Cicada Picnic | St. Louis

What a day! 

reading with sydni & tessa

We started off by swinging by the Sandven residence. They were having a picnic to celebrate the graduation of Joe's weather class. We couldn't stay long since we were headed to St. Louis, but it was nice to see them all and of course drop off our cornhole set for them to use for the day. Plus, Sydni got to see her daycare buddy Tessa, which is always fun; Tessa's adorable.

Our first order of business was eating, which we had planned to do on the greens at the arch in St. Louis. During the base tour we gave my parents, we ultimately ended up picnicing in a more secluded, peaceful manner at the lake on base.



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cicada shell

Today couldn't have been any better for a picnic, in terms of the weather. The only downside to picnicing out by the lake was that we were confronted by cicada shells just about every direction we turned. It wasn't a big deal for us; they are after all just shells, but Sydni didn't quite understand that she wasn't allowed to touch all of them, so that lent to more than just a few applications of hand sanitizer by Nana. We don't mind bugs :)

Off then it was to the arch!     

the arch | st. louis

We tried to coerce Mom to go up into the arch, but jokingly, because she's both claustrophobic and afraid of heights. It would've been a sight to see though, I'm sure. No big deal; we were all completely content to view it from ground level, and we took a tour of the museum beneath. With such limited time for a visit, we opted not to drag them all over the city in one trip. We'll come back :) 

stylish travels!

Tomorrow I join the praise band on stage and my parents will see our new church home!

xo | cmd

Errands Galore

Yep. Pretty much that is what comprised the entire day.

First stop: Airman’s Attic. We dropped off some things and picked up a few other things, one of which was an old desktop computer keyboard. We have nothing with which it needed connected, but Sydni has this persistant fascination with all of our laptop keyboards, so I figured she’d enjoy her own set of alpha-numerics she could hammer without getting swatted away by one of us.

airman's attic

Second Stop: Commissary. We needed some granola bars, and it’s right across the street. We may have picked up some other munchies while we were at it, but that’s neither here nor there ;)

Third stop: Redbox. Droppin’ off movies, renting some more kiddie flicks to keep her occupied while I clean at home.

my tall red friend

Fourth stop: Salvation Army. We dropped off yet some more stuff there, with my favorite volunteer worker whose jolly laugh is absolutely contagious and always seems to be on duty when I come through ridding our car of bins.. and bins.. and bins. We went inside this time, and managed to find a few little treasures of our own to take home with us, too.

Fifth stop: Post office. Yeah, I’ve been here for almost a month and am just now changing my forwarding address. Oops.

Last stop: Wal-Mart. Don’t tell Joe; we all know how much he hates that place. However, while running errands is tedious enough sometimes, adding a toddler to the mix does the opposite of saving time. Since Syd was with me, I didn’t bother hunting for the nearest hardware store or other lock and key place, because everyone also already knows Wal-Mart takes care of copying keys. What I didn’t know was that Joe’s Honda key has some sort of transmitter chip embedded inside [you’d never be able to tell by lookin’ at the thing]. Therefore, copying that key apparently would’ve cost upward $40+, so needless to say, we’ll survive off the one we have and just say daily prayer that we don’t ever lose or break it. Sheesh.

At home, we unloaded all of our days’ acquired trinkets and put them away before cuddling up for an afternoon watching little cartoon people tell us how to count and memorize the alphabet. It was … educational. Haha.  

Oh yeah, and it’s Cicada season here. Lovely.

Not really. Oh well.

yeah cicada.... yeah.

xo | cmd