Breakfast Reading

Catching up on the latest playground news :).

Go Dog Go

Old Friends

We were so lucky to get a visit from my childhood friend, Bevin, and her family this week.  Bevin and Robert live in Boston and we got to see them several times when we lived in Connecticut.  Now that we are back in St. Louis, it's a little tough to make the trip.  Fortunately though, Bevin's family is still here so we were able to take advantage of the fact that she was in town for a couple of weddings the past week.  It's so wonderful to spend time with old friends, someone who knows who you are at your very core, someone who helped make you that person.  We don't get to talk often and we see each other even less, but it doesn't seem to matter.  Bevin has always been an inspiration to me and seeing her as a mother just reinforces that.  Her children are absolutely adorable and bright and loving and great to be around.  Millie had a good time playing with Cal and Merrill was very excited to have someone younger than her around :). 

Lego's -- the universal friend maker :)

Miss Vivian -- she got those cheeks from her mama!

I wish we had more time to win Cal over -- such a sweet boy, but I think he was a bit suspicious of all of us!

Robert taught Millie and Cal how to spin around a bat and get dizzy -- Merill thought it looked fun :)

Robert made a good soccer net

Cooling off and getting ready to watch a little "Word World."  Millie felt this was an appropriate time to take off her skirt...

Thanks so much for the visit, Bevin!  We can't wait to see you all again!

If You Can't Go To the Beach...

...bring the beach to you! Being in St. Louis, we don't have too many beaches around seeing as we are very landlocked (other than rivers of course...). But the Magic House had a great exhibit this past month where they made a "beach" on their grounds, complete with a giant sand castle. I was very excited about this exhibit, but kind of disappointed that it was only scheduled to be here for a month. It opened Memorial Day weekend and today was the last day. Fortunately, Millie and I were able to make a trip up there yesterday to enjoy a little sun and sand.

Millie had a great time. We were the first ones there when it opened at 9:30 and had the "beach" to ourselves for quite a while. We staked out a nice umbrella to play under and made lots of little castles, found sea shells and got really dirty :). After playing for about an hour we headed inside to see the new baby nursery room. Millie had fun giving all the newborn babies their check-ups. It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning -- just me and Millie :).  After lunch and a nice LONG nap for Millie we all headed to Schafly Bottleworks for dinner followed by a special treat at Oberweis.  Fabulous day all around :).

Millie did LOTS of digging :)

And hauling water.  It was odd -- several times I thought I actually smelled the ocean ... Not sure where they were piping that water from!

And destroying castles :)

Couldn't even stop digging long enough to take a picture!

Strawberry Festival

Inspired by my friend Rizwan's blog, the idea of plump juicy strawberries, and memories from my own childhood of the Pumpkin Festival, we decided to go to the Strawberry Festival in Kimmswick, MO a couple of weekends ago (I am woefully behind on my blogging, so bear with me!). Now, I am not nearly the food festival aficionado that Riz is -- I have only my childhood memories from Morton as well as one visit to the Cherry Festival in Traverse City, MI and one visit to the Sugar Festival in Sebewaing, MI to make comparisons to -- but in terms of a food festival, I was a bit disappointed in the Strawberry Festival. I can definitely say that the Cherry Festival did not disappoint in terms of making cherries the "star" of the show -- you could find anything and everything you could dream of either made of cherries or with cherries on it. I can't recall if that is true at the Pumpkin Festival (I know the art that I entered in the art contest as a child was not pumpkin themed...), but I'm pretty sure the pumpkin theme ran pretty strong. But, in terms of a fun place to spend the afternoon with the family, well I thought the Strawberry Festival was just great :).

Now, according to the Kimmswick website, the Strawberry Festival is a place to enjoy all things strawberry. And while it is true that all of the items that were listed on their website could be found at the festival (strawberries, shortcake, chocolate covered strawberries, strawberry iced tea ...), you kind of had to look for them, hard. I expected every booth and vendor to be selling something strawberry related and that was not the case. Strawberries seemed to be just an excuse for having a fair and their presence seemed to be an afterthought. Like, "oh, I guess we should have some strawberries at this festival!" There was one stand selling fresh strawberries:
and I did get a "strawberry salad" for lunch:
good, but nothing too exciting and heavier on the almonds and cheese than the strawberries. We also picked up some homemade strawberry jam and that was very good -- it's gone otherwise I would post a picture :). Though I was disappointed because while jam was the one thing that several vendors were selling, very few of them were "pure." When I buy something that is "homemade" I do not want to see high fructose corn syrup as one of the ingredients :(. That to me, is not homemade. As far as I'm concerned jam should be made from fruit and pectin and maybe a little extra sugar. I'm not going to lie, I don't really know what pectin is -- but I'm pretty sure it comes from fruit and is maybe a little more natural than high fructose corn syrup! Here is a website if you want to find out a little more about pectin. My question is, how did people thicken jams and jellies before pectin was discovered? Here's somewhat of an answer, I think...

I am not a "man (or woman) of the people" like Rizwan, so I was not able to find out why Kimmswick has a strawberry festival in the first place. As I noted above, it seems like an odd place to celebrate strawberries. The jam we bought was sold by city hall, so the answer must lie somewhere in that fact, but I'm not sure where :).

Of course, being a family with two small children, our focus at the festival was less about the food and history and more about the child-friendly activities. On that front, the festival was a success. Millie got to go on her first carnival rides (a bouncer slide and the "swings"), see some camels and horses and even go through a small petting zoo. She also got to use her first porta-potty :D. Merrill enjoyed some great people watching and lots of sunshine. All in all, it was a great way to spend the day!

sizing up the bouncer slide (you can't see it very well, but her dress even has little strawberries on it!)


getting ready to swing! Scott was the lucky one who got to go on the ride with her!


and there they go!


there was this guy too -- he was putting on a spinning show ...


it was a bit breezy that day :)


feeding the baby goats


Merrill looking less than impressed :)


riding in style

And in the tradition of all Festive Festival Festivities blog posts, here is a clip of one of the bands that was playing that day. Again, I am not so good with chatting up the locals, and I didn't take any notes, so I can 't remember what the name of the band is (oh, actually, I think it was "A little Bit of Country or something like that...). They did cover Johnny Cash which was good.


hmmm, the video may not be working... well, I'll try to fix it tomorrow if it's not -- time for me to go to bed!

After going to this festival I am even MORE eager to make it back to Morton for the Pumpkin Festival. There is a chance that it won't live up to my childhood memories, but there is an even greater chance that it will give Millie and Merrill an opportunity to build some great festival memories of their own :).

Girls Day at the Park; More Pics from MI

More From the Farm -- Kitties!

and dogs, and hamsters -- it's a regular petting zoo at Kevin and Amy's! Lots of new experiences for the girls :).