The 1st round of parties

The last 10 days have been a blur of family visiting, leaving, staying, eating, opening gifts and leaving again...Here's the short version, kind of. My niece, Natalie, stayed with us 2 weekends ago. Dane and I took her to Six Flags and then afterwards came home to a bonfire with smores and outside movie night. Sunday my brother, Danny, from California arrived. My dad came and picked up Natalie, but before leaving we had a large BBQ at our house with some of Dad and Danny's friends from "back in the day" when they had a house in St. Louis. So 13 people came and 12 left. Danny stayed for the week.

I guess you could say he enjoys riding bikes...that's actually funny because he races professionally and one day while he was here he went for an afternoon ride and it was 70 miles...I'll repeat 70 miles...I complain about driving 70 miles. So anyway, he took Dane on a bike ride. It was probably only a couple miles, but Dane got to show him the creek and horses in our subdivision. After that ride he followed Uncle Danny around the house because they then became buddies.

Drakie and T-Bone didn't get to go as much as they wanted to :(



Danny also took the boys to pick out their birthday gifts and Dane helped wrap them...that was rediculous, but they were definitely easy for them to open. Dane opened 2 of his throughout the week and then one on Friday during Drake's birthday party...

Which leads nicely into Drake's 2nd birthday party. Friday we rented a pavillion and BBQ'd. Drake scored with lots of fun light-up cars and helicopters and books and a painting easel from grandma. He wouldn't eat his cake...he did however eat the home-maid icecream we made at the park.



He fell off of a picnic table reaching for one of his toys:

And we found out Rich and Heather (and Arabella) are expecting a baby in 5 months! yaa congratulations!

Saturday we hosted Andy's family reunion. We barely got home and unpacked from the birthday party before we had to wake up the next moring and get ready for everyone to arrive. We were exhausted, but had a great time. And I didn't take one single picture...I couldn't find the camera...It was in one of the birthday bags from the previous night. I did notice however several people were taking pictures, and lots of them. Aunt Mary brought a cd of pictures turned into a movie that Andy projected outside on our garage door while we all enjoyed smores and the bonfire. It was a nice end to a great day.

Wait, the weekend isn't over yet. We crashed after everyone left and woke up early to be at the St. Louis Zoo. Drake participated in "Animal Antics". He got to hold, pet and feed different animals and then ended the hour with a craft: He finger-painted a large cardboard butterfly. Warning...several pictures...I couldn't pick just a couple because he was excited to see and touch all of the little critters.







Today is Monday. And for MY birthday, since Andy's at work, the boys and I went to Six Flags until about 1:30 when they both couldn't even ride the train because they were so tired and we came home. They are just now waking up, 4 hours later, which is how I've been able to up-date all of you.

Are you wondering what's next? I'll try to keep it short:

Thursday - Drake's actual birthday and I fly out that night to Virginia to celebrate my sister's 50th birthday.
I return Monday and celebrate Andy's 40th birthday the following weekend. And then the following weekend we celebrate Dane's 4th birthday...but wait, we're not done. The next weekend is our wedding anniversary...
I'll try to write before all that's passed so you don't have a novel to read...just books in a series.