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.

New Bible

Every summer at our church the rising kindergarteners are told to start bringing their own Bibles each Sunday.  So last week we gave Mead her very own (purple) Bible.  She was so excited about it!

Love her joy, and pray that she will continue to be excited about God's Word for a lifetime.

Home Depot and more

A couple weekends ago Penny was home working on a paper, and I wanted to return some dead plants to Home Depot (love that they take them back, by the way!!), so all the kids piled in the car and went with me.

The kids started climbing all over the riding lawn mowers (something they frequently do at Home Depot) while I was in the return line, and one of the workers asked them if they wanted to build a lawn mower instead of just climb on them.

What fun!  We stumbled upon their first-Saturday-of-the-month workshop for kids to come and build something.  I'd heard about it before, but we've never actually participated.

So an hour and a half later they came home with new work aprons and assembled and painted toy lawnmowers - all for free!  (Not to mention Penny got a lot of work done on his paper while the house was quiet :-)  It was a fun and unexpected way to spend a Saturday morning.

I've noticed the girls becoming better friends lately - can't remember if I already mentioned this.  Got this sweet photo of them holding hands on the way to church recently.  Love it.  Hope their friendship continues for a lifetime.

Last week the kids had VBS at our church.  I didn't get any pictures, but Mead's group leader sent this one to me.  She was playing a game of catch-the-sponge-in-the-bowl/hat and having a great time.  So glad for the many things our kids learn about the Lord through church activities and all the fun they have while doing it!

Strawberry picking

Early in the summer we always make a trip to Lakeview Farms to go strawberry picking.  This time we had several families from school and church join us.  

Laine and Clare are both going into second grade and will be studying the United States this year, including sending Flat Stanley all over the States and the world.  This is the first of many Flat Stanley pictures we'll collect this summer.

Mead and Cole loved picking strawberries (and eating them too!)

One of Mead's new kindergarten friends joined us for the morning too.  They should be good buddies by the time school actually starts!