8 years ago... in a galaxy not very far away

A little baby girl, Jaina LuAnn Groen, was born.

It is hard to imagine how quickly eight years can fly.  Truth be told, there are plenty of times the minutes crawled by..(like at 2 AM with a colicky baby), but every other moment, flown.

For her eighth birthday, Jaina struggled to decide on a birthday cake. For weeks, she wanted a ballerina cake. So for weeks I pondered how on earth I was going to make a ballerina cake.

The night before, unfortunately, she changed her mind. She decided that she wanted a Star Wars cake.  Well, okay......

I sent Mike on a Wal-Mart run, and lo and behold, he came back with Star Wars toys. The boys in the house were pretty giddy at this prospect.

And the cake turned out pretty well.....

We had her party at Grandma and Grandpa Groen's farm.  There was more space, and time to be outside.... and we had fireworks.

 

 

Here are all of the kids together.  Somewhat posed...

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Jaina!

 

 



First Day of school

In keeping in chronological order, the next major even in our lives was the first day of school.

Jaina started second grade this year, and Jackon?  Well, Jackson is still in the two-year old room, and yeah, pretty much loves it.

And similar to his sister, he also has to tendency now to not stop talking from sunup to sundown. This is fun and exhausting, all at the same time.

Anyway, back to school. 

These pictures are not crystal clear for whatever reason.  I keep trying to convince Mike that OBVIOUSLY our camera is old, that we need to upgrade. But my pay down debt plan also directly goes against this, so I have kind of done it to myself.

And I have to add the next one, because Jackon's  expression just cracks.me.up.  Six ways from Sunday, I tell ya....

 

 

I just really wonder what is going through his little mind at this moment. So i speculate.....

 

 



Ah, kids.

Next up?  Jaina's Birthday Party. It is outta this world.

More vacation...

Why is it that tomorrow in summer speak means.... in a couple of weeks.

That is literally how the last two weeks have felt. It has been crazy busy.

But it keeping with logical order, here is the rest of our vacation...

We went to the children's museum.

 



They had a special exhibit on just the Mystery Magical Tree House series. Jaina loves this series, and was so excited to get to see some of the very scenes she had read about in her books.

I made Jaina pretend to be the President of the United States. A mom can hope right?  She did have a former teacher indicate she will either be a politician or a movie star.  Can anyone really tell the difference?

The last full day, we did some "traditional" sights,like Busch Stadium and the Arch. Rather than bore you with pictures, I just kept it to two.

Busch Stadium  It was HOT.

And the Arch... also HOT

That really sums it up... so let me leave you with some Pi(e)

GREAT pizza place right by our hotel.  I have learned one thing from traveling with kids... learn to love Pizza.