Kentucky Lake Vacation

This summer my mom and Alex invited us all to join them for a joint family vacation.  Mom and Alex, and my brother and his wife, both drove west from North Carolina.  We drove east, and we all me "in the middle" at The Land Between the Lakes.

None of us had ever been there before, but our midwestern friends recommended Lake Barkley to us, so we decided to give it a shot.  I've already posted a lot of pictures on Facebook, so I'll just post the remaining few here.  

We had a great trip, one of the adventures being a drive through the Elk and Bison park.  Kind of reminded me of being on a safari in Africa, though on a much smaller scale.  Really cool to see the animals so up close!

Along with boating, fishing, tubing, rope swinging, and enjoy good meals together, we also spent one morning at the beach on the lake.

Penny and the kids built sand castles,

Cole dug many holes,

and everyone swam in the midst of all the sandy play.

Here's the finished sand castle, complete with turrets at the top.

So many good memories from our vacation and glad for the time our families had together.  We are so thankful to Nan and Pop for suggesting and making the whole thing happen.

Splash pads

St. Louis has tons of parks to visit, and many of them also have "splash pads."  These come in various forms.  This one, at Millennium Park, has lots of water sprayers in the ground with a fence around the area to keep the kids contained (kind of nice).

Others have a water tower that sprays water horizontally at various heights,

and we recently found one at Creve Couer Lake Park that has a bucket that fills and dumps water on your head, along with other sprayers.

So thankful for various options to beat the heat on a hot summer day, not to mention being able to go to the pool and swim there too.  Love living in St. Louis!

Summer Camps

This summer has been a lot of fun and gone by very quickly, thanks in part to the kids being in various summer camps.

Laine and Mead did Magic House Camp in June, and they both had a blast.

Laine especially enjoyed learning about science and presenting some science experiments for the parents at the end of the week.

The first week of July Laine also did an art camp - one of her passions in life.

She brought home many beautiful things, and we framed these two:

A stained glass window painting,

And an impressionistic tryptic of winter, spring, and summer.  I love her creativity and love of art!

Happy 4th of July!

 On the morning of the 4th we went to The Daily Bread, a local bakery and restaurant, for their annual 4th of July festival.

A bubble machine and snow cones made for a great start.

Then the kids got their faces painted.

Butterflies for the girls...

and a baseball for Cole.

 They looked so cute!

Finally they got to decorate their own cookies.

Icing and sprinkles galore!

Yummy!!

On the back porch

 A couple months ago Penny and the kids built a birdhouse.  Well now the birds have discovered it, and a few little birds have even made their home in it.  So fun to see it being put to good use!

Just below the birdhouse, the kids happily painted out on the porch the other day.  Most of the paint made it onto the paper and the horses (in the girls' case) but there are definitely some remnant marks on the bricks too!  Who knows, maybe the rain will wash it away eventually.  Regardless, we've had fun spending time outside this summer.