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!

EPIC Mud Run 2012

Jackson has been BEGGING us to do this race since he found out about it. Our great friends, the Livesay's run this race so he got to hear a lot about it.  And we kept thinking we were busy this weekend- but when those plans got cancelled he was UBER excited.  And after running along side with Addison this year WE ARE NOT MISSING THIS NEXT YEAR- ADULT VERSION (although I might regret that- the kids was perfect :) )!

It was a 1 mile course of COLOR, mud, dark barns w/ obstacles, hurdles, mud pits, and MONSTER slides!

The big boys getting ready for some FUN!

This pic got out of order and for some reason won't cooperate to move.  Daddy in line, Addison unsure and Jackson EXCITED!

 Happy now that she has LOOT and knows mommy is going with her.

Ashton running through the barns- there will be zombies in there later : /

Jackson going over the hurdles.

First BIG slide.  This sucker was FAST!

MUD & COLOR!

Jackson ending w/ the last big slide.

LOVE this pic of Parker!  He was too fast to hang w/ Addi & I.  The sweat bands make him SUPER MAN!

Daddy was AWESOME photographer this day- which is a opposite of what usually happens.  He did fantastic and I was SO thrilled to experience this with Addison!  Love this SMILE!

 She wanted to go down the slide by herself (thank goodness cause I was OUT OF CONTROL- you will soon see).  

I'm starting to feel a big out of control here...

Oh dear.... 

I already mentioned how great Nate was doing at photography this day... he obviously didn't miss a moment!

Maybe my favorite (besides the slide!)

We did it!  Thanks Jackson for having so much drive to get our family to do this!  We WILL have a BIG showing next year!!  I'm thinking LOUD & BRIGHT new outfits!!