Our Big Trip!

These two were so entertaining. One was playing under the blanket and the other starting swinging and climbing around. The girls enjoyed seeing them in action.

The butterfly house was so pretty. There were so many butterflies everywhere and she loved looking at them.

Had to climb on the frog.

At Suson Park

We have a similar picture from our last trip, except Reagan is the new addition and unfortunately, they only have 3 cutouts.

Rachel was not too keen on getting close to this horse. I suppose it was okay since most of the animals had signs saying "we may bite"

We made it back from our trip to St. Louis and Chicago. We left 2 Fridays ago and made it up around midnight, exhausted of course. With the time change, the girls were consistently getting up around 5:45-6 in the morning and since they were all sleeping in the same area, sending them back to bed wasn't a great option since they might wake any remaining sleeping kids. So, thankfully Grandma has cable and Disney Jr channel was watched (a lot). Lauren and I took a lot of afternoon naps, ate a ton of Cecil Whitaker's pizza, had Ted Drewes' frozen custard, took the girls for Krispy Kreme donuts, went to the zoo and Grant's Farm, and spent a lot of time with family. We really enjoyed our time in St. Louis. We headed over to the Chicago area the following Friday to visit Michael, Amy, and our new nephew Will. The girls have been pretty excited to meet Baby Will, but unfortunately, he was a little sick so no kisses could be given. They chased around the 4 cats and went back and forth between liking and not liking the dog. Since Michael seemed to be getting sick and Amy and Will were getting over something, we decided to head out a day early on Sunday. Sunday evening at dinner, Lauren started to not feel good and then got progressively worse in the van. Thankfully we were close to a hospital and we headed to the ER. I waited in the van with 4 sleeping kiddos for about 4 hours while Lauren was treated (given pain meds) for most likely a ruptured ovarian cyst. We made it to the hotel around midnight and settled into bed an hour or so later. No rest for the weary, we were up around 6am and at least got a yummy continental breakfast with some good food. We drove pretty much all day and got home at 11pm Monday night. We were so happy to be back. I spent yesterday recovering (doing laundry, unpacking, etc) and will spend tomorrow morning packing things back up for our cruise! Matt and I are really looking forward to time by ourselves and with some friends. If you are wondering about the pregnancy, I had an appointment the day before we left and things were fine. The baby was being difficult, but we finally heard a good heartbeat in the 150's or so. I am feeling alright, but still have some evening where I don't feel great. I definitely feel like my belly is getting bigger and am a lot bigger at this point than I was with Rachel. I hadn't gained any weight as of my appointment, but with all of the junk food that was eaten in St. Louis and with the never ending supply of yummy food on our cruise, I have a feeling the next appointment will show some weight gain.On a sad note, 4 of our chickens were pulled through the chicken wire and eaten by a raccoon. Matt spent a few days trying to catch it, but caught a stray cat (and it escaped) and then an opossum. He put up some metal sheeting around the bottom foot or so of the coop, so hopefully, no more deaths. He did buy two more chicks, so we now have a total of 4.