Grandma Time x 2

Yet another plethora of pictures to make you wish you could come and visit the Edwards fam in St. Louie. Seriously. If you visit, we will see that you are entertained.

BJ's mom Marianne and our nephew Tyson came out for a week. I think Tyson was a little upset that he didn't get to visit us while we lived in NC so we could take him to the beach (as we did with Kirsten, Josh, Hope, and Sami) but I think we did a pretty good job coming up with alternative activities. (Let me just note that as we froze our hineys off while doing all these alternate activities, we may have thought once or twice how nice it would to be boogie boarding instead but nevermind. We had fun.)

stop 1
Meremac Caverns, the official hideout (it is a proven fact) of Jesse James et. al and hiding place of his booty (and all the stuff he stole)
This was very cool, unlike some of the other caves we had seen. Dark and moist and a little difficult to walk around in with a wiggly kid in your backpack at times but some of the formations were really spectacular (that's a fancy word for really neat).

This right here (above) is a ginormous mound of pure onyx.

stop 2
We went to the arch again but this time we went all the way up.

Whoa, who took that cool picture???

(so Ty could say he touched the Arch, Haylee, as you can see, didn't quite understand why she was doing it too but still wanted to be in the pic)

At the top. Notice the tini tiny windows behind us. Great view of the Cardinals ball park. It just may have been the closest we will get to going inside.

stop 3
Not a stop really, this was more like a visit. We revisited Eckerts Farm (where we picked our apples) only this time, our purpose was to pick our pumpkins and play around at the carnival-like atmosphere. We all decided to kill a couple birds with one stone and got another bunch of apples on the way out to the pumpkin patch. It wasn't hard to carry both the apples and the pumpkins all over the place and chase after our runaway 2 year old...just in case you were wondering.

Tyson chose a smaller pumpkin so it would fit in his backpack to take back home to Utah.

One cannot walk by one of these insert-your-head-here thingies without taking a picture. It took a couple tries but Ty finally got the expression right.

Lastly, I must tip my hat off to Tyson. He was quite the trooper to put up with the 2 girls (as he had to sit in between them in the back seat whenever we were in the car) and their poking and squealing and such. Also, I had heard he was a pretty picky eater but he tried, and ate everything I made him. (He did alter the seasonings of each with his own garlic salt but that's ok, I wasn't offended in the least.) He is a very fun kid to be around and definitely made the week more enjoyable. Marianne did too. (But that's a given, Grandmas always have fun, I just didn't want to leave anyone out. :) I regret to say that there are some pictures I cannot post of Ty and the girls but I don't have them. Even if I did he probably would never talk to me again if I did.

OLD FASHIONED

Oops, let me add a note here to say that I do not have the kind of news you all are thinking...I just thought it was funny.

Just Goin' For a Jog

Cute combo, don't ya think?

At least she was warm.

And pleased that I let her wear what she wanted.

It's Such a Good Feeling...

...to know you're alive.
It's such a happy feeling: You're growing inside.
And when you wake up ready to say,
"I think I'll make a snappy new day."

Jog some memories anyone?

Today while Haylee and I were folding laundry and thumbing through the channels, we happened upon Mr. Rogers! I had no idea it was still on air! I made Haylee watch it with me even though she wasn't excited about it at first since it most definitely did not look like her tv. It took a minute or two. But when Mr. McFeely narrated a video of how to make construction paper, she was hooked.

We were reacquainted with King Friday and Prince Tuesday and Lady Aberlin and Lady Elaine (the one with the big red nose and funny voice) and oh, what a wonderful time I had reminiscing of my own days with Mr. Rogers. He has such a calming way about him. If only we could get some other classics like Today's Special or Pinwheel back on the air...even so, I set the Tivo up to tape it for the rest of the week. Call me pathetic I know but it beats the heck out of Spongebob does it not?

Grandma Time!!!

My (Julie's) mom came out to visit a couple weeks ago and while we enjoyed every minute of her stay (the girls especially) the highlight had to be our apple picking adventure! We took a wonderfully bumpy hayride out to the fields and got to shine the apples on our pants and test them out, right fresh from the tree. Cambree probably "tested" 8 or 9. So fun.

I remember picking apples (not so) long ago when my family was in MI and just how fun it was. When I heard that there are orchards around here to pick your own I put it on our to-do list immediately. Not that I remember much from my childhood picking days, but I picture apple picking to be very romantic. Why? Because I can't think of apple picking without picturing the scene from Anne right at the end when she and Catherine (with a "c") are picking apples (you know, right before the diamond sunbursts and marble halls on the bridge scene?) and Anne says she wants to make sure Marilla has 2 full bushels....we didn't get that much but we did a bunch.

Sorry, I digress. This post was supposed to be about my mom's visit. I just realized that I don't have any pictures of her at all from when she was here...probably because she took all the pictures. Sorry. She really was here though. Besides apple picking, we had a picnic at the park and found my local fabric store and played lots in the backyard and played adult games at night (oops, what I really mean is nonkid games...meaning that we didn't play Zingo or Memory after the kiddies were in bed). Oh, and she rented a car so we had wheels to go places during the day! It was wonderful! We are already, literally, counting down till Turkey Day when we shall see Grandma Jan again, only this time she gets to bring Grandpa along too. YEAH!!!

Fearless this one...she wanted to make her Uncle Twinkae proud rock climbing at 2!

We also took my mom to what has become one of my favorite places here in St. Louis. The Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. If you've been to the one in Arlington, it's pretty similar. It is enormous! I think it is the 2nd largest national cemetery in the country. Acres upon acres of perfectly positioned, evenly spaced headstones dating way back. If you come visit, we'll take you too.