Maggie's last baseball game pics from Jan

Jan took some great pictures of Maggie at her last game

Green Tuesday

Ben:  This is Green Tuesday

Me:  Ben, I can't believe you are all in green
Ben:  Oh, I think even my underwear is green
Me:  Why don't you check and make my day?
Ben (without even looking):  Oh, it's green all right

Cake hunting trip with Maggie #19-24

Maggie and I went on a cake hunting trip last night.  We were in Richmond Heights and the only cake in that zip code was at The Cheshire, so we started there

Then we headed down Oakland towards the Science Center.  We stopped at the St. Louis Arena site.  The cake is where the center of the ice used to be, but it's now outside Mid America Transplant Foundation

I had never been in there since the arena was demolished, it is pretty nice and there are a couple of water features that are associated with the transplant donors and recipients

Maggie had seen this cake at the Science Center when they were on a field trip a couple of weeks ago.  She had wanted to go down there and take a picture.  There are only 2 science centers in the US with free admission

This cake was in Dogtown.  This area was originally a mining settlement and it was called Cheltenham.  I used to live very close to here when I worked at Wash U

We had lived close to Concordia Seminary when we lived in Richmond Heights, but had never been in there.  It is the second oldest Lutheran seminary in the U.S.

The campus buildings are absolutely beautiful

This reminded me of one of the Oxford colleges

We ended up at Sweetology in Clayton.  The thunderstorm was rolling in and I almost got a large bolt of lightening in the background!!!!

Our #18, the best so far....

Not only is Shaw Nature Reserve one of our favourite places to go, it also has one of the best STL250 cakes that we have found so far.

The detail on it is amazing and there are all kinds of little add-ons like this turtle

Poor lizard!!!!

Love these flowers on the top

There are even flowers stuck on the sides!

I guess that birds of prey eating dinner was the theme!!!!

Shaw Nature Reserve Summer 2014

I don't think we have ever been in the Summer before. There were a few native plants blooming

The light was beautiful filtering through the trees

I can never get this to grow in my garden, but apparently it likes being out in the wild!!!

Love the vegetation growing under the trees by the river

Saw a crowd of these bright blue dragonflies at the river's edge

We had a quick walk through the wildflower garden at the house.  The kids were pretty tired and uncooperative by this point, so didn't get to see too much

Took my usual picture from our favourite spot to picnic

Shaw Nature Reserve

Shaw Nature Reserve has turned into our go-to place to relax and have a great day out. We have never had a bad day there and we needed the time away from it all.  There was the threat of rain on Sunday, but luckily it didn't materialize and it was not too hot at all.

Even "Mr Grumpy" was smiling that day....

Of course, highlight for Ben and Maggie is always going to be going in the river.  We pretty much had the gravel bar to ourselves the whole time we were there

A brief moment of brotherly love from Ben

There were huge pieces of bark falling off the river birches.  Maggie used one as a map

It started to get hot as we were leaving the river and Maggie stopped on this rock for a quick rest on the way back

Ben got to lie on his usual picnic bench when we stopped for something to eat.

The trip made a nice end to a great 4th of July weekend

Only in our family.....

This is probably going to be story of the year

We walked to St. Louis Custard to get ice cream on Friday night.  Ben had been at Xavier's and he walked over to meet us there.  After we ate, he was messing about doing his gymnastics thing and was doing the Iron Cross on the wall.  As he was doing it, Maggie was standing behind him (you can just see her shoes) and she pulled his pants down.  Thank Goodness he had shorts on underneath.

The funniest thing was there was a little girl around 4 sitting watching him.  She was impressed by his climbing up the wall, but the look on her face was priceless when Maggie pantsed him.  She had a look between being horrified and thinking it was the funniest thing she had ever seen.

Gotta love Maggie, she's a perfect combination of hilarious and a complete nightmare!!!!