Jackson's 8th birthday!

I can't even believe Jackson is 8 years old.  I would be sad.  But Jackson keeps getting sweeter and kinder and more caring and cooler by the year.  I'm so proud of who he is becoming.  He has a passion for anything in the air- especially aircraft- and biking has also become a passion of his.  Nathan & him have gone mountain biking several times and he loves it.  He is a lover.  Sometimes I am not so excited about his love for SO MANY things.  He treasures EVERYTHING- almost to the point of hoarding!  He could likely suffocate himself with all the animals he sleeps with- but each one is SO special to him and he COULD NOT sleep without any of them!

When he wanted a Chuck e. Cheese birthday I was not too excited.  However, I told him he could choose whatever he wanted.  Last year for his birthday we were stuck up in a hotel room w/ a 102 fever and he never got a party (except for a terrific uncle who decorated his hotel room the day before!).  Despite my CEC dismay we had a great time and it was SUPER easy for me.  I show up w/ the cake and the "party host" handled everything else! Jackson was treated like a star and loved every minute.

CEC is a very difficult place to get a good photo.  :(

LOVE his cake!  I usually make a cake for his birthday (and I still made a carrot cake for his school). But we saw this at HYVEE and instantly fell in love.

FUN!

Birthday boy

Party time!

Ticket blaster!  He got about 200 tickets in the blaster.  Then his "party host" Haleigh gave him 600 more!

A new specialized bike, helmet, legos, his own camelback, $$$, remote control helicopter, skateboard thingy, model cars, and much much more... made for one happy and grateful boy!

Our party host mentioned to me what polite and mannered kids we had at the party.  She said she doesn't see that much.  So, not only do I have a great kid but he has some great friends too!

St. Louis, fall, friends and a 13.1.

We had been looking forward to this weekend for months.  It was nearly perfect- about 3/4 perfect.  Because we were missing one VERY important person.  The person who organized this weekend from the beginning- from planning the race and weekend all the way down to planning our matchy match outfits.  Our great friend Kera not only injured her hip but could not put ANY weight on it at all.  So, not only could she not run with us but she couldn't make the trip either.

Despite our sadness that Kera & family could not come we still had a great weekend.  We were so happy that Kristi & family made the trip!  Kristi, Taylor and Lauren met us on Friday afternoon at the City Museum to start off a FUN weekend.  The City Museum is the coolest place ever.  Made out of anything & everything.  And there isn't a place in this tall building that is off limits to explore.  Their motto is "there is no map. GET LOST!"

Heather & boys on the Ferris Wheel ON TOP OF THE TALL BUILDING! SCARY!

My view.  I had to keep taking pictures so I wouldn't look around and FREAK OUT!

I was SNUGGLING with this boy.  He was WAY stronger than me up there!

You have to look closely and its still hard to get a view of how scary this is but the children are climbing up the side of this dome.  WAY up! Taylor led the way and Ashton, Jackson & Parker followed her up!

SWING!

Again. We are on TOP of this TALL building. And then these kids are ON TOP of this thing-y.

STL is beautiful this fall- even on top of buildings!

My only pic all weekend of ALL the kids- Parker, Ashton, Taylor, Addi, Jackson & Lauren.  5 adults. 6 kids. We were out numbered all weekend long.  It was obvious.  Just ask everyone in our hotel :)

Rock n Roll time!!

The park.  BEAUTIFUL!

A perfect day for the Arch.

630 feet up in the air! Tay & I were the only ones a lil freaked out.

In the SMALL TRAM- Tay & I are NERVOUS! Love Lauren's expression here!

Great view of Busch Stadium.

My favorite people.

We found this quaint and adorable restaurant last year.  Usually our pre-race dinners end up in a disaster of driving hours around town trying to find a great place without a 2 hour wait.  Two years in a row of easy, stress free, wonderful pre-race meal!

Carb loading!

Race morning.  Arch in front of us.  Perfect race start!  All sparkled out and ready to GO!

Does it look like my hips are breaking?! OUCH!  SO HAPPY to be done!  Thank you sister for pulling me through. And ordering me to get a good stretch by the PT tent afterwards.  I'm sorry I wasn't my usual race cheerleader self.

Perfect weekend filled with friends, family, beautiful skies and both fun & relaxing activities.  Kristi- Thank you SO much for making the trip with your girls.  I know it wasn't an easy drive and we SO appreciate you coming to our neck of the woods :) Love you & can't wait till our next adventure!

Bennett Spring, Mo

We discussed up until the last minute where we should go camping this weekend.  We knew we didn't want to go far.  We knew we wanted some fishing and biking involved.  And we knew we wanted to go south- but not too far since we couldn't leave till later on Friday afternoon.  We decided on Bennett Springs on Thursday night at 9:30pm.

We landed the best camping spot!  We only had one person close to us so the kids could ride their bikes to their hearts desire.  And it was absolutely beautiful.

Happy campers.  And bikers.

We played a lot of UNO.  Pretty sure Jackson was the weekend champion.  Addison preferred to "referee".

Yummy grilled califlower!  There were only crumbs left!  LOVE my good eaters!

FIRE!

More biking

This picture does NOTHING for the actual beauty!

Trout Fishing.  The most serene and peaceful and beautiful and frustrating fishing ever!  Water is crystal clear so you can see TONS of large fish.  But these fish are PICKY EATERS!

This is a spring where 100,000,000 gallons of water come up RIGHT HERE (where this pic is) a DAY! UNBELIEVABLE!  It's Mo's third largest spring.

Jackson gave it everything he had...

And in the last 10 minutes of fishing cause we only had 1 hour till we had to check out he caught one!  I was literally walking over to him to let him know we had to go soon!

He deserved this one!  He had had 2 other fish on his line that got away.  No one else in the family had any such luck.

Proud fisherman!

CPCA Picture Day!

CPCA's cutest kids!

OKC w/ CMC

Every year our triathlon club goes to club nationals somewhere in the country.  The last 7 years we've been to Las Vegas area (2x), Oklahoma City, Myrtle Beach (2x) and this year we went back to OKC.  Last year we had a great family trip and drove out to Myrtle Beach.  This year school and work didn't allow us to take a long trip so it was short & sweet.  We picked the kids up from school on friday and headed to OKC.  

For some fun on Saturday (instead of sticking around the race site) we headed to the OKC Zoo.  We are a family that loves zoo's.  And we are quite spoiled with our St. Louis Zoo.  So, we weren't expecting much but were quite surprised at the great zoo they had!  It was really hot and the animals were ALL very active.

This brown bear was so funny.  I couldn't quite capture it on camera but he gave us a show.

Our favorite was the elephant show (we've never seen an elephant do tricks!).  This baby was SO adorable!  1.5 years old.

AMAZING.

Hot & Tired Crouch's.

We didn't capture too many pictures of race day.  Mom did a really great job with juggling kids and my camera though!

100+ CMCers made the trip!  What a great group of people!

Best Cheerleaders EVER!

This is on Saturday.  Cheering on the Ironmen.  I LOVE my cowbell!

Race morning.  The race crew was quite funny with their captions.  The other caption said "Don't pee in the water".  hahahaha.

Nathan had a GREAT race!  I had a FUN race! WIN WIN!