A Wonderful Vacation :)

It has been a great week! Our vacation was jam packed with great activities, friends and family. We will be studying Abraham Lincoln this year so we hopped in the car for a day trip to New Salem. The kids had a great time. A love trips that are fun and educational :)

We also took a trip to the St. Louis Zoo. They have an exhibit that allows you to touch and feed sting rays! The kids LOVED getting up close and personal with these awesome animals.

Elliana and I spent some girl time at the hair salon :) She got her very first hair cut (just a trim) and I got a trim too... :) On the days that we were not out of town we headed to Lake Evergreen. We ended up spending three days on the Lake. We rented canoes, a paddle boat and a motor boat (through out the three days). We LOVE being adventurous and getting out into nature. We even saw a bald eagle :)

We ended our week with an overnight trip to the Quad Cities. We were able to visit my mom and Aaron's grandparents. It was so sweet to see the way Elliana talked and acted around her Grandma's. She could tell that these ladies were something special :) I remember being the same way around my grandma's :) During our stay in the Quad Cities I ran the Bix (a 7 mile run up many hills..it was awesome!) and we visited with some wonderful friends that we don't get to see very often. Jared and Beth are amazing people that inspire me to be a better parent. I love visiting with them :) We were so busy having fun we didn't take any pictures of our time up north.

Vacation- Part Two

On Thursday we spent the day visiting family and friends in the Quad Cities. On the way there we saw someone familiar on the truck in front of us.....

At my moms house the kids enjoyed riding the horses and hanging out with Grandma :)

Vacation!!!!!

This week we took our annual stay at home vacation. We look forward to this week all year. It consists of a couple day trips and a lot of relaxing at home. For me it also included a lot of extra gym time (WooHooo!!)

Our day trips this year took us to the Indianapolis Zoo and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. We had a lot of fun on both trips and we took some great pictures!

The coolest part of the zoo was the shark touch pool. Joshua LOVED touching the sharks.

Elliana liked watching the sharks through the glass.

The kids and I liked looking at all the different kinds of sharks... Elliana is such a doll!

When we got home the boys made their own shark pool in the kitchen :)

Daddy and Elliana spending some quality time..

At this moment we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of little Essie York. I am a very excited Aunt!!

Our Family Vacation

We spent our vacation at home this year. Although we did not spend much time actually at home. We took three day long trips. First we went to the Quad Cities and visited the John Deere Pavillion (a favorite for the boys). We also ate at Happy Joys and Whitey's. It was a lot of fun.

We took a trip to Chicago to the Museum of Science and Industry. The boys loved seeing the U-505 (as did mom and dad). We went to dinner at the Rain Forest Cafe. Our family really enjoys eating there. The boys love all the animals. Here is a pictures from our Chicago trip. All the kids are sitting in front of the U-505 anchor.

Finally, we went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum. It was so fun. They have a great dinosaur exhibit. The kids had a blast playing and we had fun watching them. This is a picture of Joshua and I in the dinosaur exhibit. It is thundering and he is a little nervous (it was pretend thunder).

The fossils and casts of dino's were amazing. Here are the boys in front of a t-rex fossil.

They also had a place where the boys could dig for dinosaur bones. Joshua had so much fun digging. Asher had fun walking around exploring the museum with dad.

Besides the three day trips we took we also spent time playing at home. We went to Lake Bloomington to play and relax. Aaron and the boys skipped rocks and the kids had fun playing in the park. We ended our time with a picnic :) Below is a picture of the boys playing at Lake Bloomington.

This is a picture of Aaron and Elliana enjoying some time at the park.

It was a lot of fun running around on vacation but it was also pretty tiring. As you can see from

Ashers picture below...It was a great vacation. Aaron and I love spending time with our kiddos :) One of the things we really enjoyed was going out for ice cream. As you can see the boys loved it too....

I hope you enjoyed hearing about our vacation :)