Halloween 2008

Every year since the boys were born and continuing through the birth of Alena, all my children have had coordinating Halloween costumes. That is until this year... No one could agree on any coordinating costumes and they are all trying to assert their independence, so I surrendered control and let all of them pick out their own costumes. We ended up with the Cinderella, the Scream Ghost, and an Evil Jester, I'm hoping this is just a phase and they will all come back around by next year. Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Patch 2008

We didn't have time to go out to Eckert's pumpkin patch this year, so we ended up going to Rombach's which isn't nearly as cool, but it is still a good place for photo ops, here's a few...

Grant's Farm 2008

The first weekend in October was absolutely beautiful so we decided to take the kids to Grant's Farm. The boys hadn't been since they were little and Alena had never been. Since it had been so long I had forgotten what a wonderful place it is, especially since it's free! We fed goats, saw the animals, watched the show, rode the train, and drank beer, all for just the $10 parking fee. I hope when InBev takes over Anheuser-Busch, they don't close Grant's Farm because it is a true St Louis gem!

Welcome to Las Vegas!

To make my 30th birthday a little bit easier to deal with, I decided to celebrate this milestone in Las Vegas. We left at 7 am Friday morning and with the time difference we were are our hotel by 9:30 am Vegas time. Neither Brian nor I had ever been so our main objective was sightseeing not gambling. We went with economical accommodations by staying at Circus Circus, which was fine, especially the indoor amusement park which I was highly impressed with. We walked the strip, went to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, and took a gondola ride at the Venetian (which was my favorite hotel of them all). We ate lunch in Margaritaville, shopped at the four story M&M store, saw the Cirque du Soleil show, Zumanity and took in as much of the city as possible in three days. My only complaint was the weather, it barely reached 70 degrees the whole time we were there and had 40+mph winds most of the time. In contrast, St Louis that weekend was 80 degrees and beautiful. I can't believe we went to the desert in October and it was colder than at home, oh well we still had a great time, we just had to wear our jackets and stay out of the pools. Although she enjoyed staying with Nana and Bill for the long weekend, Alena was very happy to see us when we got home on Monday and we were all happy to be back at home together again.