Steamy Kansas City

A few weeks ago we took the two older boys to Kansas City for their first Major League baseball game.

Did I mention it's been hot this summer? For this game it was 101 degrees. Luckily it wasn't a sellout, and we were able to move up from our sunny seats to some in the shade. It wasn't too humid so it was actually bearable. The Royals lost, but we still had fun.

One other highlight of the trip? Opting for ice cream for dinner instead of real food, and feeding the sparrows bits of waffle cone.

After-swim

Last weekend we started swim lessons. Yesterday after lessons, I took the boys to Culver's for lunch. Yeah, I spoil them. Sue me!

Anyway, I thought these pictures were amusing. These are the responses I got when I asked them to smile with their ice cream.

Grant's Farm

We took a short weekend trip to St. Louis July 24-26. It was incredibly hot down there when we arrived, the temperature was 97 and the heat index was about 110! But we had three hours to kill before we could check in to the hotel so we headed to Grant's Farm to spend some time.

We had never been there, and honestly I had no idea what to expect. But it was pretty nice - and free (except for $11 to park). We got to take a "train" ride around and see animals, then were dropped off at the main park. There we saw an elephant show, where I caught this great picture of Tom and Nate. And a pretty darn cute one of Nile...

We walked around a little bit more, then the boys were hot and cranky (and so was my 7-month pregnant self), so we stopped at the beer garden for a free beer for Tom and some "Dippin Dots" for Nate and Nile.

(see how hot and sweaty Nate is? He totally takes after me.)

Snow Ice Cream

I had promised the boys that they would get to make snow ice cream on the first big snowfall of the year. So - when we got to have a snow day they were really excited to do it!

It's basically an egg, milk, sugar, and vanilla. And mix in a bunch of snow. They really enjoyed it.

a budding runner

Last night Nate ran his first race of the year - the June Bug Jog. Although he was very nervous at the start (he kept asking me to run with him), he did a great job! I had decided to get the video camera out for the very first time in over a year, so I recorded the whole race (all 2 minutes or so). Therefore I don't have a lot of pictures. And I am pretty sure the video is too big for the blog.

Here is Nate getting ready for the race, just after we put on his race bib. He was pretty proud that he was Number 1. Of course, all the kids were #1. ;)


As we waited for the race we walked out to a deck overlooking the river. Nate proudly informed me that this was the "father of the rivers," the "Mighty Mississippi." Later after the race we came back out here to show Gramma the river.



The race was really cute - all the "under 5" kids ran together down the bike path to an orange cone, and were supposed to turn around and run back. We had a minor confusion at the orange cone...but Nate got turned around and made it back just fine. He was hilarious as he ran past Gramma and swung his arms to show off... As they completed the race each kid got a medal and a goody bag (a reusable WalMart shopping bag - yay for me!) full of prizes.

After the race the kids collected around the race director for door prizes. In the race packet was a coupon for a free scoop of ice cream. As the race director announced that to the kids, Nate turns to me (about 15 feet away) and screams, "Mommy, we get free ice cream! YAY!" (He also won a set of spinning tops, but the ice cream was the big hit). We left immediately to go get ice cream, missing the post-race party.



All in all, it was a great event, and they did a great job for the kids. The race wasn't too big, there were probably 25 kids in Nate's race and another group in the "over 5" category. I wish I could have run the 5K that came up afterward, but this boy needed to get home. Plus, I couldn't exactly leave him alone while I ran!