Spring break in St. Louis day 5

Happy Good Friday and day five of spring break in St. Louis. Started our day this afternoon with a visit to sky zone. It just opened this past spring and so this was a great opportunity to take all three kids there today. I brought Marie with me to help me with the little ones. Thank God for Marie.

Me and 2 of my favorite moms! They help me keep my village of kids under control. I love these girls!!

They all jumped for approximately 90 minutes. They were exhausted. We we're going to try out a new smoothie place that opened, but we had our day wrong and the place doesn't open till tomorrow. So we get ended up getting frozen yogurt instead. That's never a bad thing.

We love our Marie so much!!

Since our spring break days are numbered, we decided to go swimming again. So off to Riverchase we all went. The children again had a wonderful time swimming in the indoor pool.

You would think they would be tired and ready to go home and go to bed but of course they were not. So they had to play the play area before we left Riverchase. 

I figured they would ask again for culvers after we went swimming. That seems to be the pattern. While we were at culvers Brian was going to the gym to work out. When I told the kids where he was, they of course wanted to go play in the kid zone at the gym. So another hour of exercise for the kids and mom and dad. Brian and I walked on treadmills while the children played for an hour in the kid zone at the gym.

Day 5 ended up being a full on exercise day for everyone. We had a super fun day. 

Spring break in St. Louis day 4

Day 4 was quite the adventure. We took all the kids and Chloe on a train ride from Kirkwood to Washington Missouri. This was the first time any of the kids had been on a train. They were so excited!

The train ride was only 44 minutes long. My mom drove my van to Washington Missouri to meet us. So after the train got going I took each of the kids to the café car so they can see what it was like. They got to walk around on the train. They thought that was pretty big stuff. I also taught them how to open the doors by pressing the button with their foot. That was cool for them.

The train station in Washington has an old red caboose at the station. This is the picture we had taken when we arrived. We had so much fun. This was a total grandma day. Grandma Sue rode the train and my mom drove the car. We are very lucky group to have these great grandma's in our lives!!

We finish the afternoon with lunch at Cowans in Washington. 

I have to admit, the drive home in the van was not as much fun as the train ride to Washington. I think I should be traveling more by train with my children because it was great.

I think for my kids the best part of the day was when we got home and daddy came home from Florida. He had a good trip with his dad and Steve.  I think the next time he goes to spring training he'll have to take David with him. 

Spring break in St. Louis day 3

Spring break day three and St Louis was an absolutely beautiful day. It was sunny and 70°. We started the day with the kids playing outside on the big swing. It is always one of their favorite past times when the weather's nice.

We headed to the zoo around 10:30 and the children loved it. They got to ride the carousel and go to the children's zoo. They even brushed and ran around with the goats. All the animals were outside having a great time. This was my first time seeing the new polar bear exhibit. I was really happy to be able to see it today.

Since we are on vacation this week the kids of course had to go to build a bear. That isn't what we do on the normal visit to the zoo, but since we're on vacation, we decided it was OK.

David rode a tiger on the carousel and loved it. It of course made me dizzy and want to throw up. But That's my own issue. Lol. 

We were supposed to go swimming after the zoo, but we ended up coming home too late and missed our swim time. Nothing like getting kicked out of the zoo because it was closing. 

Day three of our spring break staycation was a success.

Spring break in St. Louis day 2

St. Louis is known for quite a few things one of them being Bob Kramer's marionette show. We took all the kids there this afternoon along with one of Jane's friends. None of us knew truly what to expect. But we had a really great time. 

They have a little shop where they sell a bunch of puppets. They also have treasures from their 50 + years of experience being puppeteers. It was a really neat place and a great place to see some unique history. 

It started with a lesson about the history of puppets in general, the types of puppets and how they have evolved, and then information about how they make a marionette. He showed us how they go from the design all the way to the finished product. It was really fascinating. All of the kids ended up enjoying it at the end and being pleasantly surprised with their afternoon experience.

After the lesson they did a puppet show called Humpty Dumpty and the Easter parade. It was pretty cute. We all enjoyed it very much.

We then had a late lunch and came home so that all the kids could play outside in the beautiful sunshine. It's been a gorgeous spring break so far. We couldn't ask for better weather.

Tonight Jane has gymnastics as usual and then will be finishing our spring break day 2 at Ted Drewes for frozen custard. It was delicious as always! The little ones had cones and we adults (me and the grandmas) had concretes. 

For our final activity of the day we set up tents in the living room for the children to sleep in. Brian and his dad are in Florida at the Cardinals spring-training. Grace is in Florida with her mom. So we are having a major staycation in St. Louis if you can't tell already And tonight this involves tents! 

Day 2 is officially in the books!!

Spring break in St. Louis day 1

We have had such an amazing day. We started the day and yucandu craft studio with our sweet friends. Everyone had a great time crafting. 

Then we went to jets pizza for lunch and then headed to the park to play. It was a great afternoon. It was beautiful and sunny and the kids ran around the lake in the sun and had so much fun. 

I think day one has been a success! 

Open House tomorrow! Let's sell our house.

Tomorrow is a big day for us! Our house is on the market and we're having an open house for viewing. We moved our beds out on July 3, and now it's July 25th and everything is out and the house has been painted and fixed up pretty for selling. What a process. It's a very emotional thing to do. Our current apartment still has so many boxes to be sorted through and put away, it's overwhelming. But...hopefully the house will sell quickly and we can focus on the next step...unpacking and a second wave of purging. I hope to find the rest of my bathroom items soon. Then I'll stop using Brian's deodorant. LOL. I feel like I see it every once in a while but don't get it out, then I forget where I saw it.

See what we love about this house!

The hardest part so far for me has been bedtime. It's hard to get children to sleep as it is, but when we're all sleeping in such close quarters, it's extra hard. Our little guy (2 yrs old) is now inconsistently napping, and staying up super late at night. He's also throwing more tantrums than I've ever seen him do since we've moved into the apartment. I'm not sure if it's all the change or what, but it's hard. These little ones have to be super adaptive and they're doing their best, but you can tell it's hard on them too. I'm hoping that now that the house is on the market we can get ourselves situated and get a routine set up in our apartment.

It's so beautiful!

Speaking of our apartment, it's been 22 days that we have been living in Brian's parent's basement apartment, and it seems to be going really well. For me the nights are the hardest because I know his parents can hear all the chaos going on trying to get all these kids settled down, but they haven't said anything. The dogs are having their own issues. We don't have a fenced in yard here, so they've been out in the yard on leads. Otis is having a super hard time with it. Future plans include exploring an electric fence to help the dogs. They need to run. It's hard to watch them be sad.

I miss this sink and faucet. I'll put it on my want list for the new house. 

We are so excited about our future! We are learning each day about what we want our next home to be like. I'll share some of those ideas later along with some pictures of our apartment space. It's so spacious and we couldn't have asked for a better plan for our in-between time. We have all been so busy getting the house ready to sell that we have not had time to focus on  the unpacking and organizing part. I can't wait to hang my Elfa shelves here. It's going to change the way we organize our downsized space. Organization will be our key. My goal is that everything has a place and if I can't come up with a place, then we don't need the item.

I watched an episode of tiny house tonight and I decided that I'm going to start watching those shows to see how to make better use of our space. I'm pretty sure we can learn a lot about using our space wisely from people who build those small spaces. Who knows...maybe Brian and I and our 4 kids and 2 dogs will build ourselves a tiny house. Lord help me!

God speed my friends. I'll keep you updated as we continue on this journey.

Moving is hard!!

As excited as I am to move and downsize our lives, it's hard to get rid of your stuff! Our basement is full of toys from birth to age 7, clothes in crates for hand me downs, and tons of stuff that we have just collected over the years. I went to the house today with 2 of my muscular teenage nephews to start moving things out of the basement. When I got in the house I went into panic mode. 

I don't know what I was thinking. We have so much stuff!! We have to get the house ready to sell. The first thing we wanted to do was get everything out of the basement so that the guys can come in and paint. So the boys did that today. Thank God for the boys!! There are probably a couple more hours of clearing out to do and then the next phase can start. 

I loaded up the Tahoe with some goodies and of course everyone's favorite horse, and came back to my peaceful new apartment. 

My mother in law is cooking some wonderful smelling pasta dish for dinner and I got to sit down and relax and write about my day for a few minutes. I'm pretty sure this is going to work out!! I'll post some pictures tomorrow. Stay tuned!