St. Louis

In August, we took a two week trip to visit family.  One week in St. Louis, one week in Wisconsin.  It was wonderful, exciting, busy and exhausting.  It had been over a year and a half since we had come back to the midwest-- only our parents had met Charlie!  We fixed that.  Also, there was all of the excitement of flying on an airplane.  We talked about all of this with Lucy for months.  One day, Grandma Glenda was talking to Lucy about all the fun things that would happen when she came to visit and Lucy said in an absolute deadpan voice, "It's still June, Grandma."  She knew she had to wait until August.  So we did a lot of packing, a lot of working, a lot of reading books about airplanes, a lot of waiting.

Lucy says, "I'm the moon!" 

This inner-tube is Charlie's new therapy equipment, if you can believe that. 

The moon had to take a call.

Anyway, we flew on the airplane.  It was fantastic.  Despite being delayed over an hour, both kids did amazing.  In fact, they did so amazing that when we landed, the passenger behind us stood up and said,  "Oh!  You have two kids!  I had no idea!"

We did a ton of things on this trip and I'm not evening going to try to list them all.  Here are some pictures of Great Grandpa Brinker's birthday party.

Lucy was more than a little excited to hang out with Taylor.  Here they are reading together.

Uncle Jeremy and Charlie hanging out.

Corbin getting jealous.

Charlie was fascinated with the air vents-- all of ours are on the ceiling!

We took a family photo-- not to shabby considering Lucy was bawling 5 minutes prior.

And a cousin photo, too.

A visit to the Sullentrups, where Lucy learned how to dress like a princess (raid Great-Granny's jewelry, find head bands and mardi gras beads galore, elicit lots of attention and admiration).

 Charlie with Great-Gramps

 Charlie with Great-Granny

Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Brinker

Time with Nina!

And here are way to many pictures of our trip to the Magic House:

 Grandma and Lucy blowing a bubble around themselves.

 Making a ball ring all the bells.

 Giant water table (my personal favorite)

Lucy's favorite: pretend grocery store.  Go figure-- she was most excited about the vegetables.

Dr. Lucy listening to Grandma's heartbeat.

 Hello?

 Pretend tea party.

Giant climb-y thing.  Alternative to taking the stairs.

 Construction worker Lucy.

That was a lot of pictures, but there were even more picture opportunities that I forgot to take advantage of, such as boating on the river with Jeremy and Leah, Uncle Jeremy taking Lucy on the jet-ski, having lunch with Vicki and Nina, swimming in Grandma's pool and riding the bike.