Cake hunting

We have doubled our score of cakes in the past couple of days.  We got the Eckert's one on Thursday, even though the phone app didn't work.

Maggie and I got this one at Hanley House in Clayton after I got my driver's license renewed yesterday.  I told her that there were bound to be cakes in Clayton and my phone app said there were two close by.  After we got this one, it said there were no others in the area.  When I got home and checked, there are 4 or 5 cakes in that area.  This phone app is going to be the death of me!!  The "upgrade" is definitely a "downgrade"!!  I'm going to have to carry the list around with me from now on!!!

Maggie and I went into work on Friday night and afterwards we ran by SLU's north campus and got the SLU cake

Then we walked up N. Grand and got the cake outside Big Brothers and Big Sisters

This cake is outside the Centene center for the arts

There was a cake outside the FOX Theater

Maggie really enjoys looking for cakes, but Ben isn't as thrilled (teenagers!).  I told Maggie we will go looking for them while he is doing gymnastics this Summer.  It's a great thing for me to spend some time with Maggie

First week of Summer vacation 2014

First week of Summer vacation, kids are completely free. Sam and I each took off work for a couple of days to be home with them.  The tent comes out EVERY vacation!!!!  This time, they wanted to sleep outside, so they set up the tent on the grass.  Unfortunately, a couple of disasters happened.  The zipper on the door broke, so I had to use safety pins to close most of it and just leave enough space that you could shimmy in and out.  Right after we went to bed, the heavens opened up and water poured into the tent, so they had to come back inside immediately!!!!!  Nice try-Ben wasn't going to make it through the night anyway!!!

Sam took them to the pool on Monday and Tuesday.  Not sure if this is what the hip teenagers wear to the pool or not.....  Regardless of what he is wearing, Sam reports that the pool girls HAVE noticed him, especially when his shirt comes off!!!!  Sam says he's completely oblivious, it's going to be horrible if he eves catches on!!!!

I didn't go to the pool with the family, I planted our school garden instead.  I planted some tomatoes and Ben's celery plants, plus I found some sweet potatoes and thought I'd give them a go this year.  After I dug everything out, I found out that the water was turned off because there is a leak in the system.  So, now I am taking water up to the school every day to try and keep them alive.

We went to Eckert's to pick strawberries.  It was a perfect day, not too hot and hardly anyone around.  Ben and I picked a box each, Maggie ate strawberries the whole time!!!!

Don't these look fantastic???!!!

I don't know how Maggie found a sour one because I certainly didn't!!!

We found a STL250 cake at Eckert's but it wasn't on the official map so we didn't record it on the app.  Still, this is our #6

Last week of school 2014

Wow, what a whirlwind week. Combination of Sam being out of town and last week of school.  The kids had all kinds of things going on all week.  I spent the whole week driving in and out of the garage!!!!
Maggie had her last gymnastics session on Monday.  We decided to pull her out, at least for a while.  I don't think she's enjoying it at all and she cheered when I said she didn't have to go back.
Ben had a band concert at Moss Field on Tuesday night.  They did a fantastic job.  7th grade played first and then 8th grade.  We went to Baskin Robbins for ice cream after the concert

On Wednesday night, Maggie had a Girl Scout trip to the Botanical Gardens.  We found out 5th cake.  Only 245 left to go!!!!

We were dodging the rain, so the girls did an information program inside before we went out for a tour of the garden.

The irises are the best I have ever seen.  A benefit of the cold Winter-they are all blooming at the same time

I don't know what these are, the look like a type of ornamental onion and they are spectacular

The Girl Scouts sitting on the sheep!!!!

The lego exhibit starts this weekend.  We saw a couple of pieces but most of them are in the Climatron

Maggie had a softball game on Thursday night.  She still steps out of the base when the ball comes to her, but actually managed to get a hit on Thursday.  She's got all the moves that she sees on TV (apart from the swing!!)

The last day of school rolled around and they brought home all their school stuff.  Honestly, there's always so much of it and it takes for ever to plough through it.  I want to just dump it all in the recycling without looking at it!!!!  Ben filed most of his, he'll probably never look at it again!!!!!

He has an awful lot of books by his bedside for someone who doesn't like to read....

The peonies are fantastic this year.  I always cut them and bring them inside, unfortunately they don't last very long.

So, now we have an 8th grader and a 5th grader.  They will be Top Dog at school next year!!!!

Anne's graduation

Anne's graduation was last weekend. We went to her pre-commencement ceremony at Chaiffetz arena.  I realized this is the first undergraduate ceremony I had been to at SLU!!!!

They had all the graduates names on the ticker tape.  Ben and Maggie loved looking for Anne's name to come around

Molly and Tim had a party for Anne on Saturday afternoon.  Ben and Maggie had a great time running around with everyone.  Ben is almost as tall as Anne!!!!

Random recent stuff....

This one is just for Mum and Dad-looks like Mad Pat has been up at the school!!!!!  It was teacher appreciation week and someone thought it was appropriate to plant these flamingos.  God, how I hate these things!!!!

Just had to take this photo of our "double decker" cats

School is ending and projects are coming home.  Maggie made this ugly pot, I can remember when Ben made his-is it really three years ago already?

Maggie has been really busy recently.  She does gymnastics on a Monday night, Girls on the Run on Tuesday and Thursday nights, Girl Scouts on every other Wednesday, and softball in between.  We did the GOTR run last Saturday and we did pretty well, although nothing like as good as last year.

We did find another St. Louis 250 cake when we were done running though.  This is #4

This is Maggie's first year doing softball, but she is doing pretty well.  Jan and Julie have been spending a lot of time working with her on hitting the ball.  She played as catcher the other day, she looked very professional

She also did the Mini Gymnastics at SLGC

Even though I was despairing over my garden, some things are coming back slowly.  My English bluebells have been lovely this year.  However, I figured out very quickly that they don't so well as cut flowers!!!!

Science at school

Ben has loved science class this year. He may not be getting good grades in it, but he loves the class and the teacher.  He really likes the fact that the teacher and I work in a similar field and he talks to her all the time about what I do.  I went on my first class field trip a few weeks ago when I went over to SLU to do the heart dissection.  Recently, I gave the school a bunch of pipet tips for them to use in class and Ben's teacher sent me a couple of pictures of the kids using them.

Mother's Day 2014

While I was away......

Even though I was only away for a week, I missed two firsts in the Sylar family.  First, Maggie had her first softball game of the season.  Doesn't she look cute in her uniform????

She played short stop at one of her games. I think she looks very professional, but I think she hated playing that position.  How did I get that feeling?  By the way she yelled "WHAT?????  Why do I have to do it?" after the coach told her to get suited up!!!!

The other first was that Ben mowed Caroline's grass for the first time.  Sam has been threatening to make him mow our lawn for a while, but our mower may be a little too heavy for him.  Sam has settled for him mowing Caroline's grass for now, we'll see what next year brings....

Trip to San Diego

I think everyone knows how much I love San Diego.  Some people have answered "oh, I couldn't live there, I'd miss the seasons"  Really?  You'd miss the brutal Winters and sweltering in the red hot Summer?????"  Not me-give me 70 degrees and sunny every day.  However, on this 6 day trip, we went from 50 to 93 degrees-I think that's a good enough season swing for anyone!!!!  Took this couple of pics the first day we were there, you can see how cloudy it was and it even rained a little bit

This was taken from the top of the Convention Center, our crazy hotel is on the right.  We had some very interesting stories after staying at this hotel.  I think we (John) picked it because it was a little cheaper than some of the others, but across the street from the Convention Center.  However, it should NEVER be listed as a meeting hotel.  First, they messed our room reservation up and Shannon and I were in a room with a single bed.  They brought us a roll away bed, but it was horrible and Shannon had a sleepless night.  When I asked about moving rooms, they told me they had nothing available.  Eventually, Shannon said she was going to talk to them and she read them the riot act.  Amazingly, they found us a room!!!!

Our new room was overlooking the pool, where they had a huge drunkfest on Sunday afternoon!!!!  What a contrast in one place-conference attendees and people passing out in one hotel!!!!  Luckily, the party was over at 7 and they cleared everyone out immediately, but it was quite an interesting afternoon.

Shannon and I went to tour Midway on Monday afternoon, it was really interesting to see.  I can't imagine being on it out in the middle of the ocean.

We found this huge statue on the Embarcadero

Oh, we did some work too (actually, we did A LOT of work!!).  Janhavi even flew down to see us, it was great to see her after so long