Piano Lessons

Katherine has started taking piano lessons and LOVES it! She willingly practices almost every day and her favorite things is to play duets with John, as each piece that she plays has a duet part to go along with it. FUN!

Gardenland Express

On New Years Day, we took a trip with Grandma Dana and Grandpa Ken to the Missouri Botanical Gardens to see their Gardenland Express exhibit - a train exhibit that they set up over the Christmas holiday time. This year the theme seemed to be "the garden", in that each train area was set up to look like an area of the Botanical Gardens - the Japanese Garden, etc, so that there were repicas of many of the buildings in the Garden. Christopher was in awe, and the girls enjoyed it, too. We all had a great time.

Christopher especially loved the steam train.

This one I think had Santa on the front car...

Here's classic Katherine - reading the history timeline of the Botanical Gardens...

Thanks for coming with us, Grandma Dana and Grandpa Ken!!!

Springfield, IL

We had decided, since Katherine has taken an huge interest in history lately, to take a short trip to Springfield, IL over christmas break. So, on Tuesday after Christmas, we drove up to Springfield from St. Louis (about 100 miles) and after checking into our hotel, went to see the Old State House, Abe Lincoln's law office across the street ( I didn't get any pictures of this), and his home several blocks away.

All of those sights were GREAT! It was amazing to feel like I was standing in the same spot that Abraham Lincoln did 150 years ago - before he was president! These sights and the Visitor's Center, near his home, are fabulous and I highly recommend going to see them! After a pretty good night's sleep, we went the next day to drive around the current Illinois State Capitol building and to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, just across from the Old State House. The museum was decked out for Christmas and was beautiful.

There's a great kids play area in the museum with dress-up clothes as well as old toys from the time of Lincoln and a "Lincoln's home" doll house. We spent a LONG time in that area.

We got our picture taken with the Lincoln family. :)

A replica of the log cabin where he was born and grew up in Kentucky (if I remember correctly). We had a fabulous trip and I highly recommend you get there if you live within any reasonable distance to Springfield. We all had a great time!