Remember?

When I used to dress Olivia in clothes that were too small for her? No, really what I am asking is do you remember this cute little thing two springs ago? This is what the daffodils look like - since we forgot to take pictures last week.

What was I thinking? She looks like Daisy Duke, with fatter cheeks and shorter hair!

April Showers

We drove out to the Nature Reserve last week - hoping to beat the rain - we lost. We drove through the Reserve and looked at the daffodils (didn't take a single picture, duh), and then played a bit in the rain.

For those of you who have not been out there, we recommend it. Great to bird watch, hike/walk around, lots of different types of vegetation. And they have an excellent bookstore! I am not kidding - children's books for $5-6 that would be $13+ elsewhere. Ordering good books is a hobby for the lady who does it there, so she really gets the good stuff. She marks up the adult books a bit more, but they are still a descent deal.

alma mater

You be the judge

Which kid is more energetic?

The Prairie

We took about a mile and a half walk around the reserve.















This is part of the wildflower garden. Sorry about the glare in a lot of these pictures. It was a perfect, cloudy but bright day for pictures, but I was always taking them right into the brightness it seems.

















That is a pond!

Prairie Friends

The Woitas were surrogates for the weekend and they hauled their chicklets out to Prairie Day.

Prairie Day

Let the fall festivals begin!! Maybe I am easy to please. Maybe I am a goob (no comment, Jeremy). Either way, fall festivals make me so happy. The Shaw Nature Reserve has a Prairie Day every two years and this was our first time going. It was very Little House on the Prairie-ish - tons of hands on activities for the kids. Below Olivia is grinding coffee. This guy (with the fabulous handle bar mustache - the only kind of mustache, by the way, that I think does not make a guy look shifty) and his wife also owned sheep and she was exhibiting the whole sheering to yarn process. They had big vats of boiling water with pokeberries or golden rod or walnut shells in them dying the yarn. We bought a $2 loop of pokeberry dyed, wool yarn. Who knows what we will do with it.














The kids got to collect wooden nickels at any of the booths where they asked questions or touched something like a turtle shell or skunk pelt or arrow head. Then they could trade in their nickels for various items. Olivia bought a ring of tree identification tags for 10 nickels. It is very cool and I am sad to say that I currently cannot find it. She was playing with it in the backyard with some friends yesterday and...















Here are the "Herps." It's a python.














This is actually at an interactive area on the other side of the reserve from the festival. This area is worth the drive out there if you have kids.

Spring 2007

Thank you, Mom for those very sexy legs! Believe it or not I am 7 months pregnant here. Mind the "buffalo" in the background - Shaw Nature Reserve, St. Louis.




































I think I must be dressing O in one size too small - she looks like a piggy in a blanket.



















Easter egg "hunting"

I smell a rotten egg...

Say "Grape"