Um, OK, so it snowed a bit....

There was already over a foot of snow on the ground here in Des Moines, and in the past 24 hours, we received quite a bit more. We played in the front yard until Walt got too cold. Here are some pictures and videos of the fun. Some of the pictures were taken by Jessica with her new camera.













In these pictures, someone is throwing snow on Walt with a shovel - I'm not sure who it was....

Christmas Morning

We awoke somewhat late on Christmas morning, but it was fun for Walt for sure. This was one of the first things that he opened. It's a Black and Decker weed-eater (complete with safety goggles). He had fun playing with it all day long (even though there weren't too many weeds to "eat".









Here are some pictures of Walt reading some of his books. Among those are some books about Thomas, a Space Shuttle book, as well as a Where's Waldo book.

Transportation Museum

Here are some pictures from the Transportation Museum in Southwest St. Louis County. I wasn't there, but I believe that Walt really enjoyed playing with the trains....

G-ma and Papa's house

We're in Des Moines for Christmas, and here are some pictures of Walt having fun at the piano and with Mommy and Daddy.

Rams Game

Last Sunday, our good friend Bill had some extra tickets to the Rams game against the Texans. The seats were phenomenal (in the club section), and it was even an exciting game (even if it didn't work out for Sara's fantasy team...). Here's a picture of Walt enjoying the action (as well as some popcorn).

Camera problems

In my last blog post, I mentioned how some of the pictures that I'm taking have been a bit blurry. They're pictures taken from my phone, and I had originally attributed the poor quality to the lighting in the Scottrade center (as most of them had been taken at Blues games). Anyway, for all of the years I watched my mother as a semi-professional photographer, and all of the time I spent in the dark in her darkroom, I missed a VERY important piece of taking good pictures - keep your lens clean. Here's a before and after:






That's only a slight difference eh? Well, consider that a lesson learned. When you keep your "camera" in your dingy pocket all the time, it doesn't hurt to take a cloth to the lens every once in a while...

Blues Game and Warm-ups

Last Friday I took Walt to another Blues game. That itself probably isn't very blog-worthy, but for this game, we were able to get down to the game a bit early, and go close to the ice to see warm-ups. Walt was very excited to be down that close to the ice, and so close to the big players. The third picture is Walt proudly displaying his new prized possession - a puck from T.J. Oshie.

As a side note, sorry that some of these pictures are a somewhat blurry. I'll have more details on that in the next blog post....

New Highway 40 (redux)

Some of you may remember last year when they shut down half of the city's most important interstate for the whole year. Right before they opened that half, they let the good citizens of St. Louis walk/jog/bike on the highway as a novelty. Well, the second half is now finished, and these are pictures of the family (as well as Lisa and Tom's son Evan) enjoying the new highway. Walt and Evan are very good friends (as you can see from the pictures), and had a ton of fun playing that day.

Walt....

Nanny captured this great picture.

School Concert

Sorry for not blogging for a while. Things have been busy.

Today, Sara's choir performed a concert at Walt's school. I guess he had a bit of a problem with his mommy being in his school's gym and watching from afar....

Pouty Face

So they read the book Pout-Pout Fish today, and the teachers asked all of the kids to make their best "pouty" faces. This is Walt's:

I don't know if that's his pouty face, or if it's his fishy face, but it's pretty funny regardless....

transportation unit

Walt's class is "studying" transportation right now and one of the other kids brought in a "roller coaster". Walt loves it as you can see.

Book Fair and first conference

So they have conferences for 2 year olds. We went to Walt's today. He is doing great. They are going to start potty training starting Nov 30! Watch out we may be getting out of diapers soon (I am crossing my fingers as I say that!) With conferences comes the schools book fair. Clifford visited the classrooms today, walt was one of the few kids that was not scared of Clifford. :)

Blues Game

Walt went to the Blues game last night. While we didn't bring home a winner, he enjoyed the game a lot. There's a picture of Walt and Daddy, as well as a picture with the big blue bear. Sorry for the picture quality.

first school picture

walt and Evan

Here is a great clip of the boys first time on "stage"

pumpkin farm

A few weeks ago we traveled across the river to IL to go to a pumpkin farm. It was the same one that we went to last year. Walt liked it even more.

The zoo

We went to the zoo last saturday not knowning that it was this huge trick or treating day at the zoo. We were not in costume, but we had fun nonetheless. We rode the train and saw some of the tiger cubs, that are not so much babies any more!

Happy Halloween!

Cow, Dragon, and Monkey...those were walt's first 3 costumes. He really liked his monkey costume. This year was his first year where he actually went trick or treating. He loved it. Although as you will see by the wagon picture he got a little tired after a while. Bob and Walt went out with Nik and Gavin. I stayed at Nik and Kelly's and played with new baby Zoe!

painting pumpkins at school. WOW, glue and paint in the same week they are brave.

Glue Day

Walt tried using glue for the first time today. Wow these teachers are very brave! :)

Haircut

Walt got a haircut on Wednesday, so now he's not pushing it out of his eyes (which I'm sure that he appreciates). I know that it still looks kind of long, but it's definitely better. As you can also see, his eye is getting much better.

familiar??

Walt must love being at the Listening Center in his classroom. (check out his black eye! He fell at school yesterday.)