It was an early start today. Well, early as could be for it being the Saturday morning after my finishing VBS and my family driving almost 8 hours the day before. Mom had it decided before we were even out of bed this morning that we were doing something, likely in St. Louis. After some review, we settled on Grant's Farm.
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| joe. sydni. cori | dills |
Heidi & Paul had some plans to do some hiking over on the Cahokia Mounds, so Jonathan loaded up with us and we started on our exhibition to St. Louis. We didn't take off before stopping by to see our good friend Bulent in Belleville [gelato stop, duhhhh] and of course taking Mom by Peace by Piece. Oh, and remember a week or so back when I stopped in and nabbed my TOMS ballet flats.. and I'd ordered something
else? At the time, I was holding out because I didn't wanna ruin the surprise.. Well....
I ordered a necklace. Sounds a little goofy, but here in Belleville, there are a plethora of locally-based artisans who I would love to see be successful. Heather, the crafty hand behind this piece, took my order herself and did the work of putting the Dills on a chain in something of a non-traditional way. I'm not big on the typical
mother jewelry, but I was attracted to the simplicity of this one, along with the fact that it's the entire family. Like I said, I could've easily done this myself, but I'm happy & I love it.
Grant's Farm was the place to be today!
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| grant's farm! |
It took us no time at all to cover the horse stables and see the beauty of the famous Budweiser clydesdales. It also afforded us some great opportunities to update some long-overdue family photos...
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| family :) |
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daddy & syd
joe. jonathan. dad | joe. syd. mom&dad | me & jonathan!
mama & syd |
There was of course the tram ride that traverses over the grounds of the farm: Naturally I wound up with three times as many pictures as necessary, but Sydni kept demanding that I capture every single animal, be it sleeping or flying. We tried. Haha.
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| animals everywhere! |
My favorite collaboration from the day:
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| she. is. adorable. call be biased ;) |
Oh yeah, and of course Nana & Pappy insisted on buying a "little something" for Sydni, so we stopped off at the gift shop and spent a good while churning through a bin of colorful rocks. Sydni picked out as many as she could fit into the little leather bag provided, and shared with us her brazen pride with her selections all the way to the car. So... stinkin' ... cute.
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| pickin' out rocks with mama |
Whew. We are... spent! It's time to get to grillin' - Heidi and Paul are back from their day trip and we're about to do some business with the grill :).
I LOVE.. MY FAMILY!
xo | cmd
