Bring on the Green

I love spring.  And it is here early this year.  So here come the leaves and blossoms popping out in Missouri.  So we are going to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by enjoying the new greenery.  We already have been trying to make the most of it.  We have be outside everyday that we could.  Today we walked through the blossoms outside of Jake's school.  Pace loves to call them "popcorn trees".

My favorite "popcorn" tree of them all

Love these guys

They also happen to have a couple cannons outside the school too.

We went down to Slabtown Bluff for a hike where we thought we could see much better views than in the summer when all the leaves are out.  While we could see much further, the pines were thicker than we thought.  But still a great day out on the bluff.

Because anyone who knows me, knows I love these guys :)

I may be biased, but Missouri is BEAUTIFUL

On our way there and back we decided to take the GPS route (we usually look it up before).  Lets just say we were not impressed with our GPS's ability to navigate the Missouri backroads, but it was sure fun.  Especially when our road turned into a small creek.  Unfortunately Jake didn't get the camera out until the going was a lot easier, but here is a glimpse of the road we were on.

We were also able to go explore a new area around Lake of the Ozarks that we had never been to.  Pace and Grant loved it.  We graduated Pace up to hiking on his own and Grant went up to the big kid pack.  The both loved it.  Although Pace seemed to slow WAY down at the last quarter of a mile.  He just wanted to play in the leaves all day.

The Y tree

Hiking

We also found a backwards #4

A small cave in the bluff

In other news, I joined a The Roubidoux Grotto, a caving club.  My first trip was a blast crawling through mud and checking out all the formations and cave life.


We had fun indoors as well.  We "put on the armor of God"  for one of our family nights.  And sang some fun songs.

Wearing the helmet of salvation.

The whole armor

And  a picture or two just for fun.

Because I wanted to capture the messy face, yes I am a mean mom....

But he is usually pretty happy.  And if you look close you can see his vampire teeth,