Cakes #109 - 118

I know I don't blog much. Honestly, there are only about 5 people who read it! So I have little motivation. Sorry.

Here is an update on the cakes. We have gotten up to 131! I was so excited to get halfway, since the weather got cold, and we had little time. (Finishing up soccer season for the boys had us up to 3-4 games a weekend for a few weeks.) On top of that, Kevin is finishing up his Master's, and he is swamped with schoolwork.

In my determination I kept going. I am still enjoying it! Kevin still likes it (not the hubby, he doesn't care), but Colin and Gwyn are not as interested. Thankfully Kevin talks it up to his brother and sister, and is sweet to me about it.

Anyway, here are some of our recent adventures! (More posts are coming since we now have 131 cakes!)

This day of cake hunting started at Jefferson Barracks. It was the Sunday before Veteran's Day and we headed to the cemetery to add flowers to two geat-grandpa's sites. There are 3 cakes in the surrounding parks, so we started there. Here is the cake at the Civil War Museum.

This is the Jefferson Barracks Historic Site Visitor's Center. We ran into a couple that finished all the cakes the day before! We were sharing stories about our favorites and which ones were difficult to find. That is one thing about this adventure - you talk to people at so many locations! Everyone has a favorite cake or two as well.

Here we are at the Mississippi River Greenway - Trailhead in Jefferson Barracks Park. This is part of a trail system being developed in St. Louis, adding trails all over the city and county. There are trails next to our neighborhood that are part of this. I love it!

This is the Gateway Harley-Davidson, which was closed on the Sunday morning we were there. Thankfully the cake was outside!

Here is the second cake picture Gwyn has taken. This is much better than the first! We are at St. Anthony's Medical Center.

We ended this trip at Laumeier Sculpture Park. We need to bring the Kerr's here. It has art and a park! Megan will love it! I liked this cake since it was decorated with items found in the park. Some of it was trash, some was natural materials, but I like that idea.

This cake at Lambert International Airport is out of order. We actually took it on our way to Chicago in early October. But I forgot about it, and I didn't want to renumber all the cakes I have already numbered. So here it is. It is also a cake I could not get with the kids by myself since it is inside the airport. I can't leave the car without paying for parking. So this cake is just me.

Okay, I thought I had a great idea. I thought if we went for "night cakes" after dinner then a couple things would happen. 1.Kevin would have quiet time to work on school work. 2.We would get out of the house. 3.We get a cake! Well, I forgot about how dark it was getting at dinner time. Winter hours were not on my brain. So we set up a night hunt with Kevin's mom/Grandma Louise. We left right after dinner, around 5:30, to a cake I have been wanting. It was dark before we even left. But we had fun, and froze, and got 2 cakes that evening. The first was one Our Lady of the Rivers at Portage des Sioux. You can barely see the statue in the background. The river is right behind it. It was pretty to see the cars driving on the great river road in Illinois, but I had to use headlights from the car to light up the cake! #AlmostFail.

The second cake of the night was West Alton Memorial Park. It was about an hour trip to get both. (Unfortunately, we have so many cakes that the closest ones to the house we don't have are about 30 minutes away - at least!)

A few night later we went to the Historic Daniel Boone Home & Heritage Center with DTG (my mom). This was interesting. We were approached by security. Okay, the gate was open, there were NO signs saying "Closed at dusk" or any hours or anything telling us to go away. There were even cars in the parking lot! (Apparently there was some kind of class going on, which is why the gate was open.) The cake was not at the gates, but up by the house. So we parked and walked in, and as we got the cake we scared an employee and had security sent to question us. It was scarier for us than it was for them. 

I will update again soon with more cakes!

The Christmas Decorations Are Up!

... and it took less than 4 hours to find this. These boys are adorable.

Gwyn just loves what she calls "Gwyn-sized trees!" She wanted her picture with them. And yes, it is cold out, but she didn't want to wear tights in the house.

Halloween 2014

This year both boys wanted to be boys for Halloween. Which pretty much means that they wanted to dress up as some kind of death. (This was a bit awkward when they dressed up to see my grandma at her nursing home.) At first Gwyneth was going to be Santa Claus, which was my favorite. Then she was going to be a pirate, and then finally settled on Tangled. (Which is really Rapunzel.) I should have known it would be Tangled, and I honestly did and almost bought the costume back in September, but I guess I was still hoping for Santa Claus.

Halloween was freezing this year. It was so cold. The kids had to bundle up. At least the boys could still wear their costumes on the outside, but Gwyn cried about having to wear long sleeves under her dress. And I remember being little and having the same thing happen. It ruins what you thought you would get to dress up as. I felt bad for her, but she came around once it got closer to collecting candy.

Gwyn made it around one court this year! It is much better than the 1/2 house she made it to 2 years ago, and the 3 she made it to last year! Afterward, we hung out in the house with my mom while Kevin took the boys out. After about an hour the boys returned to drop off candy and head out again, but they never left the house after getting warmed up.

It was a successful night!

Gwyn wanted a sickle, just like her brothers.

Dress-Up Day At School

Kevin and Colin had a day where they could dress up like the profession they want when they grow up. Colin did not care to dress up, but Kevin did. He wants to be an engineer. Luckily, we had a polo and a belt for him to wear to school. But his favorite part was the badge. It even had a real Boeing lanyard!