Summer Fun All Around

We have had a fantastic summer!  The weather has been beautiful and we were able to spend a ton of time outside.  Besides some of the bigger days/trips of the summer, we had many, many more low key, memory making moments.  Some of them include...

playing with sidewalk chalk.

having fun moments with each other.

spending Father's Day at the Gateway Grizzlie game with not only Tim but Poppy as well.

taking family bike rides -- to Tropical Sno, to garage sales and the park, and to Tom's for a cookie (in which Hannah rode her bike the WHOLE WAY!  That's close to 4 miles round trip!

having a fun visit with Nikki, Kyle and Jordan for a weekend.

 going to a small local water park for Cornerstone night and the ice cream shop with the Speaks'.

 taking a visit to the Chicago area to see several friends and their kids including the Gorsch family.

 spending time with our small group throughout the summer.

and going to pick peaches and blackberries with the Speaks family.

We also can't forget swimming, swimming and more swimming!  I have loved all of our summer and feel so blessed to have a job that I love for nine months of the year and it also enables me to spend three months with my kids.  I look forward to more memory making summers!

A Whirlwind Day at Holiday World

A few years ago, we made our first trip to Santa Claus, IN for a trip to Holiday World.  On that trip, we stayed at some awesome cabins and spent a couple of days there.  We really wanted to go back, but didn't really want to spend the extra money to stay overnight.  We decided that it was close enough to do a one day trip there and back.  I mentioned it to my friend Emily and we were set to plan a day!  We decided to leave early and go as long as the kids could make it then drive home the same night.

We met just about 7 am for the 2 1/2 hour drive to Santa Claus.  All of the kids did great and it wasn't a bad drive at all.  We arrived just as it opened and we went straight to the amusement park side.  We hit several rides the kids could do and ended the morning in a section designed just for them.  Here are Cam, Hannah, Jack and Emma in front of the Holidog statue.

When we finished with this section, we headed out to our cars to eat our picnic lunch.  We popped open both of the cars and sat inside and around the cars to eat.  The kids thought it was pretty cool!  Then we put swimsuits on and headed back inside to check out the water park side.  We found a central spot in a great section for our kids that had about eight different small slides and a little pool.  The weather was gorgeous, sunny and 80*, and the water park was a little crazy.  Tim and I took Hannah and Cam on one family slide together.  But the rest of the time we just stuck near the small slides.  It will be nice when both kids can do the same stuff and we can just all go places together.  Even though we pretty much stayed in the same place the whole time, the kids had a blast!

When we were done, we changed clothes and went back to the amusement park for a few more rides.  There is another small section with a lot of rides our kids could do.  We finished the day with some yummy ice cream.  While the dads and girls waited in line for ice cream, the boys hung out in the stroller.  Although this was staged, it's only because minutes before they were hugging totally unprompted.  These two have such a fun time together...even if Cam is a little bigger than Jack!

Everyone enjoyed their ice cream snack, but none more than Jack.  He was going to town on this chocolate cone and was covered with ice cream!  Love him!

As we were leaving(it was close to 7pm!), we took a few pictures with the Santa statue at the front of the park.

The Casey Family

The Speaks Family

Our crazy kids who are BFFs!

I'm pretty sure Cameron was asleep before we even left the parking lot and Hannah wasn't too far behind him.  We had such a fun day!  We are so blessed to have great friends and especially glad that our kids have friends to play with.  I think this will be a new Casey/Speaks summer tradition! :-)

A 360' View

Every time we drive into St. Louis, Hannah gets so excited about seeing the Arch.  Every time we drive into St. Louis and Hannah sees the Arch, we always say we need to plan a trip.  That finally happened today!  Tim had an all day workshop in St. Louis, so the the kids and I headed over after nap time to meet him at the Arch.  When we got there, the first available trip was in about two hours.  We bought our tickets then walked to Caleco's to eat supper.  After dinner, we walked back to the Arch to tour the museum and get ready for our ride up.  The kids had a blast!  The little egg-like contraptions that get you up to the top didn't seem to bother them at all.  Once at the top, it was a little crowded, but everyone was able to get a good view of both sides of the Arch.  They loved pointing out things they saw from the top of the Arch.  I'm so glad we finally penciled in a time to go and I'm sure it won't be the last!

Branson Vacation

Last year, my mom and dad took us on an awesome beach vacation to South Carolina.  Coming up this December, we will be taking our first family trip to Disney World for Hannah's 5th birthday.  Since we are all saving up for that, my mom and dad suggested we take a long weekend to Branson this summer.  We did these past few days and had a ton of fun!

We left really early Thursday morning all piled in our minivan for the four-ish hour drive to Branson.  My dad found a great cabin on a golf resort right outside of Branson to stay in.  It was great for our family!  Once we checked in, Tim and my dad played golf while my mom and I took the kiddos to the pool.  They had a great time swimming and were able to show off some of their new water skills for Nonnie.  After some rest and showers, we headed to Branson Landing for the evening.  It is a redone area right on the lake with some restaurants and shopping and a really fun water/fire show.  Poppy even got a special picture with the kiddos!

We went back and forth on whether to do Silver Dollar City on this trip.  I was worried that the kids wouldn't have enough to do there and the tickets were really expensive.  Instead, we were up bright and early and went to the water park.  It was an awesome day!  It wasn't a huge park so it didn't take too long to get to the different rides.  Hannah could ride all but a few slides and she had a blast!  She was a little nervous at first, but once she got going, there was no stopping her.  Cameron also loved the slides he could do, but was also content to just sit on the lazy river with Nonnie.  He even took a little snooze while dad and Tim rode a few of the bigger slides.  We had a super fun day!  That night, we ate a great little hamburger place and went to the outlet mall to shop.

Day three started early for my dad and Tim as they headed off to golf.  Mom and I took the kids to the park and the fish hatchery in the morning.  They loved seeing and feeding all of the fish at the hatchery.  We had been told it was a must do outing and I'm really glad we did it.  Once the guys were home from golf, we all headed to the pool to swim for an hour or so.  That night, we went to the Dixie Stampede show.  The kids had a great time and really loved seeing all of the animals during the show.  It was a fun experience and a great way to spend our evening.

On our final day in Branson, we started with the Ride the Ducks experience.  My mom, dad and I had done this in the Dells several years ago, but Tim and the kids had never been.  The ducks are fashioned after a military boat/car and they go both on land and in the water.  The kids had fun driving around town and especially on the lake.  I think they had the most fun using their "Wacky Quackers" whenever our driver told us too!

After lunch, we hit the outlet mall again before heading home.  We found lots of good deals for both the beginning of school/fall and for the kids for next summer.  We wore the kids out and they slept pretty much the entire drive home!

We had an awesome few days as a family and we are blessed that my parents wanted to spend a few days with us on this awesome vacation!  We can't wait for more trips with our family!

Let Freedom Ring

We had a great Fourth of July this year!  We started our day at the VP Parade in downtown St. Louis.  My parents headed down quite early to get us a nice shady spot, although it was the coolest 4th we've had in a long time!  We got there just in time for the parade to start.  Nonnie and Poppy had bought some snap pops for the kids and they started popping them as soon as we got there.

Someone was refusing to smile for me...

Cam parked himself on Poppy's lap for the majority of the parade.  Cam loves his Poppy and is usually pretty good if he can be with him.

 Mommy and Hannah sitting on the blanket watching the parade and getting lots of candy!

This is one of our favorite summer activities and I'm glad we went again this year.  After the parade, we all went down to the Landing for some lunch.  We could see the air show a little bit as we ate lunch and headed home.  We had a pretty low key rest of the day.  We watched fireworks in our backyard and the kids really liked that.  It was a great day to spend as a family!