Sofia's Dress Rehearsal

Sofia had her dress rehearsal Thursday afternoon, for her big stage debut on Sunday. It went really well. The theme of the show is fairy tales. And her character is Thumbelina. She didn't seem to nervous. Although she complained non-stop about how itchy she was. She even had to be re-dressed on stage. I guess her dress and gloves were just way to aggravating. Here's a few photos of her all dressed up.


All the girls. Sofie is the second ant from the right.

Sofie wasn't happy to share the spotlight with her brothers...

Kansas City

Last weekend, we took another mini vacation. Our destination, Kansas City... It was an action packed weekend. Full of lots of sight-seeing and unfortunately just as much rain. I had never really explored KC. What little I knew of it was from the occasional drive through in route to somewhere else. We met up with Eric and Sarah at a great campground in Platte City. The kids were dying to see the girls, and they spotted them as soon as we pulled in the campground. The campground had a wonderful pool, a huge playground and multiple fishing lakes.

Our first destination on Saturday was Moon Marble Company. All we knew upon arriving at Moon Marble was that they hand make marbles. The demonstration was amazing. The marble maker used a blow torch to melt leftover glass into marbles. It was very interesting. After the demonstration all of the kiddos got to pick out their very own assortment of marbles to take home.




Our next stop of the day was Crown Center. Crown Center is the World Headquarters of Hallmark. It was three levels of wonderful food, decent shopping and fabulous kids entertainment. Our favorite being Kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope has roughly ten different activities. Parents and children were allowed to run around and make all kinds of different crafts. We left with masks, crowns, puzzles, glow in the dark snakes, etc.





Our final stop on Saturday was the Treasures of the Steamboat Arabia Museum at the City Market. If you are ever in KC, this is the place to go. It was, without a doubt, my favorite part of the trip. Apparently, about 20 years ago, a few people did a bunch of research and decided that they knew where the Steamboat Arabia had sunk. That part of the Missouri River having been redirected by the Corp of Engineers some years back, it was located on what is now farm land. After asking the landowner for permission, they resurrected most of the boat, and all of the cargo. It is a great story and an amazing collection.

**Sorry for the out of focus pictures. It was a no flash area!**




On Sunday, we were supposed to go to World's of Fun. Unfortunately, it stormed all morning and so we had to re-plan our day. So we ended up heading to Country Club Plaza for lunch and a little shopping. We ate lunch at Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue. I would highly recommend it. It was excellent.

Our love bugs. (I think this could be the cutest photo EVER!)

Noah and Claire

After lunch, we headed over to Kansas City's Union Station.

We took in the Dinosaur's Unearthed Exhibit. Most of the dinosaurs had feathers. It was very strange. Even the t-rex.... It was mainly a bunch of large scale animatronic dinosaurs. In addition to some fossils and a few skeleton replicas.
Emilie and Rylan concentrate hard on the dino dig...

Sofie the Trickster

One day last week, as I was lounging lazily on the couch. (Yes, I should have been cleaning, but I was really tired from an early (3:45a.m.) morning at work. Sofie came in and asked for a glass of water. As I said, I was really tired. So I asked Sofie to wait a minute. She sat perched on the end of the ottoman and whined about how thirsty she was. So I told her, "Fia go get a glass from the dishwasher and fill it up with ice and water from the front of the fridge." She cried, "No Momma do..." So I caved. I dragged my exhausted butt off of the couch and into the kitchen, and as I was grabbing her favorite princess cup out of the cabinet, I heard... "Me ticked you, namin peease..." For those of you who don't speak Sofie, the translation is "I tricked you. Vitamin please!" Sofie knew I was to tired and that I would refuse to get up for a gummy vitamin, but she knew she could get me up for a glass of water, so to quote the princess "Me ticked you..."

Camping - Memorial Day Weekend

So over Memorial Day weekend, we spent five wonderful days at Whippoorwill Lake. The kids swam in the lake, caught hundreds of baby crawdads in the creek and stuffed their little bodies full of every sweet and soda that came their way. They also enjoyed playing games on the ipods, and playing computer games. Who ever would have thought that would be a part of camping?


Sofie and Chloe

Emilie and Noah enjoying desert...

The resident lovebugs, Rylan and Elise.

Noah and Claire

Colin, Noah and Connor. It was Colin and Connor's first time camping. They loved it.

Sofie enjoyed a nap in the chair while Mommy, Sarah and Grandma ran to town...

Sydney slept for 12 hours straight after a full morning of swimming in the lake.