Our Growing Family: Labor Day Weekend

Whew! It's been an amazing weekend filled with tons of fun things and fun people. We are so amazingly blessed to have the people we do in our lives. We started the weekend off Friday night with a family birthday celebration for Jarod. Jarod smoked ribs, and we did presents, and birthday cake. It always so fun to get together with family. Saturday we met our friends Jess and Justin, their girls, and friends Ryan and Coralie at a mini golf place where we all ended up sweating our butts off in the 100 degree weather. It was still really fun. Then we went back to our house where Justin made Jarod a b-day pasta dinner. We ate cake, played outdoor games until it was too dark, and then played poker for chocolates. Sunday we woke up to weather in the 70's and decided to take a hike that we have been wanting to take for the longest time. It is a 5 mile hike along the Missouri River. The website we found it on said it was moderate to strenuous. It was a really neat hike. There were tons of lookouts on the tops of bluffs looking over the Missouri River. There were a lot of major inclines and declines along the trail. It took us all of 3 hours to do the 5.2 mile hike. And I will say I got one hell of a workout! We are definitely going to have to go back during the fall and check it out when the leaves have changed. Today, we got up and knew we wanted to spend time outdoors again after gorgeous weather the day before. The plan was to go to Purina Farms. However, after talking to my mom I realized that most of the things to do there were indoors. On a day that the high was supposed to be 75 I had no desire to be inside. The next thing we thought to do was either Grants Farm or the Zoo. We finally decided on Shaw's Garden. They are having their annual Japanese Festival. We went on Labor Day last year too. My parents joined us and we had the best time!! We also knew that we wanted to head to Forest Park and go to the Boathouse too. However, once entering Forest Park we realized that we had made a major mistake! Talk about crowded. I have to remember to stay away from Forest Park on Labor Day weekend next year. I think we had the same problem last year. We ended up getting stuck in traffic inside the park for 30 minutes just trying to get back out of the park. Craziness! So we ended up going to a bar and grill near home and sat outside for lunch. It's been such a fun weekend. I'm excited to sit around this evening and relax before we get started with another week of work. (At least it's a short one!) Here are a TON of pictures from the weekend.

There are a ton of pictures of me and Mel. Jarod had the camera because I had Melanie.

She passed out after about the first mile and then was up off and on the entire time.

One of the bluffs over the Missouri.

People's reviews said there was a ton of wildlife. This is the extent we saw. Hopefully we will see more next time.

This was a dry creek bed. I was hoping it would be wet and we would get to cross it. However, with the drought we have been having it was completely dry.

This was kind of ~~awkward~~ fun!

We got to the five mile mark and my shoulders were starting to kill. I haven't completely gotten over the whiplash I got last weekend skydiving. We went a little farther and then I passed her off to Jarod. We walked about 50 yards further and hit the parking lot.... Ha ha. Oh well!