Recently

Well, I haven't blogged in about a month, so . . . I figured its time for a little photo drop of sorts. :)

CHEEEEEESE!!!!!

Sarah was a bumblebee for Halloween this year--totally her idea! We asked her what she wanted to be, she said, "Bumblebee!" We thought, "Random, but potentially cute." And my mom found the costume!

 

Sarah gives herself a makeover, part 1.

 

The "queens" at Burger King (we like their two whoppers for $5 deal after church on Sundays).

 

Sarah getting her first "real" haircut from an actual stylist--my friend Melanie at her house.

 

And, Sarah's self-makeover, part 2.  Two days after Sarah's first real haircut, she cuts off 1/3 of her bangs at the root.  Nice move!!

City Museum

On Saturday, we took Josh and Danielle to one of our favorite St. Louis attractions--the City Museum. Now, given that name you might think that this is a museum about the history of the city of St. Louis, or something along those lines. But it is really nothing like that. It is basically just this huge indoor and outdoor playground built by an artist out of repurposed urban junk and old architectural elements. And it is awesome!!!

This is a photo of one of the main indoor areas--its amazing the way they created something that was both super fun and also beautiful!

In the indoor part, they have tons of these little holes you can crawl down into.

Some of them open up into sort of caverns . . .

And, as Josh discovered, others lead you into these tight little passageways that come out someplace totally unexpected, like this tree trunk!

And here is Josh pulling Harvey out of the passageway!

The outdoor part is really fun. Sarah absolutely loved climbing up really high!

This is an actual old airplane that they incorporated into the playground!

David climbing through the highest part of the outdoor section.

A fantastic time was had by all, though we were thoroughly exhausted at the end. Still so fun to share this unique place with our wonderful friends.

Visit from the Shelleys!

We had a wonderful weekend with our good friends, Josh and Danielle Shelley and their little boy Harvey, who came up to visit us from Memphis. The Shelleys were in China with us for four and a half years, and we were teammates for 2 of those years. We actually had the privilege of seeing their friendship blossom into romance, then engagement, marriage and right before we moved home last year--parenthood! Though, actually, we also knew them at UNC, though they were a couple of years younger than us. Oh, and we all went through new staff training for Campus Crusade together. So, yeah, our friendship goes way back! We had been trying to figure out a way to get down to Memphis to visit them over David's fall break this coming weekend, but those plans fell through when David realized he has a 10-page research paper due Monday. So they graciously offered to come up here over Josh's "fall break," (i.e.a half day off on friday and no classes on Saturday) to visit us instead! Josh just started the Memphis Teacher Residency program, a really amazing program training teachers in the inner city Memphis schools. If you haven't heard about it, you should check it out: http://www.memphistr.org/

Anyway, they arrived on Friday afternoon, as Memphis is just a 4.5 hr drive away. OK, so for friends on the East Coast that probably seems like a long way, but in much of the country, someplace you can get to in half a day is pretty darn close! That evening we decided to check out this food truck gathering they were having at a park in the city. Food trucks may be a familiar thing to many of you who've lived in a bigger city in the U.S. over the past several years, but they are a relatively new concept for David and I. I'd heard about the phenomenon several years ago, but this was my first time to try it out. I love the idea of chefs producing just a few really good, simple things and selling them inexpensively out of a truck--its basically just all about how good the food is. I had Korean tacos, and they were out of this world. David had a Vietnamese Bahn Mi sandwich, and really liked it. It was a fun chance to try out some new and creative foods!

Another highlight of the weekend was how well Sarah and "Baby Harvey" got along! Sarah is really into babies and toddlers these days, and you could just tell that Harvey thought she was about the coolest older kid he had ever laid eyes on. They played and played and laughed and laughed and only a handful of times did we have to intervene over shared toys or whatever. Sarah was so sad when they had to leave. She said, "I love Baby Harvey! I want him to stay forever!" It was really sweet. On Saturday, David and I took them to one of our favorite St. Louis attractions--the City Museum. Its a place that has to be seen to be believed--those photos and stories coming tomorrow!

Taste of St. Louis

God is so good! At the end of a stressful week for both David and I a couple of weeks ago, St. Louis had its annual food festival, Taste of St. Louis. If you know David and I, you know this is right up our alley. We love to eat yummy food, and its one of the things we most enjoy doing together. We missed this festival last year when we had just moved to St. Louis, so this year I made sure we made plans ahead of time to make sure we didn't miss it this time around.

It turned out to be a gorgeous fall day, and the festival itself couldn't be more perfect. There were more than 75 different restaurants with booths (pretty overwhelming, really) with everything from hamburgers and pizza to the catering company for the St. Louis opera house selling fancy hors d'oevres. The whole thing happened downtown, and from the beginning we both said how much we enjoyed just the feeling of the city. We started out our time by walking all the way through the main restaurant row, and looking at all the offerings. It was really hard to pick out what we wanted to try--waaay too many choices! But we both ended up settling on things we had seen at the very beginning. I got a yummy turkey salad slider and gourmet fries to share with Sarah, and David got some pad thai (he is still in search of the best pad thai in the city) and some bbq wings.

Everything was delicious, but I have to say the wings were every bit as outstanding as they looked!

I love this photo of David and Sarah with the arch in the background. Please forgive the dab of bbq sauce on the corner of David's mouth--this was a food festival after all!

After we'd had our fill, we took Sarah to the kids area, where she got to meet Dora, Cinderella and Strawberry Shortcake. Somehow I ended up with just this one photo, but believe me she enjoyed all three meetings. They had several fun little booths set up for kids, giving away free balloons and a bunch of other stuff. It was definitely worthwhile to go as a family! There was so much more that we didn't even get to explore--a whole wine tasting area, and next time we will be sure to bring bigger appetites to this event! The most random area of the festival was an entire section devoted to promoting Texas tourism! They had a stage and a big trailer and this whole interactive show-thing. We didn't go through it, but I am guessing this thing just travels from festival to festival throughout the country. It was just so random--there weren't any other state-themed travel attractions, just Texas. But it looked pretty cool--guess its a creative way to get people interested in coming to Texas. Can't wait to see, and taste, what will be there next year!

More of Sarah in her Snow Outfit

So, I already shared the story behind these photos in my last post. But I realized when posting that I really had several other cute photos that just perfectly express my quirky, creative, energetic, silly little girl's personality. And, since my mom and sister especially told me how much they enjoyed the pics in the last post, I figured I would add a few more! Really, I seriously love this girl!

I want to blog again . . . pray for me!

Its only been . . . 4 months . . . since my last post. Much has happened, sigh. All of summer, actually. Friends came in town, we went out of town several times, lots of fun memories . . . all un-blogged. Oh well. I want to start blogging again, and maybe I will get around to retro-blogging at some point. But, the best way to get back in the saddle, I think, is just to start where things are at right now. And right now, it is fall, we are back in the swing of David's law school life and Sarah is getting crazy big. So I'll just post some pictures of our normal life, and we will see where blogging goes from here!

This photo happened right at the beginning of September. After a pretty scorching Missouri summer, we finally got some "cool" weather, like in the 80's. I told Sarah that Fall was coming and the weather was going to start getting cooler. She is just beginning to grasp the idea of seasons. We were out on the deck, but suddenly she yelled excited, "Its going to snow soon!" Then she ran back inside, and re-emerged on the deck in this get-up. I love it--sooo Sarah!

Sarah has also discovered that she really likes the jacuzzi function of our bathtub, especially in combination with bubble bath. Its actually pretty amazing. A tiny little capful of bubble bath that makes a really pathetic amount of bubbles when simply poured under the bathtub faucet turns into a whole bathtub of thick foamy bubbles when you turn the jacuzzi jets on. Lots of bath time fun happening this way these days!

Sarah also still loves books, thankfully. At 18 months she would only fall asleep in her crib if we put 2-3 books in there with her for her to look at as she drifted off. She still loves to just sit and look at a book. I have aspirations to start some simple reading stuff with her this year--she is definitely interested! But the main reason I took this picture is she just looks so darn grown up!! I want it to stop, I tell you! And yet, I am so proud. I am just crazy about this girl, I tell ya!

Finally, this is from Sarah's first day of "school" a few weeks ago. Actually, she is just going to a parents' day out one day a week. But she LOVES it! She is just so active and curious and social, and since she is not napping anymore (for like 8 months now!) I finally broke down and said--I need a few hours each week to do things that are difficult to get done when you are your non-napping super-social child's only social and entertainment outlet. Praise the Lord, he provided some super sweet ladies at a church not too far from where we live who intentionally keep the PDO prices low so that it is affordable for families like ours. Seriously, such a provision! Sarah really likes it, and I think she is really growing and benefiting from the social and structure aspects, and I have aspirations to actually organize my house and possibly do a little more blogging . . . So thankful!!

Deans Go Camping!

A couple of weeks ago, we took Sarah on her very first camping trip. We stayed pretty close to home just in case she didn't love it and wanted to go home in the middle of the night. Does it look like we had anything to worry about?

The campground some friends recommended to us was Babler State Park, and it really was perfect. Only half an hour's drive away, its actually just kind of on the edge of the suburbs of St. Louis. So there are grocery stores and what not less than a 5 minutes' drive away, which we ended up taking advantage of. Still, the spot we chose was lovely and wooded, and was secluded and natural enough that we felt like we were really experiencing the outdoors, even if our car was parked less than 10 feet from our tent.

The only snag we hit in our trip was that David discovered that the poles of our tent (which we bought in 2005 just after getting married, used twice, I think, and then stored for 5 years)--somehow the stretchy cord that runs through them had spontaneously lost all its stretchiness while in storage in my parents' basement. So the segments of the poles didn't hold together that well when you assembled them. Annoying!! Still, major problem-solving points to David for making it work--our tent got assembled and stayed up all night!

Don't you love Sarah's little pink camping chair?? I found it and a matching sleeping bag at a garage sale last summer. Sooo perfect for my little adventurer!

Sarah's favorite thing?? The tent. Ummm, she LOVED it!! She played in it most of the afternoon and evening! David got our fire going on his very first try!! Perfect for roasting our hot dogs and marshmallows!! Oh, and the marshmallows were also a favorite of Sarah's. Just not roasted. And no s'mores for her either. She just wanted her marshmallows and Hershey bars plain and cold and separate. One of these years she will figure out what she has been missing! Other than the fact that it took her a loooooong time to fall asleep when we went to bed, I am sure because she still had so much pent up excitement, Sarah really did great! She followed the rules about not playing near the fire, and she just had a great attitude and adventuresome spirit (except when it came to trying the s'mores)! David and I loved the tranquility and beauty of the spot. It was a perfect way to celebrate the end of his first year of law school and spend some quality time together as a family after not really having very much of that the last several weeks/months of the semester. And this one? Well, she plays "camping" all the time at home now, and I am pretty sure she's not going to let the summer go by till we take our next family camping trip.

My Budding Artist

This post is a little bit Mother's Day continued, because my mom and my mother-in-law are probably the only other 2 people on the planet who feel as passionately as I do about Sarah's artwork.  So, this post may elicit a well-deserved eye roll or two that I have become one of "those" parents, but that is OK with me.  Because, in my opinion, the process of seeing Sarah go from a toddler who just enjoys the action of scribbling with a crayon across a page to actually being able to draw something that resembles something in reality (all this in only about a year's time!) has been nothing short of incredible.

This is from late fall, when Sarah was in her very prolific painting blobs of non-sensical color stage.

More recently, this Spring, she was doing lots of multi-colored scribbles, many of which I loved, like this one.

Then, all the sudden one day about a month ago, out of nowhere, she draws this.  I was astounded!  I immediately took a picture with my phone and texted it to David.  I mean, not that long ago, she was a BABY, for goodness sakes, and now she draws little people!  It's just miraculous, seriously!

And now she draws pictures with stories, like this one which is a self-portrait, but with long hair.  She added an "S" on the side, since she knows that is the first letter in Sarah. :)

I found this little guy on a receipt I had left lying around; she informed me this one is a "king." In fact, pretty much any paper surface she can get a hold of these days is quickly decorated with one of these (adorable, in my opinion) little figures: grocery lists, the inside covers of books, old church bulletins, etc. I have to say, I am head over heels charmed by these little guys!!!