July 1st:

So I guess since my last couple of posts have been about trips, I thought I would post about what Stoney & I have been up to at home.

This is our house In case you didn't see the last picture I posted.

It is summer time here. The grass is green and the trees are full of leaves. There are flowers blomming everyday. The hydrangeas are by far my favorite. It is quite pretty here.

In Febuary I posted pictures of Stoney working on building garden beds. Well now those garden beds are full of food. It has been so excting to see everything grow and it has been really neat to eat the food that is ripe.

So far this is what is growing:

Green Beans

Peppers Lettuce

Grape Tomatoes

Roma Tomatoes Regular Tomatoes

Strawberries

Melons

For the last three weeks Stoney has been working on building a chicken house. Yes we are getting chickens. Stoney and his grandpa have built a stellar chicken house.

Framing was their first step.

Then they added old truck panels.

After the panels were all added they did patch work.

Finally they added a chicken yard, so the chickens can get their exercise.

Now all the house needs is a coat of paint and it will be fully complete.

We also got the chicken 2 weeks ago. There is one mama and her 9 babies! They are so freakin cute and they are growing so fast. We don't know yet how many chicks are boys and how many are girls. The mama has black feathers. The chicks have the following feathers: 4 blonde, 4 black and 1 brown.

This is what they looked like when we got them.

Now they look like this. They have least doubled in size.

When have also named most of them.

This is Stoney's chick, its name is Pubert, its has blonde and white feathers.

My chick is the lonely brown feathered one, its name is Gordie.

Other names we have chosen are Woodstock, Conrad, Leroy Jenkins, and Wenis. So we still have 3 more names to pick out, but maybe we'll wait until we find out if they are boys or girls. But aren't they so cute?

Yes I am bloggin about chickens!

They are so funny to watch too. Right now since they are young, they do everything the mama does. The other day we were watching them and they were out in the yard hanging out. The mama was digging in the dirt trying to build a little nest. The chicks were also trying to dig some nests. The reason why it was so funny, was because they really couldn't figure out why they were digging the nests. They also jump on the mama's back and try to get piggy back rides. So far my chick, Gordie, is the champion of the piggy back ride, he has stayed on the longest. The mama hasn't laid any eggs yet, because the chicks are still young and she is busy trying to keep track of them. So maybe in the next month or so we will finally get some eggs. But the chicks are definately growing up because they are starting to be more independent and not stay so close to mama anymore. So sorry for saying a lot about the chickens, but I just had to share how cute they were.

Also, mom remember when I was telling you about the Elephant Ears Stoney planted?

This is what they look like.

Aren't they cool looking? They grow fast and the leaves are huge.

That is my size 9 shoe right next to the leaf! I know huge, right?

Maybe you should plant some by the pool, they are tropical looking. Just a thought.

Hillary sent me this Princess Quiz today. It was a cute little activity.

I am Aurora! (aka Sleeping Beauty)

Thoughtful and loving. Authority figures probably have been sheltering you all of your life. Thankfully you're a very tranquil person who is content with what life has given you, but secretly you want to know how the outside world works.

Take the quiz and see what princess you are. Which Disney Princess Are You? 

 

 

June 3rd:

Well we are back from our trip. We had a great time and enjoyed spending time with Stoney's mom and Kelson.

Stoney & I started our journey on Friday May 16th. We drove 6 hours to our destination, which was St. Louis, Missouri. Which by the way, if you haven't driven through Missouri, you should. It is not mountainy, but it has beautiful green rolling hills dotted with trees, it is just a very nice relaxing drive.

In St. Louis we stayed at the Hyatt right across the street from the arch! We sort of had a rough start getting to the hotel. First off, we arrived in the city on a Friday afternoon, so needless to say it was a little crowded on the streets. Next, I called the hotel to see where parking was, the lady sent me to the valet office where no one answered. I called back and she didn't know which side of the building parking was on, so she sent me to someone who didn't answer. I called back 2 other times and she was still not being very helpful. She must have just started or was having a bad day. So finally the last time I called she sent me to the concierge desk, where someone finally answered! The concierge was very helpful and told me that hotel only had valet parking and there was self-parking 2 blocks down the street. Mean while during all this phone tag, Stoney has been driving up and down the same street like 6 times! So we decided to go valet because we were sick of driving and needed to get out before we started taking out frustration on eachother! We finally make it to the front desk and told them about our ordeal with parking. They are very sorry and comped our valet ticket.

Our room was on the 11th floor and at the end of a seriously mile long hallway. But we were close to the stairs in case of an emergency! Always, look at the bright side :)!

Our room was small but did have a king size bed and a hot shower! I guess that is all you really need.

But the best thing about our room was the view!

There is the Gateway Arch and the Mississippi River!

It was awesome to look out our window and see this breath taking site. The Arch is amazing and such a site to see.

After we got settled into our room, we put on our shoes and headed across the street to check out the arch up close.

Underneath the arch there is a gift shop, theaters, and small museum.

They had this awesome wall that showed who the builders were and compared the arch's height to other monuments around the U.S.

For example, Old Faithful in Yellowstone is 165' tall, Mount Rushmore is 465' tall, and the Washington Monument is 555' tall. The park worker we talked to said the Washington Monument could stand underneath the Arch and still have 100' to spare, just to give a comparison.

The little museum that was there was about America's movement into the West, because the Arch is the Gateway into the "West". They had a lot of information about the Louis & Clark expedition. Something I found out was that St. Louis was named for Louis, because after his expedition West he came to live here, back to where the movement had started.

In the museum they had a sorts of stuffed animals and this was a sign that was next to a horse, I thought it was hillarious.

They also had this massive ship wheel, I don't know what ship it is from, but it was huge.

There was also this awesome pedigree chart on Louis. It was a huge chart that had to have over 50 names. Although, I wasn't able to find out how long it took to put together.

There is also a tram that goes all the way to the top of the Arch, but by the time we got to the ticket booth they were all sold out for the rest of the day. So we said we would just come back Saturday and ride to the top, but we got a little nervous and chickened out. The tram carts were very tiny and held 6 people, so not a lot of room.

We then left the underground and walked around the park. We wanted to go down to the banks of the Mississippi but it was almost flooded to the sidewalk so we just stayed right on the edge. The water was really brown and the current moved very fast, it would be quite a tube ride.

I wanted to take a nice picture but Stoney was being retarded.

We walked down this cute little path and got a great shot of the Arch

After we had seen the Gateway Arch and Park we decided to head down to the Cardinal's Stadium to see if we could get tickets to the baseball game. Stoney had checked Ticketmaster before we left and it said the game was sold out, but we went down to see if we could get lucky. Sure enough they had some tickets left. They were of course in the top section right behind the left field foul post, but it was still awesome that we were going to the game. We felt a little bit out of place because we were like to only ones not wearing Cardinal's shirts or jerseys, but we survived. Unfortunately the Cardinals did not, they lost to Florida 1-3.

Saturday morning we woke up to blue skies and cool temps. Saturday was busy in St. Louis and especially at our hotel, so we were glad to be leaving. Before we checked out we went and took another walk around the city.

We walked to the courtyard and got this great shot. This is the courthouse where the case Roe v. Wade was held, if you remember that case from school? Also the brown building on the left is our hotel.

We left the city and drove to the Missouri Botanical Garden. The Garden was huge and it was neat to walk around and see all the different things and exhibits.

They had a rainforest greenhouse, that had all sorts of tropical things.

There were blown glass sculptures all over.

There was also the coolest looking leaves everywhere.

There was also an actually garden where fruits and vegetables were growing. It was neat to see a really big garden set up because Stoney is totally into gardening now that we have one of our own, but that is a post for some other time.

There was also a beautiful Japanesse Garden with a Koi Pond. Koi fish are the big gold and orange fish, you usually see them at the zoo.

Us chillin the English Woodland Garden.

After our rest we went to Victorian District, were the original botanical garden was started in 1859. Stoney really wanted to see the maze and the 2 rose gardens in this district.

We went first to the maze and it was tiny, but still fun.

Then we walked to the first Rose Garden, we heard it is beautiful, we turned the corner and saw not a single rose.

So a little disapointed we trudged on to the next rose garden.

Needless to say, there were no roses but at least this one had buds.

So the Victorian District was a little disapointing but they did have this awesome sculpture. Any guess on who that is?

After visiting the botanical gardens we had planned to go to Grant's Farm. If you have never heard of Grant's Farm you have for sure heard of the animals that live there. A little background first, St. Louis is the headquarters for Anheuser-Busch, Inc. aka Budwiser. They have a ginormous factory where you can take tours. They also have a place called Grant's Farm that houses the famous Budwiser Clydesdale horses. We had decided not to visit there beacause we had already been in the sun most of the afternoon. Also we figured we would come up through St. Louis another time and would visit then.

So we said goodbye for now to St. Louis and continued on our journey. We were finally on our last leg headed up to Naperville.

While in Naperville we had a big schedule for the coming week. Sunday there was Seminary Grad, Tuesday we had a Commorative Ceremony (where we all cried), Wedsnesday a Senior Awards Assembly and of course the big Commencement Ceremony. It was a little weird too, because all the Seniors graduate on Weds, but then the rest of the students didn't get out of school until a week later. So that was a little different for me. Also, there were still a lot of sports teams that were still going on. So seniors who are on spring sports teams are still finishing up the season even though they have graduated. Weird!

There was about 800+ kids in his class. So it was a long graduation. But it was neat to experience. There was also a big fireworks show at the end! Congrats Kelson!

After our high school adventures were finished we decided to catch up on some movies.

On Thursday we saw I wont give any info away, but for me it was a good one time see. I liked the story line between the characters, but I didn't like the adventure story line. It was a little weak for being a Lucas/Spielberg colab. But it is Indian Jones so you have to see it.

Then on Friday we went and saw I loved this movie. It was so good. The ending was not what I wanted but it was very entertaining and enjoyable. I think the guys that play Caspian and Peter are cute. I also loved Susan's and Edmond's characters much better than the first one. Susan was much more get in there and kick butt girl. Edmond was much more mature and not so shut up you stupid kid. He was also grown up and cute.

Then the rest of the time we just hung out, played games and had some laughs. We stayed for about 2 weeks. We could have stayed longer, but we wanted to get back to our own bed.

We had a safe drive back home and saw a lot of pretty countryside.

One more note while in Naperville Stoney decided to give himself a "cool" haircut. Which I was really the one who gave him the haircut because he can't see the back of his head. Anyways this is how it turned out.

Funny right? He usually does this when he shaves his head, but he doesn't keep it. But this time he kept it for about 5 days. One thing funny was that, on our journey home we stopped for lunch at Wendy's and a groups of older ladies were looking at us funny. So when we got home he shaved the rest because he said he was "embarrassed".

We had a great trip and great laughs.

May 15th:

I am so excited! We are going up to Chicago for Kelson's (Stoney's Bro) HS Graduation. We are leaving tomorrow morning and going through St. Louis. We will stay the night in St. Louis and hang out on Saturday, then in the afternoon make the rest of our journey. St. Louis is about 6 hours away from us, then to Chicago is about another 4 hours. I am so excited because we got a great deal on a Hyatt hotel room. We are staying at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis Riverfront, it is right in downtown and across the street from the St. Louis Arch! It will be awesome to see the sights! I love visiting cities, because they are so fun. Just walking around and seeing all the sites is so fun for me!

This is St. Louis and the area we will be staying in.

Once in Chicago we will stay at Stoney's Mom's house. We will visit, go into the city, and see the new Narnia movie!! That is another reason I am excited, Prince Caspian comes out tomorrow and I cannot wait to see it! I love the first movie and the books, I am so excited!

I also went and saw the other day and I have to say that I really liked it. It reminded me of How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days, funny and sweet. Even your husbands would like it just once!

Also last week I was watching the Ellen show and she was showing videos of kids doing and saying funny things! I laughed so hard at one video, and everytime I watch it still makes me laugh. So I went and found the video on YouTube so I thought I would share it with you. But please watch it when your children are not around because the little girl says a#% and I would not want to be held partly responsible for your kids vocab!! One reason why it is so funny because you can hear the mom in the background trying so hard not to laugh and also trying to tell her daughter not to use that bad word.

So Funny, right?

Anyways when we get back from our trip I will make a new post and tell you all about our adventures. Until then have a happy week!