7 wonderful years

We celebrated our 7th anniversary this summer by going out to dinner and seeing Wicked at The Fox Theater.

Drop and give me twenty

Discipline starts early around our house.

And a few minutes later...

Blessings

I realize why we don't have as many pictures of Walker by himself as we have of each of the girls... every time I get the camera out, a crowd assembles and everyone (especially Mim!) wants their picture taken.  And unrelated, I love Walker's 'Scooby Doo "Huh?" look' in this picture.

Miriam's store

We so enjoy Miriam's creativity and imagination. She created her "store" all on her own then asked me to take her picture by it.

Marcus, Shanna & Harper's visit

Uncle Marky, Aunt Shanna and Harper visited a few weeks ago, but I think most of the good pictures were taken on their camera. Here are a couple fun videos to share though. We visited the fountains in the Children's Garden of the Missouri Botanical Gardens:

And Uncle Marky had a lot of fun with the girls in the backyard:

Now THAT is a look of pure joy!

Zoo with friends

A visit to the StL Zoo with some good friends from our community group...

As you can tell, the train ride was the highlight of the day!

More fun on the farm

Aunt Ali's softball game

Kittens, calves, killer waterslide

A visit to Grandma and Grandpa Hess' house at the beginning of June:

Memorial Day Weekend

Not documented with pictures: nail in Miriam's foot :)

Make Tracks

A few weeks ago, our whole family ran a 5K in Forest Park to benefit the St. Louis Zoo. Cora thought we might be most competitive like this.

But Mommy and Daddy decided it would probably work best like this.

Daddy ran really fast (and even left Mommy behind at the end of the race, per Mommy's request) and was the first stroller across the finish line... and the only stroller that we saw with more than one child that was actually competing in the "run" part of the race as opposed to the "walk."

Cora did finally get her own chance to run; Miriam opted not to compete this time. Bear with the shakiness at the beginning of the video; it gets better. Cora is STILL talking about running over the "big bump" at the end and how she wants to do it again sometime soon.

Happy Father's Day!

I meant to get this up yesterday, but didn't get it done and would rather do it late than not at all.  :)

Miriam's self-portrait

Complete with a flower!

The many uses of shorts

This is the work of big sister Cora.

Four generations

Great Grandpa Charlie

Grandpa Steve

Mommy (behind the camera, taking the picture :) )

Walker

This picture was taken at Cousin Natalie's SLU MBA Graduation Party back in May.

Rub-a-dub-dub, three kids in the tub

M.I.T. (Mommy in training)

We enjoyed a recent visit from Aunt Lindsay.  She's going to be a great mommy!

Lovely locks

Quick fix

Until I get pictures up here, you can see a few shots of the kids on Uncle Micah, Aunt Jamie, Isaiah, Naomi and Levi's blog: http://micahsteele.blogspot.com/

Solids!

"I'm SO ready for this."

Wait... you want me to put THAT in my MOUTH?

And of course Mommy had plenty of help!

Head start

Cora figures that since Walker is a third child, there's a chance he might lag behind developmentally, so she's already starting to work with him on counting to 10.

You should see the other guy

A recent trip to the park to fly a kite took a disastrous turn for the worse.  As we were departing the front of our house, Cora - who about 3 minutes prior had discovered that her jacket had pockets, so of course her hands were occupying said pockets - missed an elevation change in the sidewalk.  This was the result:

(It looked a lot worse in person; we couldn't get a picture to do it justice.)