botanical gardens

Brian recently had about a month-long vacation from work.

He is actually back to work now, but we were able to get a lot done and enjoy the time we had.

He was even able to get to Florida to see his family for a few days and catch up with some of his friends there.  

During the last week of his time off we went down to the Botanical Gardens.

I usually drag everyone down there a little earlier to enjoy the tulips or the cherry trees in the Japanese garden, but we just didn't make it this year.  We typically don't go during this time because the cherry blossoms have fallen off the trees and the tulip are pretty faded by now.  But who knew that the azaleas were blooming so fiercely?!  For some reason I never get an alert about the azaleas so I just don't think about them.  They were absolutely gorgeous!

The most fun part for me was that Brian brought a camera with him to shoot pictures too.

He was actually the original photographer in the family, but somewhere along the line (probably when the boys were born and I wanted to take pictures of them all day long) my interest in it kind of skyrocketed and I've pretty much taken over.  The camera rarely touches his hands any more,  because I'm always hogging it.

We don't do it very often, but it's fun to go on little photography jaunts with him.  He has a really good eye and it's fun to see things differently with him.  He taught me a ton about cameras and photography when I first started being interested.

Somehow, our quest for the day at the Botanical Gardens became getting an awesome blurred-motion running-water shot.  I think both of us had read how to do it and knew how to do it, but it was actually a pretty good challenge remembering everything and applying all of our knowledge.  I think you really need a tripod for a truly great shot of this, so maybe a little planning ahead next time :)

But here are a few of the images we ended up with.

Not bad for our first time I don't think!

Read Right and Run

This was the second year that the boys did Read Right Run with their school.

Last year it started storming the morning of the race so we didn't get to finish the 26 miles

at Forest Park as planned, but they did finish it at school because they have an awesome

PE teacher.

This year was the exact opposite weather.

It was absolutely beautiful.

Plenty of sunshine.

Not too hot.

Not too cold.

We were spoiled for sure.

They had such a good time.

I'm proud of them for doing all 26 books, good deeds and miles.

The good deeds were the hardest to keep up with.

Not the hardest to do - we would just forget to track them.

But they did it and are ready to do it again next year.

They even saw signs for a 5K Halloween run and were all over doing that

in October in our costumes.  Sounds fun!

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the zoo.

Along with almost every other St. Louisan I believe.

If you live here you know what it's like on those first nice Saturdays in spring and know what I'm talking about :)

Saw the new sea lion show for the first time and just walked around enjoying the day.

silhouettes

Absolutely my favorite photography project right now.

I'm on the lookout for an awesome place to do this with no weeds at our feet.

So hopefully there will be more to come.

I'm thinking the beach if we can ever get there!

4th Grade Camp

This kid was so excited to go to 4th Grade Camp a few weeks ago!  

And according to him, it was the best camp ever.  

He talked about it until he went to bed the night he got home,

and then started in again the next morning.

So much to tell us.

He was most excited about the archery sessions.

He got two bulls eyes in a row!

But he really liked every bit of it - even the food.

The best sloppy joe ever, apparently.

I'm glad he is outgoing and likes to be with his friends.

I'm sure this will be a forever memory for him.

baseball

I think I mentioned that Ethan started baseball practice in January, and we are in full swing now.

He L.O.V.E.S. baseball.

He has no doubt that he will play for the Cardinals when he grows up.

That's after he and three of his friends finish playing football in college.

You gotta be well-rounded, ya know.

He has a really great coach and team this year, and it's so much fun to watch him play.

He has been playing his much-desired position of first base for the past two games and has been doing a great job - most importantly having so much fun with his teammates.

 And no game is complete without sliding into a bag of sand at some point, right?

I'm pretty sure I should buy some stock in Clorox.

football

The boys have been asking to play football forever.

We've hesitated mainly for two reasons:

They play their games on Sundays.

We know that tackle football is a huge time commitment.

But we agreed to let Elliott play flag football this spring with the understanding that he might miss a few games if they interfered with church.  He was fine with that, and we have not had to miss any games.  We are late to half of them, but that's fine.

It's been fun for us to watch, and he has really loved it.  He has been playing Center for the most part.

Of course, he throwing bones to get us to agree to tackle in the fall now.

So far we are not convinced though.

 Every football player has devoted fans, right?

no longer for everyone

I went to update the blog a few minutes ago and noticed several pageviews for today which is out of the ordinary, so I clicked on one of the sites that had supposedly been viewing.  I'll just say I wasn't prepared for what I saw and this blog will no longer be open to anyone who wants to view it.  I tried to send invites to anyone who I thought read it regularly (well, when it has something to read, which is not very often lately), but if you didn't get one it's most likely because I either didn't have your email or I didn't know you were a reader.  Just let me know and I'll think about adding you to the club :)