Mini-Vacation: The Arch

We stayed the night in St. Louis at a hotel very near the Arch:

 Dinner:

"If there's one thing we're good at, it's devouring chocolate cake."

The tram car to ride up the arch:

'

Shadow from up top:

Mini-Vacation: St. Louis City Museum

Coop and I took a mini-vacation once school got out.  First stop, the City Museum in St. Louis.  Good for people not afraid of heights or climbing.  

Start of summer

On Coop's last day of third grade, he had all of his classmates sign his shirt:

Coop wrote a book called WWII Adventures, a fictional WWII story, and he sent it to the Wall Street Journal for their book review.  One of the book editors wrote him back:

Train tracks in the basement:

Dressed up like Death for the Art Tougeau parade in Lawrence:

With Molly, their parade entry:

With Gus and Eleanor.  Coop and Eleanor playing super heroes while Gus pulled out all of the books from Coop's shelf:

Lego Kids Fest

Coop and Alan went to Lego Kids Fest in KC one weekend.  Pretty stinking impressive creations:

Treasures on the way home!

Quintessential Cooper

Snuggling one Friday night after a long week:

After a shower one night: "I like my hair like this.  Take a picture."

The Mother's Day interview Coop completed:

A Star Wars scene Coop drew and turned into a jigsaw puzzle:

Bike Riding

We spent hours (HOURS!) biking during the week after Coop learned to ride his bike.  We went to Prairie Park Nature Center in Lawrence to ride on some paths, and then spent a couple more evenings riding in circles around the Baker campus.

Moving on!

Cooper and his fellow third graders went on a field trip to Tall Oaks, an adventure challenge course designed for team-building.

Cooper came him tick-free and with fabulous stories about the day.

One weekend, Coop and I took his bike to the Baker sidewalks.  Check it out:

Getting there...

Ice cream to celebrate and cool off:

And then we hit Walmart to buy a new bike that fit him:

Except it was pouring rain that day, so we didn't get to try it out!

Drawings

This is Andy and Barney (from the Andy Griffith Show) chasing bad guys:

The bad guys:

And this is a bad guy from a book Coop and Alan are reading (Mysterious Benedict Society, I think?).  He's got a shock watch.  (See the inset for action.)

Wedding dress repurposed

In an effort to decrease the amount of stuff I own (and will therefore have to move), I opted to donated my wedding dress to Alexandra's House.  Alexandra's House is a perinatal hospice organization that works with families who have a terminal diagnosis for an unborn child (i.e. -- moms who are pregnant but who know the baby won't live).  I volunteered for a time with the organization, and I simply adore Patti, the founder.

I asked if she'd be interested in my wedding dress and would have a volunteer who could make it into gowns for babies.  Yes!

For memory purposes, here's what it looked like a million years (and much more hair, and much less gray) ago:

And here are the baby gowns that some volunteers made.

They're beautiful and I'm so, so pleased.

Misc fun

Coop was thrilled to figure out how to recline the back seat and pretend to be asleep:

Fun with Molly and Estelle:

In a play at school:

Cooper visits Topeka

 One weekend, Alan took Cooper to the capitol building in Topeka:

Apparently, they got to hear some deliberation about budget cuts:

But the real reason they went:

Coop did a report on John Brown for school, so he was thrilled to see the mural!