Stephens Lake Park

First of all - I love this park! It's close, clean, and has a lot of things for us to do year round. I noticed Saturday that the fountains were turned on after I got the girls hair cuts. So Sunday afternoon we decided to do a little picnic with the Slenker's and have some fountain fun.


Abby and Megan are trying to convince Lily that the water is fun. She wasn't convinced to start with but then had a great time. Landen was climbing on rocks, he took a little longer to convince.



My girls on the other hand couldn't stay out of the water. Megan did actually have a dress on too to start with but didn't want to get it wet. I wasn't sure if they would actually play that much in the water. We'll be bringing swimsuits next time!


Pretty standard here - Megan was fearless and Abby has water in her eyes. Megan would go in head first right through the fountains.

Enjoying cooling off - unfortunately her diaper weighed about 6 lbs. by now.

Braving another fountain. Abby would sneak through, Megan would charge through - her diaper is about to fall off of her butt, she was as always - entertaining.

We got to spend about an hour playing after we had eaten until the bigger kids showed up and it wasn't as fun to play there so we packed it up and headed back home to get out of the sun. We all got a little bit burnt yesterday, but had a great time.

We survived our storms last night without any issues. We'll see if anything shows up in the next couple of days. Our thoughts and prayers are with Joplin, MO and their recovery.

T-Bird Preschool Program

This past Friday Abby had her T-Bird Preschool Program. It's not officially a graduation as some of the kids still have another year of school as it's for 3 and 4 year olds. So there was a nice gathering at the Auxvasse Elementary school where they sang songs, said the pledge, and got a certificate from their teachers.


This is where they came in to line up. It's the morning and afternoon classes together.


Here is Abby getting her certificate from Mr. P.

Very proud preschooler!

An attempt for a full class photo. What you can't see is Megan standing next to Abby in the photo. You can see her shoes, but not her head in this shot. She decided to sneak in to the photos, which everyone enjoyed. As 5 of the 17 morning class kids go to our daycare they all know Megan quite well.

So just one more week of school until summer break due to our snow make up days. It's hard to believe it's almost Memorial Day weekend.

Rogersville & Allison's Baptism

This past weekend we headed down to Rogersville, MO for the baptism of my Goddaughter, Allison. This was Tim's first trip down to the new Cowan residence as well, and a chance to maybe shoot a turkey......


Megan cannot get enough of babies, especially Allison. She would have held her all weekend if we would have let her. She was very concerned at all times where Allison was and what she was doing. If we were following them in the car somewhere she had to be able to see "babies car".



The other popular item of the weekend was Ashley's 4-wheeler. Now remember I said it was Ashley's...... Here Ashley is getting the reminder of what the buttons do and Abby is learning so she can try.

Abby is ready to go - along with Tim on the kill switch as well. Abby didn't ride it very long, she got scared pretty quickly.

Dave on Ashley's 4-wheeler.



Tim on Ashley's 4-Wheeler (photo by Abby)



Baptism day. The Bishop decided to grace us with his presence for the evening mass and the baptism so it was quick and honor to have him there. Ashley is a little tired if you couldn't tell. Abby and her had "quiet time" watching a movie instead of napping and paid the price during mass.


My newly baptized goddaughter - Allison Joy - and Abby's hand.

Susan was the other godparent for Allison so here is our group shot with some extra kids as well.


Megan gets her turn on the 4-wheeler. Of course it's not on. Jenn's father George pushed her around on it a little bit and she had a great time. When she is a little bit taller she'll be tearing it up I'm sure.


And last but not least - Dave's mother Jayme on Ashley's 4-wheeler.

Megan and Allison - some goodbye loving.

Abby, Allison, and Megan. I think Allison has had enough Schmidt loving for the weekend.

One last hug - and there were some kisses too but those pictures didn't turn out that great. It's rough to be loved Allison....

And as David pointed out while we were there I shouldn't be saying what we're doing next weekend because people might come rob our house. So now you'll just have to wait to see what we are up to. We could be at home, we could be elsewhere, but we'll be busy I'm sure.

See Dave.....I listened.

Easter, A Wedding, and the 1st Fishing trip of the Year

Playing a little blogging catch up today. We've finally bounced back from the Disney trip and I have been out of town for work, so it's been a little busy to say the least. Pictures have been taken, just not downloaded. So here is our recap of the last couple of weeks.


We did our Easter egg dying at home, still need to make some deviled eggs....maybe tonight.


Easter morning the girls found their baskets conveniently in their rocking chairs with some new movies and a couple other goodies. It was a little bitter sweet as we have spent the last 2 Easter's out at the farm with Uncle Pat and visiting my Grandma. So this year, new traditions. Things were a little last minute so I am sure these new traditions are not finalized.



Showing off our baskets before church. As you can see, Megan is just as much a morning person as I am. Abby sprung out of bed immediately - she's very cooperative when there are gifts involved.




The Egg hunt upstairs.


Megan wasn't that thrilled - she's not exactly awake - and yes her hair is actually combed. It tends to do it's own thing at times.


On our way to church - you can just feel the excitement. This is her new baby from the Easter Bunny.


After church we went to Truman's for brunch and what Easter would not be complete without a little Big Buck Hunter.

Oh - and the boat came back over Easter weekend as well. We now have an additional concrete pad poured just for the boat!



After brunch we continued the downstairs Easter egg hunt - these eggs had the candy in them so there was a little more excitement.


Easter was survived and this past weekend we celebrated the wedding of Laura & Brad. I had an outside seat during the wedding so my photos are a little far away. However after the wedding Laura and Brad went out back - and I got a good shot of Brad enjoying his new husband duties of fixing Laura's dress. When we arrived at the wedding we walked by seeing Laura get a few shots and Abby's first comment was "Mommy -there's the princess!"


After the wedding. Her flowers were beautiful, great colors to go with the bridesmaids dresses.


And the departure.....every Schmidt wedding in Carrollton I have been to has had the wedding party leaving in a tractor drawn flatbed. This is the first one in a corvette, possibly in over 25+ years.

Trying to get a good photo of the cousins - Theo wasn't having any of it. Although he did adjust to getting all the extra lovin' from Abby by the end of the night. Abby and Theo were dancing quite a bit by the end. He was shuffling his feet while Abby was spinning him around and putting some of her DWTS moves on him.



At the reception - Abby got her picture with her princess.....although she forgot her autograph book!


(Photo by Abby) Abby got a hold of my camera for part of the reception. I told her to take some photos of the cake and she came back and said "Mom, all I can find is cupcakes and there are some weird things on top." The weird things were of course Mario and his princess from Super Mario Brothers. Weird to Abby but recognizable to everyone over 10 years old. As Brad is quite a gamer there were references to that throughout the night - the wedding party walked in to the sound of the Pac Man game.

The day after the wedding we went out to do some fishing on one of the Schmidt farm ponds. Megan still reels in the cast as soon as it's out there. No patience for an actual fish to bite.

Abby however did very well and set the hook on 3 fish she caught all by herself. Still not going to touch them - however I'm not much help in that department. Megan won't even get close, there was crying and running away when we tried to get a photo with her fish.

Counting the fish on our way up for lunch - Abby said there were 14.


And that was the end to our weekend. We ended up getting back to Columbia after 4 pm. Unloaded the truck and I managed to fall asleep until Monday morning. I thankfully have an awesome husband that fed/bathed the kids and didn't bother me so I could catch up on some much needed sleep.

It's a new week though. This weekend we are headed down to Rogersville, MO for the baptism of my God-Daughter Allison. Tim also thinks he is going to do some turkey hunting...we'll see how that goes.

Photos from the Princess Photo Shoot

Here are the 3 photos we picked out from Abby's Princess Photo shoot. She did really good for the photographer - I'm wondering why she is not so cooperative with the one at Sears! We were done in 5 minutes I think. We have yet to put the photos up.

This one is my favorite of them all.

You can kind of see that she has a crystal crown behind her big Belle Crown. She upgraded the Snow White head band for the Belle crown. She didn't see how you could be a princess without the crown. We had just gotten hair cuts on Thursday before we left so her bangs are all nice and straight - as opposed to when I trim them!


Posing like Snow White - and of course you could see her new shoes. She loved how the dress was so poofy.

Had to get a photo with the wand in there.

Abby is still reveling in the whole glory of the trip. Everything is "Remember yesterday when we saw __________ (enter princess name) and she was real!"

Epcot Day & the Night Parade & Fireworks

As you can tell we had to take a little blogging break. Thursday we went to Epcot again for the search for Snow White and then that evening went to Magic Kingdom for the light parade and fireworks - and then we ran out of gas! 4 days of straight park adventures was too much for the family so Friday we actually just stayed at the resort, slept in, went swimming, took naps, went swimming again, then family dinner. We were exhausted!!! But more on that later - back to Epcot.....

As I said previously it is the Garden Festival at Epcot and it is beautiful. The things they can do with plants is amazing. We were at Epcot around 10:30 - but not much happens until after 11 there so we just took our time and wandered. Since we had gone to Mexico and China the previous day we took a right and went to the UK and France to start with.


Here Abby is with the Beast and Belle in France. We ended up going to a lovely pastry shop for dessert breakfast - it was excellent. Tim and I shared a strawberry tort - highly recommended!


Abby in front of Aurora and Prince Phillip, but as usual she was ready for the real ones instead of fake ones....



So finally Princess Aurora made it out and yes - that is Megan finally in a photo with a character and is not crying!!! She even gave her a hug!


We had to stop and see Belle again - and yes there is Megan again and she hugged Belle as well.

They had a miniature Rapunzel tower with the music from the movie - as we watched that most evenings when we returned to the resort, the girls enjoyed looking at it. There is a train set also by it. We were in Germany at the time.

Waiting patiently for Snow White......

SNOW WHITE!!!! Abby was thrilled - Megan threw a fit.
Since we were in Germany we browsed a bit...


Abby and Megan found shields/swords to play with (they are foam) and Ann & Tim found the Oktoberfest beer :)


From Germany we went to the American Adventure. There Abby got to help say the pledge of allegiance with a group of kids.

From there we went to Morocco and found Jasmine and Aladin. Megan is hiding in the stroller if you were wondering.

One more stop in France to see the Beast - which Abby was afraid of - Megan is still hiding in the stroller.

Then one last stop in the UK to see Alice - who had alluded us at Magic Kingdom - she's apparently hard to get time with, but we got her.

After that we headed back to the resort for naps and late lunches because we were heading back to Magic Kingdom for the Electrical Light Parade and Castle Fireworks.


Curb side seats for the parade. As you can see we had to get some light up toys for the parade - Disney has to make a fortune on these based on how many kids had them. They dim the lights for the parade so it was fun for the kids to be able to use them.


Another shot - Abby has a Cinderella one (which is Megan's actually) and Megan is playing with Abby's Tinkerbelle one.

Let the parade begin!

Prince Charming trying on the glass slipper for the step-sisters. They were a hoot!

We stopped off at the ice cream parlor on Main street for some "dinner" then watched the fireworks by the castle - not my best photo - I had a better one but it's too much work to replace it after a week of blogging like this.

We were back at the resort around 11:30 I think - and that is where we ran out of gas. Friday was Park-Free, but full of swimming which is what the girls wanted to do - we didn't mind either as we were a little exhausted with it all as well. We learned quite a few lessons on this trip. Hopefully we can share with our friends. We had a lovely time and I am sure there are more photos still to post - we're still trying to recover from it all. As I asked Tim when we got back to the KC airport - "Were we really gone a week?" - Tim said - "Felt more like a weekend".