Sarah's Photography

Another thing Sarah is really into these days is photography. By that, I mean stealing my camera (occasionally I give her permission, but mostly her photos are taken clandestinely) and snapping photos of whatever interests her.  Still, she is surprisingly good!  Here is a sampling:

 The kitchen, from Sarah-height.

 Taking Mommy by surprise.  Please ignore the mess.  In all these photos.

 Daddy after a run.

 The dog.  One of her favorite subjects.  I adore this photo!!

 The dog's back end.  Hmmm.

 Self portrait #1.

Self-portrait #2.

I love her budding interest in taking pictures!  Maybe someday she can be like our friends the Montague's 14 year old daughter Ruthie, who is an AMAZING photographer!  Check out her website:  http://www.photosbyruthie.net/

Stuff Sarah is into

Someone recently encouraged me to start paying attention and looking for patterns in the things that Sarah does if given freedom to do what she likes to discover her interests and natural abilities.  I have discovered she really likes building things.  Like paths out of books:

And building her "World Famous Dog Traps":

Maybe someday she will be an architect or an engineer?

A St. Louis 4th!

I finally talked David into going downtown to celebrate 4th of July and watch the fireworks under the Arch this year.  Supposedly, between 300,000 and 500,000 people attend this each year--whaa???  When we told people we were going to brave the crowds this year, many gave us wary looks.  There are like 10 other fireworks celebrations around the St. Louis area, including a small one just a couple of miles away from our house.  But I really wanted to do the "big" one at least once!  And this year the weather was great--highs were just in the 80's yesterday.  I figured it was the perfect year to do it.

We went downtown around 5 and figured we would get dinner from some of the food vendors that were set up around the arch.  We were able to get food for dinner before the lines got insanely long--David went back later to try to get us some funnel cakes, but heard the wait was over an hour!  But then we did have a long while to sit on the lawn waiting for it to get dark and the fireworks to begin.

 So we took some photos. :)  Next year we will bring a frisbee and other stuff to keep Sarah (and ourselves) entertained during the wait. The advantage to arriving early is we did find a nice spot sitting on a hill to watch the show from (later, ALL the green space you see around us was filled up with people).

 And, please ignore David's expression in these photos.  Those of you in the Dean family know that the Dean boys have made a life-long commitment to being wierd in photos.  He was having a good time and does indeed like his family, I promise!!

 Another thing adding to our fun on the 4th--our Chinese friend Yang Fan (English name--Peter) was with us!  He just got a job teaching 2nd grade at a Mandarin language immersion Elementary school here in St. Louis and will be living with our family for a while.  We are so excited to have him!  He has been in the States for 2.5 years getting his M. Ed. at Michigan State.  He said the crowds he saw downtown last night were more people than he had seen in whole time in the U.S. up to that point combined. :)

While we waited, they did have a concert going on.  Trace Adkins.  I like a couple of his songs; David--not so much.  We probably would have enjoyed the wait more if there was a concert of someone we actually enjoyed.  Personally, I think I prefer a live orchestra playing patriotic music even to a pop concert.

In any case, once the fireworks began, they were definitely amazing!!  I wish I had gotten some photos of the  crowds (insane!) and the fireworks show.  But you can go here: Fair St. Louis photos to see more pictures of those things!

We also left a little before the end of the show so we could get on the road before the traffic became unbearable.  We got home without getting stuck in the crowds, but both David and I said it really was kind of a bummer we didn't just sit and enjoy the whole thing--after all, the part we missed was the finale!  I did see it on video here this morning: STL fireworks video

Anyway, it was a fun time and we were glad we did it.  The crowds were seriously, seriously insane though.  I think we will try it again in the future, coming early again and then trying to park someplace where we can hopefully stay till the very end and still not get stuck in traffic for hours afterward!

Retro-Blogging: The Holidays Part 1

Soooo, what's a girl to do when she gets behind on blogging for a couple months? Retro-blog, of course! So here are some of my favorite photos from Thanksgiving and Christmas. :)

We had 2 of David's Chinese law school classmates over for Thanksgiving. It was a blast!  Andrea, on the left, couldn't get over my album of Tang Dynasty glamour shots. :)

The spread.  Pretty yummy.  I think the corn casserole was the biggest hit with our Chinese friends.

Sarah and I made a gingerbread house.  Wondering why it looks so good?  Because you are looking at the side I decorated.  Sarah struggled with having the self control not to just eat the icing and decorations before they made it onto the house!

Making gingerbread cookies.  Funny story: we took a bunch of these over to our neighbor's house.  A few house later Sarah and I came down with a stomach bug.  I was convinced we had just delivered holiday vomit inducing cookies to my dear neighbor!  Thankfully I asked her later and they were miraculously spared the virus!

Sarah's official Christmas portrait.

After her portrait photo session, Sarah wanted to try taking some photos herself.  She took this one of an ornament on the tree--pretty impressive, I'd say!!

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!