Missouri History Museum

The Missouri History Museum here in St. Louis had an awesome exhibit this summer for kids, and Naomi and Aleta both loved it!  It was a really cool exhibit--they had so many fun things for the kids to do and play with.  They had a market area with carts, food, and cash registers.  There was a big dress-up area with lots of dress-up clothes, hats, and other props.  They had a huge chalkboard wall, drawing/coloring area, puzzles, tent/teepee things to play in, a car play area, blocks, and lots more.  Oh, and the best part is that it was free!!  We were all bummed when the exhibit closed down a couple weeks ago!  They are making it into a permanent exhibit at the museum, so it will be closed for the next  year or so until that is finished.

Here are some photos from a couple of our visits to the museum this summer:

On certain days & times they had arts & crafts activities for the kids, too.

This was Naomi's best friend, Jetta, and her mom, Kristi.  They recently moved to Alabama, and we miss them!

 

 

St. Louis Sprout & About Celebration

Today was the St. Louis Sprout & About Celebration at the Missouri History Museum, so Jacob & I took the girls!  There were lots of booths from various businesses in the St. Louis area, and they each had activities for the kids to do.  And the best part was that it was all FREE!  I love awesome free family activities!

The girls got to meet Elsa from Frozen, Belle from Beauty & the Beast, and Spider-Man!  They got balloon animals (they chose dinosaurs), and they got their faces painted, and they got to make their own slime, and they got to play doctor to sick teddy bears, and lots of other fun things!  The World Bird Sanctuary brought 4 of their birds, which Aleta loved.  She just kept running back and forth from one bird to another.  Naomi did an entire activity at another booth during the time Aleta was just staring at the birds!  So I think the birds were definitely Aleta's favorite part, and Naomi said her favorite thing was getting her face painted.

Meeting Elsa!

The girls wanted red dinosaur balloon animals.

Naomi chose a unicorn for her face paint.

Aleta couldn't make up her mind but finally settled on a rose.

Dr. Naomi!

Dr. Aleta!

Belle!

Making slime

Checking out the birds

This owl was my favorite of the birds--he looked so cute!

This one kept trying to fly away.

They colored flags at the St. Louis World's Fare booth.

Spider-Man!

The only thing that cost money was the Humane Society's booth, where the kids could "adopt" a dog or cat.  They had a bunch of stuffed dogs and cats, and the kids could choose one to take home as their "pet" (for $5).  It really wasn't a bad price for a cute stuffed animal, and it came with a leash and an adoption certificate.  We weren't going to let the kids get one, but Naomi actually prayed last night that we would get her a puppy (which is NEVER going to happen), so I gave in!  We originally told the girls "No", and they were fine with that... But as we walked around, I watched all the other kids pulling their dogs and cats around on their leashes, and I thought about how much fun the kids would have with their little pretend pets, and I thought about how Naomi had prayed for a puppy that she'll never get, and I just couldn't help myself!  So on our way out, we stopped back at the booth and the girls each chose a puppy!  Jacob tried to talk me out of it, but I kept bugging him about it until he was so annoyed that he told me I could just do what I wanted (haha!). 

Winter Wonderland

As I mentioned in the post about our free carriage ride, St. Louis County Parks creates a "Winter Wonderland" in one of the parks here in the city.  I really wanted to take the kids to drive through all the Christmas lights, and I somehow managed to convince Jacob to take us, so we went on Monday night!  Unfortunately, since Winter Wonderland was closed on Christmas Eve, Monday was the last time to drive through before Christmas, and everyone in St. Louis decided to go!  Traffic was INSANELY terrible.  It should have taken us 10 minutes to get to the park, but it took us about an hour and a half instead.  Cars were waiting in a line on the freeway to get off the exit, and we waited in the line on the freeway for fifteen minutes before even getting onto the exit ramp.  By the time we finally got off the freeway and then drove the mile or two down the road to the park entrance, it had taken over another hour.  It was crazy.  But I had promised Naomi a park full of Christmas lights, and we were going to give it to her!

For Jacob & me, the night was horrible.  Hours of traffic and antsy kids who just wanted to get out of their seats.  But Naomi & Aleta loved the lights, when we finally got to see them!  I took a bunch of videos--you can hear some of the exclamations from the girls in the background. 

In this next video, look for the frog lights.  He starts on the grass, then jumps & splashes into the pond.

My favorite kind of lights were the shooting star lights.  You can see them in the tree in the next video.

Our carriage ride through Winter Wonderland...

Sometime in November, I happened to be on the St. Louis Parks website, and they were advertising a contest they were doing to give away free carriage rides through their Winter Wonderland, which is a giant Christmas lights display in one of the parks here in the city.  To enter, all you had to do was "like" any or all of their parks facebook pages.  A horse-drawn carriage ride through a park filled with Christmas lights sounded pretty awesome, like something out of a movie, so I liked all of the facebook pages on the list!  I tried to check the page to see who won each drawing (not at all expecting to actually win), but somehow I missed one of the drawings, and weeks later, I saw that I had won!  Luckily, we were still able to claim our prize, and Jacob and I had our first date night since we moved here in August!

I checked the facebook page after our date to see how many entries they had, and the main parks page alone had over 3500 likes!  I felt so lucky and blessed to have won!

The envelope for my tickets--I thought it was cute that she drew the little picture in the corner. :)

The carriage rides are $80 normally, by the way, and that's not including the tip for your driver (which is expected).  The carriage ride is only about 20 minutes, and although it was pretty nice to ride through "Winter Wonderland", it is definitely NOT worth 80 bucks.  But for free, it was pretty awesome!

Our horse's name was Woody.

We rode in the Cinderella carriage, which made me feel a little guilty for not bringing the kids, because Naomi would have LOVED it.  But we really needed a date night!

I wanted to take pictures, but I wanted to enjoy the time with my husband more, so the camera stayed away for most of the carriage ride.  I'm hoping to get some pictures of the Winter Wonderland later when we drive through it with the kids.

Halloween Fun (Some catching up...)

Well, I have been terrible with blogging lately, which is sad, because this is the only type of journal I have right now.  So I'm doing a little catching up today!

Waaay back in October, our neighbors decorated their door for Halloween.  Naomi LOVED it and asked me every day, numerous times a day, if we could decorate our door, too.  So I pulled up some pictures on google of different Halloween door-decorating ideas, and Naomi chose the one she wanted to do.  Here is our finished door!  (We decorated on a Sunday after church, which is why Naomi is wearing a dress).

Naomi also helped me make what we call "brownie pumpkins" for our neighbor friends (and one for ourselves).  There is a woman in my church at home in PA who makes these brownies for every family in the ward, every single year in October.  We LOVED them as kids, and we'd look forward to them all year long.  It is part of Halloween for me, so it is a tradition I have tried to do every year as well, although there is no way I could ever make them for every family in our ward.  But I at least try to make one for us, and if I can, for some of our friends or neighbors. 

My cute helper sorting the M&Ms for me!

Naomi & one of the finished pumpkins!

I had taken the girls to a pumpkin patch on our Girls Weekend, but Naomi wanted to go back with Daddy, so Jacob & I took the girls to another pumpkin patch on a different weekend.  They had SO much fun, especially Naomi.  They had so many activities for the kids-- a hay maze/obstacle course which Naomi absolutely loved, lots of slides, little kiddie tractors to ride around on, swings, a tower to climb up in, a big pirate ship, corn mazes, and a bunch of other things that I'm not remembering.  We had a lot of fun!

Steering the pirate ship

One of the awesome slides... it was hard to pull Naomi away from them!

Aleta liked throwing the hay off the hayride.

Ready for the hayride around the farm!

On the hayride

Please ignore the big scab on Aleta's nose!

Jacob took Naomi up onto the tower

Running through the corn maze.

Pumpkins!

Checking out the animals

They were trying to lift the giant pumpkins

Aleta tried to push Naomi on the wagon.

This was part of the big obstacle course.  Naomi loved the obstacle course... she spent more time on that than anything, and it was so hard to get her to leave!

Spinning around in the giant tire

For our Halloween costumes, we were all characters from Peter Pan.  Our costumes weren't anything fabulous (other than Naomi's, which we bought off Craigslist), but I was still pretty proud of them since I made them all from thrift store finds!  We built our costumes around Naomi's, because she really, really wanted to be Tinkerbell.  I was able to find a really awesome Tinkerbell costume for cheap on Craigslist, so for the rest of us, I spent HOURS over multiple days driving to every thrift store and Goodwill within 40 minutes of us here in St. Louis.  It was ridiculous.  With some cutting and some sewing, this is what we ended up with:

This is a terrible picture (other than for Jacob, who is actually smiling, which never happens in photos!) but it's the only one I got of our whole family.  Someone took it at our ward Halloween party.  Naomi is Tinkerbell, Jacob was Peter Pan, I was Wendy, and Aleta was Nana the dog!  I was most proud of Aleta's costume... it was so hard to find the stuff I needed and figure out how to make it all work together!  Sadly, I forgot to draw on her puppy face for the party, and her hood isn't even up in the picture.  So here's a better one of her costume, from another day:

And she was supposed to look something like this:

I was actually pretty happy with how Aleta's costume turned out.  I used brown sweatpants & a brown Gap hoodie from a children's second-hand clothing store, then I cut the ears and belly from an old crappy towel, and I sewed them on the hoodie.  The hat was a white summery baby hat that we already had, and I just sewed it on the way I wanted it to sit on her hood.  And since I sewed the hat, belly, and ears on by hand, it was super easy to rip out the stitches so our hat and the hoodie are perfectly fine to use normally again!

Here are a few more photos from the night of the ward party...

Showing off her facepaint!  (It's a flower)

We finally got around to carving our pumpkin like a night or two before Halloween, and it went terribly!  Next year, I am buying a cheap carving kit with the special little knives for carving pumpkins.

On Halloween day, I planned lots of fun activities for the girls & I to do at home.  We read all of our Halloween stories in their Princess tent, did pumpkin ghost bowling (explanation below), colored Halloween pictures, made pumpkin sugar cookies, and watched some Halloween movies.  It was a fun day!

She was going "ooooooo" like a ghost... haha

The pumpkin ghost bowling was an idea I got from some website (I probably found it on pinterest).  I cut little circles and ovals out of black construction paper and taped them onto toilet paper rolls to make them look like ghosts.  Then we set them up for bowling, and the girls bowled with their little pumpkin.  They loved it, especially Naomi.  Aleta was a bit more interested in building towers with the "ghosts".