FInishing up May

On Wednesday, May 29th, we got to have Lucy, Quinn and Larkin for most of the day. Emily dropped them off in the morning before she headed off to her part-time job of medical record extraction at a nearby physician's office.  The first activity of the day was to collect mulch from the Carondelet mulch site to spread on our turn-around. Not so much fun but the kids were very helpful!

After the work was done, we took a fun "fieldtrip" was to visit the nearby Carondelet Historical Society Museum. It is a true treasure house of  so many things. First of all, it is housed in an old school that hosted the very first kindergarten in the United States. Below are photos of a re-creation of that classroom located on the main level.

We next went upstairs to see displays of all kinds of artifacts from the community of Carondelet through the years. (Carondelet is the second oldest community in the area - St. Louis being the oldest) Music boxes and musical instruments, Victrolas, dolls, tools, toys, trains, the tour guide's grandmother's wedding dress, even all the furniture and tools from a working general store...

the  photo below is us taking in all the things from the third floor...

The basement included a quilt display, old dresses, a huge steering wheel from a river boat and a replica of an iron clad boat that went up and down the Mississippi during the Civil War. 

We ended our tour with the library of the museum with all kinds of documents and records and more artifacts including a working antique telephone!  The tour guide used it to call my cell phone.  So amazing.  

We returned home to eat lunch, to do piano lessons with Quinn and Larkin and to finish our time together doing a Christmas ornament craft.  

Oh, and the kids got to feed the neighborhood dog, Paluche, some doggie treats. He is such a sweet dog

Speaking of dogs, I got some good photos of Sally on Friday morning as we had our FaceTime with Alice, Ivan and Kirsti. She LOVES to lick Steve's bald head and, bless Steve, he puts up with it.

For the last week, off and on, this has been happening to our deck in back....

We got an income tax refund and we thought we would use it to hire someone to sand and paint it. Well, like many home-improvement projects, it has morphed into a much larger undertaking and will cost almost twice the amount of our refund but we will have a much nicer, more stable deck that should last long after we have moved away. I will take a photo of the final result when it happens. Our handyman, Ken, is very skilled but also kind of flaky - taking on multiple jobs at once - so often we are not his top priority. Plus, he has had to deal with a rather wet month of May. Once the deck is re-built, we will have to wait until the deck is completely dry before he can paint it with the expensive deck paint we bought. So, stay tuned....

We have had houseguests since Wednesday evening. Joe and Vicki Southerland - Joe's parents - have been staying with us (since the four bedrooms at Emily and Joe's house are full). 

They have spent all their time in Ballwin soaking up grandchildren time culminating with the big event of Larkin's dance recital Saturday afternoon. Steve and I got to attend and it was a full two hours of small dance routines by so many dancers - mostly littles but a few numbers by teenagers. The dance studio is HUGE and the recital we attended was one of four (one on Friday evening and three on Saturday!!!)

As I sat there in that high school auditorium watching all the little dancers, I was reminded that I took dance lessons for about a year when I was in 2nd grade. Below are photos of me in a tap routine and in my ballet costume. We performed in a large auditorium in downtown El Paso.  

Below is a photo of me and Noah, Lucy and Quinn after the performance.

And it is now June.....I look forward to a wonderful summer!