June 21

Night 2 of Garage-a-palooza is finished! We had about 20 more kids tonight than last night, so that was good. Our numbers are still a bit down from last year, but everyone still seems to be having a good time. I'm in charge of registration, so it is always a bit crazy the first couple of nights trying to get all the kids registered and signed up for their interest groups.

I did sneak away for a few minutes tonight to take some pictures. This is one of the girls in the Hair and Makeup group. I have no idea who this girl is, and I probably shouldn't be posting her picture on my blog if I don't know her. (So if this is your child and you don't want her picture posted here, let me know!). But it was my favorite picture of the night; I just loved the expression on her face!

June 20

Happy Father's Day! I should have taken a cute picture of Daniel and Audrey together today, but it was a very busy day, and that didn't happen. So instead here is the card I made for Daniel...it's not a very exciting card, but it's hard to make masculine cards. (If you're a Stampin Up fan, this card gives you a preview of two new colors: Marina Mist and Cajun Craze!). We got him a Starbucks gift card as well. Then Daniel got the joy of spending quality time with his daughter all afternoon and evening while I was busy getting ready for our first night of Garage-a-palooza! Night one of G-a-p went well; we didn't have as many kids as normal, but we're hoping the attendance will pick up tomorrow night. It's going to be a busy week!

June 19

I'm sure there are better pictures from today that show Audrey did have a lot of fun at The Magic House. But this one is my favorite. The museum had a whole children's village: with a pretend kitchen, market, bank, library, theater, pizza shop...and an ice cream stand. Everything was so realistic looking! Audrey was not too pleased when she licked her ice cream cone and discovered it was fake!

I posted a few more pictures from our trip here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=13278775&l=6e458b3e4e&id=521110244. And I posted a picture on yesterday's post as well...

June 18

We decided this afternoon to take a little trip to St. Louis for the night and the day tomorrow. It's so unlike us to plan such a spur of the moment trip! But we don't have a big major vacation planned this summer, so I've been wanting to do some fun little trips. We pricelined a $40 room at the Millennium Hotel in downtown St. Louis. So we'll eat dinner, hang around downtown and go swimming at the hotel tonight. Then tomorrow we're going to take Audrey to The Magic House, which is a children's museum in St. Louis. We bought a children's museum pass last month, and we've only used it once so far. I want to get my money's worth out of it...I'm thinking we should plan our trips this summer around places that have children's museums!

Due to traffic and road construction, it took us a litte longer than expected to get to St. Louis. But we finally made it to the hotel and headed straight for the pool! The hotel had two pools, and we swam in the outdoor pool tonight. Audrey was so excited about the pool...and about the elevators and the escalators we took to get to the pool. The whole trip was worth seeing all of Audrey's excited faces tonight! I wish I had a video camera with me to better capture her joy. It was so adorable!

June 17

This morning I babysat for little June. She's about 6 months younger than Audrey, and they seem to like each other. Audrey ran around all morning saying "Jew, Jew" (her version of June). I let both of them play the piano for a little bit, and it was so cute. I love how, in this picture, it looks like Audrey is trying to teach June how to play the piano!

June 16

Daniel took this picture today, but I wanted to post it to compare with last year's picture of Audrey swimming in the camp pool. I can't believe how much she has changed! And how much her hair has grown!!

We finally had a nice afternoon today, so I took Audrey swimming with all the kids at camp. She's not quite as adventurous as Cael (he is a CRAZY! man in that pool), but I do think she likes being in the water. She wasn't happy last year at the pool, probably because the water was so cold. But she was much happier in the water today and only cried when I told her it was time to get out. We definitely need to find some friends with swimming pools who are willing to let us come over and swim this summer!

June 15

The first words out of Audrey's mouth this morning were: "Mamy (Amy)...Cael". And then the whole time we were getting ready to leave she kept saying, "Mamy, Cael", and then she added "clap-clap" (because she really likes it when all the kids at camp clap and cheer) and "chair" (because she has been having fun sitting on chairs at camp and watching all the kids) and "go, go, go" (because that is what she says to the kids while they are playing games). It was cracking me up, like she was going through her head all of the fun things she has been doing this week...she really loves camp!! I think she will be a sad little girl on Thursday morning when camp is over, and we have to go back to being home all day!

The picture above is one that I took of Amy and Audrey during lunch today. Like I said the other day, Audrey loves Amy now!! And the picture below is one that Amy took of Audrey and Cael this morning. They have become best buddies this week! Audrey also LOVES this wagon and has spent a lot of time this week being pulled around in it.