Catching up

I am finally catching up on downloading some random photos from the last couple of weekends. We've been home, but we have been busy - as usual. Last weekend was the Boone County Fair in Columbia. It has improved a lot since the last time we were there it seems. We toured all the animal barns and of course our little carney Abby had to ride some rides.

Having a good time on the carousel with Daddy.
Circling on the tea cups. Apparently Abby's tummy started hurting so there weren't so many circles in the end.
Riding some dogs that go up and down.
Driving the love bugs.

And the biggest surprise was that she wanted to ride the ponies. Not a very good picture, but she did really well and rode them on Saturday night as well.

Look Dad - I want to go fishing!
We received a $2 Nemo fish with her fishing skills.
Thursday night was the horse shoe so we watched some contestants practicing prior to going in to the ring. Horses were coming in and out of the horse barn and riders were grooming and prepping for competition so we didn't tour those barns.
Here we are again at the fair on Friday night with Abby's friend Landen. These were his first carnival rides.


Riding the carousel again
Megan was having a good time too as you can see.
They also had pig races that we watched on Saturday night. Abby thought they were great. She's the one in the pink.
Our first attempt at putting Megan in the high chair. She did really well and love to bang her toys on the tray. She has already mastered throwing them as well on the floor. Abby likes to pick them up though for us.
I was putting Abby's clothes away and had put Megan in Abby's bed just to keep her out of the way. She ended up falling asleep there and Abby covered her all up because it was her "baby". Abby wanted to sleep in Megan's crib though since she was in her bed.

Another weekend activity with Nell's 4th birthday party. That is Abby taking a swing at a pinata.

This is the birthday girl with her uncle working on breaking the pinata open. All the kids had hit it and we weren't making any progress at all so we needed a little adult help.
Success!
Everyone was getting their loot.
Abby really liked the Shrek cake.


Here is our babysitter Taunia with her husband John and of course Megan.
Blowing out the candles
Megan thinks she can feed herself cereal now. Really she just wants to chew on everything lately. She has her two bottom teeth now.
Abby imitating for a photo as usual.
Last night we tried, and I mean tried to feed Megan squash for the first time. We were feeding her cereal and I snuck a bite in and she looked at me really funny and then just spit it out. We mixed some in with the cereal so she did get some, but you can see the piles on her bib of our other attempts where she just spits it right out. Overall not a bad first time, we've seen worse. It will get better with time.

That's about if from the Schmidt family. We are heading down to the Lake of the Ozarks this weekend again to spend time with the Cowan's and Resnik's and relax a little. I'm sure there will be photos from that.

Niagara Falls Vacation

After the successful Papke/Knight wedding we headed the short 45 minute drive up to Canada and crossed over to Niagara Falls. We had spent the late morning with Andrew & Rebekah and had lunch with them so we conveniently traveled while the girls napped. The border patrol line was not long either so that went quickly. Other than the Canadian gave us wrong directions to our hotel, we should have trusted Garmin, but we figured it out either way.

This was the view from our room when we checked in. We could see the American and Horseshoe Falls very well.


A close up from our room - they had windows that opened right up with a guardrail so you could take really good pictures.
The American Falls
We decided to stay close and walk around the hotel area so we had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. There are monkeys close by that "came alive" every now and then and a tree frog above Abby so she was staying close because they were going to get her.
Our one tourist item for the evening was the Sky Wheel, we thought we would get a good view of the area. As you can see Abby has no issues with the heights.
Surviving the Sky Wheel


Here is the Sky Wheel at night. We stayed by most of the tourist attractions and everything was lit up at night.
This was our hotel Sheraton On the Falls, we were on the 19th floor.
Yes ice cream in Canada tastes the same as in the US, but we had to make sure.
Next day, having breakfast at the Fallsview Restaurant. It's on the 14th floor of our hotel, very nice view of the falls of course.
Our activity for the day included the Maid of the Mist. So here we are - I think we're in front of the American Falls. It got a little bumpier in front of the Canadian falls.

These are the Canadian Falls

We survived and didn't get that wet, behind us are the Canadian Falls
We were walking to a restaurant called The Keg (not a microbrewery apparently) and there was a rainbow in front of the American falls so I had to get a picture of that.
The afternoon was spent at the waterpark connected to our hotel. This was Abby's area.
The slides were for Tim and I. Abby was only tall enough to ride a couple slides because they won't let you go down with an adult. We had a good time though.

A stop at the Hershey store of course. At Andrew's wedding some of his friends asked me how it was to have a mini-me just following me around. Sometimes I think Abby is changing so much she doesn't look that much like me - however with this picture, there is no doubt she is my daughter.

Tuesday morning we headed to our last attraction for the falls - Journey Behind the Falls. This takes you behind the Canadian Falls to two lookout portals and then down to an observation deck that is 25 ft from the base of the falls.
The observation deck.
Just an impressive attraction all around.
Of course we had to check out the top of the falls as well.


Then it was back to the US and on to Buffalo so we would be close for our flight the next morning. So we checked out the Buffalo Zoo. Abby is feeding - or has already fed a giraffe a cracker. She did it without any help from me.
Digging for dinosaur bones.
Riding the carousel. These ponies didn't go up or down and were shorter to the ground to get on so I think she liked them best.
There was a Little People section of the zoo and it had a train so of course we had to ride that as well.
And here is Megan at the zoo, she was having a good time too as soon as we got her out of the carseat.

That pretty much wraps up our vacation. We survived the flights back and were pretty tired all the way around. This past weekend we went to the Boone County Fair so if I ever catch up on our activities you'll see photos of that. This weekend we head down to the Lake again for another girls weekend with the GBS ladies.