Our Trip to Farmington and St. Louis

This last weekend was very nice and relaxing to say the least, even though it seemed jam packed with fun! It was Nick's 4 day weekend, which we love as it comes every 5 weeks and love the extra time with Daddy at home! So on Friday we got up and headed to St. Louis to the Temple where we met Grandma (Nick's mom). She graciously watch the girls so we could do a session at the Temple. The girls of course loved the time with Grandma, in fact when I called her on our way there to make sure about what time we were meeting, Cora got extremely mad that we weren't seeing Grandma right there at that moment! I sadly didn't get pictures of the girls at the temple, but looking back I should have taken the time to and will try and do that next time. I'm glad though that they do get excited to go to the temple even though they aren't old enough to go in. I look forward to the Kansas City Temple being built soon so they can go through the Open House.

After the temple we headed to the zoo in hopes of catching a few animals. We were short on time, so everyone was great troopers (including us adults) as it had been quite a while with a decent meal. I was glad I packed a lot of snacks, which tided us over. Luckily the girls each had their own animals they wanted to see and they were both in the same area. Cora wanted to see the Lions and Kayley wanted to see the baby Camel. I was just glad no one wanted to see the elephants...they always seem to take forever to get to! Here are some pics of our animal sightings!
More animals, including the baby camel, it's kind of hard to see them all underneath their shedding coats! The baby camels humps were laying flat, which was weird too. I guess that's something that comes as it gets older.

Then after the zoo, we headed to Chilis for some yummy food then headed to the condos in Desoto. Thanks to Grandma being so willing to come and get us in the condos, we got to stay for the weekend. The next morning we said goodbye to Grandma who wanted to head home and then headed to Farmington for the JDRF (Juvenille Diabetes Research Foundation) walk. We were amazed at how many people were there. Apparently their goal was to raise $1500 as this was Farmington's first time doing a walk (I think), they actually ended up raising $15,000! We were amazed! We were just glad to be able to be there with family! The Farmington Felkers were there of course and my Mom and Otto also made the trip. It was great to see them as well as all the other Farmington family/friends! I just love this picture of Elizabeth and Kayley (thanks to Stephanie I have more pictures as I had my camera, but didn't get very many taken at all!)

Here are some pics of the girls (Kayley, Mallory, & Cora) playing. My girls loved playing with this hot wheels car...I think Santa or the birthday fairy has her work cut out for her to find one of these! Also some random zoo pics that didn't get in the spot earlier. We also got to go to Lix, the beloved Ice Cream shop that is only in Farmington. I have to say, Nick and I are not fans of Custard at all, but this one was the best custard place ever! It almost took the place of Maggie Moos! Too bad it's only in Farmington...I guess we need to take more trips there now!

Here's some more pics of the kids playing on Saturday. Edward and Stephanie were gracious enough to let our kids play all day with their kids! They loved spending time with their cousins!

Nick got schooled in basketball by Elizabeth...and by me of course!! We had many fun games of Horse and Pig! It brought back memories playing Edward as he and I used to play many games when I was younger...all of the time I would beat him of course!! :)

All in all it was a great weekend seeing lots of family and having lots of fun! We were sad to see it end all too quickly!

Lately and Projects

Well, about a week ago, I opened my camera to take pictures of the Carles before they left and found out that my camera was broken! It still took pictures, but the screen was messed up. So, I was very upset at first as we only paid $15 for the camera and now we were going to have to pay tons more money, but honestly once I started looking for cameras, I started to get excited to have a new camera with new features! So for about a week we've been casually looking at any store we can think of that has cameras and found some I liked, but I didn't want to pay that much! Finally I decided if I wanted the features I wanted, I was going to have to pay a little bit extra and the fact that my other camera was so cheap, I felt I could splurge a bit. I had it narrowed down to two and I was headed into the store to buy one of them, then we forgot about another store we hadn't checked yet, so we went there first. We are glad we did as we found a camera that was on a great clearance price and it had all the same features of the other cameras I was deciding from before for about $100 cheaper! I was way excited and I have been pleased with this camera. So, the girls have been my guinea pigs on testing out all the features, so here are a few of the pictures.

The girls cheesing...
Then we had to take them to the park to test out some other features and for the girls to play. I won't bore you with the pictures of the sunset, landscape, distant pics, etc...so I just included the pics of the girls! Einstein also had his share of sliding down the slide...as well as Nick!

Then last night we went to Liberty so Nick could go to his favorite store, Great Guns. The girls and I stayed and played with Ashlyn and Preston while Daddy did his boring gun shopping! Kayley has lately been into working on things like Daddy works on things with his tools. We don't have any tools at our house, so she's had to pretend, but she was in 7th heaven being able to play with Preston's tools. I guess we are in really big need of a boy in our house! So here's our Handy Manny!

Then, here's my projects I've been working on...the outside of the house! Here's one project to check off my list. I pulled up that nasty black plastic stuff that just kept pulling up more and more with each mow and replaced it with the smaller landscape rock. I'm also in the process of changing out some landscaping on our retaining wall along our fence as this is where I got these small rocks! I'll put pics of that up later once I start planting the new plants I want to put in there. Here's the rest of my to do list for the outside of the house:

1. Paint the front door

2. Put up the new doorknob on the door

3. Paint the trim along the garage doors

4. Put up the new lights on the outside of the garage (this is Nick's job with my assistance)
5. Build a retaining wall in the front landscape (also Nick's job with my assistance)

6. Plant plants along the retaining wall

7. Put the extra small landscape rocks around the willow tree in the backyard

8. The small landscape rocks around our trees in the front need to be dug into the yard, they are just sitting there and get turned everytime you mow/weed eat

9. Start our garden...it will be on a much smaller scale this year than usual with the baby coming

10. Pressure wash the deck (more of a spot clean as I did this last summer) then stain the deck

11. Lay the tile in our bathroom

Don't worry Grandmas and Grandpas, I am not over doing it! I just want these things finished before the baby comes and Nick won't let me paint anything inside that I want to paint, so I have to settle for the outside projects! Plus I want to get these done before it starts to get stiffling hot and before our pool opens so we can go swimming instead of working!!

Here's the before pic...notice how it's all coming up!??!!

Here's the after pic...I have to seed some of the lawn now as it's much easier to curve the black plastic stuff than it is to curve the landscape rocks! I just love it so much more now this way!