New Grass...New Drum

This was what Gabe and I were up to this morning. We have new grass. It looks great but now we also need to do some maintenance on the old grass. It's now clear how bad we've been at taking care of it! We had it all done, including a trip to Home Depot to pick up sod and look at their kitchen remodel stuff, before noon. That's what happens when we're up and ready to get to work before 8am. Oh, the days of sleeping in on Saturday mornings are long gone.

When we ran errands this afternoon we couldn't resist picking out a toy drum for Levi at Target. He's reached the stage where he loves making noise. Especially hitting the tray on his highchair at dinner time. We figured he'd love having something that actually made music when he banged on it. So, here's a picture...mostly for the grandparents out there!
Well, Gabe leaves for Florida in the wee hours of the morning...again. This will be the third trip he's made in six weeks! I'm so sick of it. Luckily they're quick trips. But it makes me sad for him to be gone, even for a short time since we see so little of Levi as it is. This little guy is only going to be a baby once and I hate Gabe missing out. Even if it's only for 48 hours at a time. Having to work gets in the way of everything. Speaking of work...I have 8 more weeks myself!

Earth Day 2010

Well, it's the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and I really wanted to celebrate by doing something big this year. I've been racking my brain for weeks, and up until the last minute...right before bed last night. Yet, I was unable to think of anything Gabe and I could really do this year. Neither of us were really willing to turn our 30+ minute commutes to work, into an hour or more by taking public transportation.
Of course we would love to put in one of these, but that is definitely not happening this year. Maybe for Earth Day's 50th anniversary. Perhaps since we're good at living "green" every day, we can be off the hook this year? Oh, wait! Gabe did print the coupon he just took to Dairy Queen on previously used paper. That counts right? Unfortunately, the gas he's using to drive there and get our blizzards will cancel that good deed out. (Everyone has heard about the buy one get one for $.25 right?)
Happy Earth Day!

Spring Cleaning...(sort of)

Wish I would have thought to take some before pictures. Gabe and I started the process of "remodeling" our yard. We have some big dreams of what we'd like to do. Get the hot tub up and running again, gas fire pit, lots of native plants, new sod, steel raised beds for the veggie garden, taking out the rock front lawn and replace it with no-mow grass. Those are just the big things on the list. Well, this weekend all we really got done was a little trimming and some demolition. Gabe tore out a bunch of wild blackberries and was going to mow the lawn. That was the plan anyway. He worked for about half an hour trying to get the lawnmower working but with no luck. Leaving an old lawnmower out in the elements all winter is probably not the best idea. Guess I know what someone will be getting for Father's day.

I worked on removing a stupid flagstone path in the yard. I hated it. It just took space from what little yard we actually have. So, we'll need to lay some sod in the next month to give Levi a little more grass to play on. I also removed what was left of the previous owners water feature. They left the small "pond" of stagnant water but took the electric fountain. It was disgusting. The smell almost made me lose my breakfast. So, now we have a huge hole in our flower bed. Oh, I also removed at least 100 iris from the front yard. I'm giving some to my mom but if anyone else wants some let me know. We have no idea what color they are. I just don't like iris...unless they're of the native variety.

So, we don't really have much to show for all our hard work, other than our sore muscles. The yard actually looks worse right now. I guess I'll have to go at it alone next weekend. Gabe's off to play with his dad and his buddies for the weekend.

It was a very productive weekend. Got lots of other cleaning done around here that I've been avoiding. But in the mean time, also avoided the school work I brought home to do this weekend. Guess I can't do it all!

Happy Easter!

Levi slept over at Grandma and Grandpa G's house last night so that Gabe and I could go out with friends to the Spring Beer and Wine Fest. We met up with the family at church and then went back to Grandma and Grandpa's house for lunch. Here's Levi checking out what the Easter Bunny left for him in his basket. No chocoalte bunnies this year.We had a nice but short visit with the family...the little guy refused to nap!

I hope everyone had a happy Easter. Next year Levi will be on the hunt for eggs. That will be fun.

Cousins

These pictures are mainly for Grandma G. But I figured there may be a few more of you out there who might also enjoy a few shots of Levi with his big cousins.

We tried desperately to get Sawyer and Levi in the bath tub together. But I guess when you're the big boy cousin you have no desire to get into the bath tub with a baby. So here's Sawyer "helping" me give Levi a bath.Here's one of Levi watching Savannah and Sawyer feed what few ducks were inhabiting the duck pond. I think most of them must still be hanging out down South, waiting for winter to be completely over.And here's the best of our attempted photo session with all three kids. I love this picture but I hate that the depth of field is off and Savannah and Sawyer are out of focus! And it's really one of the best ones we got.This one's ok too. Except the kids are all looking at me on the floor being silly...trying to get Levi to smile, rather than looking at the camera.We got a few more cute "silly" pictures too. Sawyer was definitely more into taking the silly pictures so he could stick out his tongue. So, there are a few more good ones to look at if you're interested Mom.

And that completes our St. Louis adventures. I'm really thankful for our wonderful family. Thanks Heather, Ryan, Savannah and Sawyer for having us. We loved seeing you guys. Wish it could happen more often. We miss you!

Butterfly House

Our last big outing in St. Louis was the Butterfly House. It's now part of the Missouri Botanical Garden, but is located in a different area. The building is basically a giant greenhouse, with all kinds of tropical flowers for the butterflies. For March, the butterfly of the month was the Blue Morpho, there were around 3000 of them flying around the building. There were so many, that at one point or another, I think all of us had a butterfly land on us.


I apologize for the quality of these pictures, they came from Gabe's phone since the building was too humid for our regular camera. It fogged up as soon as we got it out, rendering it pretty much useless.

-H

Anheuser-Busch Brewery

The one thing Gabe really wanted to do in St. Louis was go on a brewery tour. I'm not really sure why. He doesn't even drink Budweiser. In fact, I think he'd probably drink water before drinking one...well, maybe not. So, we pulled Savannah out of school early to head into the city. One of the things on our agenda...the brewery.We saw the brewery, the Clydesdales and historic stable, the bottling facility and drank our complementary free beer.

Here are the boys enjoying the sights and smells of the brewery. Savannah said the brewery smelled bad, to which both her dad and uncle strongly disagreed!

Missouri Botanical Garden

This is the biggest botanical garden I've ever been too. 79 acres of plants! It took us a good 3 plus hours to explore. Unfortunately spring was not in bloom in St. Louis and I feel like we missed the most beautiful time of year to visit this garden. I was surprised to find not even daffodils in bloom yet. They've been in bloom almost a month here and are just about spent. Even though the plants weren't 100% ready, this was still a big garden to explore. Plus they have the Climatron, the world's first geodesic dome greenhouse. It made us feel like we had our Hawaiian vacation...sort of. All the plants in there are tropical and it seemed like we were back on the big island. They have tons of different types of gardens. Here's the entrance to the English boxwood garden.They also have a traditional Chinese garden.And a Japanese garden. The koi in the pond were hilarious. We stood at the railing to look at them and they were all under the impression we were planning to feed them the food you can by in the candy like dispenser. They all swam over to us and just came up to the surface with their mouths wide open. It was funny but also really disgusting. Carp are such a gross fish. Here we are watching (and not feeding) the fish.

St. Louis Zoo

Well, I think it's going to take me a while to get all of our adventures in St. Louis on here.

Levi had his first visit to the zoo in St. Louis. The St. Louis zoo is an awesome zoo and what makes it even better...admission is FREE! We enjoyed a beautiful day. The elephants were definitely Levi's favorite. He made all sorts of noise as he tried to talk to them. And the two baby elephants were running around, jumping in the water and playing. It was so fun.Gabe, Levi and Sawyer also rode the carousel. Here they are waiting in line.And here's Levi after his first ride. It was so cute. Levi rode like a natural. When Gabe set him down on the lion, he immediately grabbed onto the pole. It was like he knew exactly what to do.And just one more shot...here's Levi watching the Sun Bears lounging in the sun.I'm not sure how aware Levi was of all the animals. I think we'll have to make some visits to the Oregon zoo this summer. I'm sure Levi will love it!