Date Night!

Once, every other month, Covenant offers free childcare so parents can go on a three-hour date.  So Kathee and I took advantage of it and had a date on Friday night.  

Went to HuHot for supper (we love that place).

And after grabbing some bubble tea, we went to Creve Couer Lake and talked!  I'm already looking forward to our date in September!

Grant's Farm with my brother Aaron's family

Waiting for the tram to take off

Waiting...

Gideon and Cousin M checking out more animals.

Feeding the goats

More feeding...

The look (and joy) of success!

The Biker

Still riding around 100 and 120 miles per week and loving it!  This picture I took today at mile 21 of 32 eating a power bar.  I have really grown to love riding down here and am taking the advantage as much as I can, knowing full well that once classes start, I probably won't have much time to do anything.   

My current route is pretty sweet.  I ride from our apartment and head up to Creve Couer Lake.  It is 4 miles around the lake and I essentially ride around it 3 times.  From there, I ride on a bike trail up and over the Missouri River and then head back down to the lake and home.  

I really don't like riding on one of the roads as it's pretty busy (yet there are TONS of people who bike on it, and I'm only one it for 1 mile), but the others are fun to ride.  It takes me about 2 hours to ride the 32+ miles, which seems to be fairly good (based on other's times in comparison to their distance).  

St Louis seems to be a huge biking town, with bike routes all over the place.  And Conway Road (which Covenant is on) is a very popular road for road bikers to ride.  Almost every time we leave or come home from an outing we see at least once road biker on Conway.  

I think the other people in Covenant Village think I must be a little weird, what with my cute tight shorts and jerseys and side mirror and, and, and the list goes on.  The great thing is that once they actually talk to me (whether in biking garb or not), they know I'm a bit weird.  That being said, they can smell their own.  Everyone here seems to be a little different, me/us included!  

Family Photo at Turtle Park

One of the days the Smith-Steen-Terwilleger were together, we headed to Turtle Park for a family picture.  It is a small park across the interstate from the zoo and is a lot of fun.  There are 5 or 6 HUGE turtles that look like they are made of hardened sand that kids can climb on and have fun.  At least ours did!  

Hope and Cousin T had a blast climbing and exploring.

Gideon had fun climbing underneath some of the small turtles that lined the sidewalk.  

Gideon, Cousins W and T hung out and had a great time...

playing in the rocks and building gravel castles...

While Hope made gravel angels all over the place...

She ended up a bit worse for the wear.

And Esther, like always, she sat calmly by herself and played quietly with Grandpa's flashlight and messed around in the rocks.  

Oh the family picture?  We took a bunch of them (before the kids played), but I haven't moved them from the thumb drive, onto my computer, and then onto the blog.  Maybe tomorrow?!  We'll see.

Museum of Transportation

So after the Arch we headed to the Museum of Transportation.  One of the best parts of the museum is the 20 minute train ride that goes around the museum.  Last time we went with Grandpa Smith, he bought us a family membership, so that when he comes, he can take Gideon there to ride on the train and climb on all the museum trains.  

So we arrived and immediately jumped the train.  Gideon and Will enjoyed the train ride a lot and had a great time.  They also enjoyed climbing up into the trains, pulling the ropes to make the bells ring, pushing the buttons to control the traffic lights, and all kinds of other stuff.  

When we rode the trolley from the lower area to the upper area, the boys climbed up in the front seat and Will even got to say "All aboard" over the loud speaker.  

By the end of the day, we had two tired boys who had a lot of fun at the museum.  

To the Gateway Arch

With Kathee's sister's family in town, we did a bunch of cool stuff with them.  One of the days they were here, we went down to the Arch.  

Everytime we've seen it from a distance, we point it out and tell the kids, "sometime we'll go to the Arch."  Great, they have no idea what that is and have no concept of what happens at the Arch.  So when we got out of the parking lot (underneath the Arch), I showed Gideon the windows at the top of the Arch and told him we were going to to the top of the Arch.  He was really excited.  And he got more excited when I told him we wouldn't be taking the steps (like he thought) but would be taking an elevator up.  

The elevator-ride up was a lot of fun.  Our family fit in one space pod while Sharon and Jamie's (and Grandpa Karl) fit in the other.  

The older two loved looking out the windows at the stairs as we headed to the top of the Arch.  

Hope and Cousin W had a blast looking out the window and watching the tourist helicopter below landing and taking off ever couple of minutes.  

As always, I love looking out and seeing the stadium of the greatest baseball team on the planet.  What a gorgeous stadium, and what a great day to be in the Arch.  

After coming down, we ate a picnic lunch on the grounds before dropping the girls off at the apartment, so the guys could head to the Museum and Transportation.  

Time with the mission team

Last week, the Catalyst mission team from FUPC-Moline came down to New City Fellowship Church for their mission trip.  It was a total blast seeing them.  

Each night as they finished their backyard Bible clubs, I received a text from their leader (Matt Williams) that they were packing up and that I should get heading to Bubble Tea down in the Loop.  This is a place that I started taking kids to each day when I was leading mission trips to St Louis (I found out about it from my friend Craig DeMeester).  So off I went each night around 8:15 to hang out with the team for about an hour or so.  It was fun for me to see them, check in with them, encourage them, and just spend time with them.  It was really fun.  

On Friday, they had the entire day in St Louis to do whatever they wanted.  So, as a team, they had decided that they wanted to spend the day with the T's.  One request they had was to have Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast.  So I got up early, headed to the Krispy Kreme place a ways from here and bought 6 dozen.  By the end of the day, we had 2 donuts left.  Not bad, eh?

The team arrived at 9am for breakfast.  The other team that was at New City with them was a Korean Presbyterian Church (PCA) from St Louis.  Their two leaders happen to be students at Covenant, who interestingly live right across the parking lot from our place.  So, knowing that Peter and Yoohoo were be exhausted from their week, and not wanting to see teenagers for a while, the team took them a dozen Krispy Kreme and stopped by (I may have done a little recon work to find out where they live specifically).   

After breakfast the team hung out at the house and chatted...

Manlin D did Hope's hair...

Gideon played cards...

And then, after eating at a Nepalese place I took the team to a few years ago, the team wanted to go to the zoo.  So I drove Kathee, Gideon, and Esther back to the apartment, and then turned aroud with Hope and caught up with them at the zoo.  The picture with Hope (above) is in the butterfly enclosure (her absolute favorite at the zoo).  

After we closed down the zoo, we headed to Five Guys Burgers and Fries for supper (which is a few miles from our place).  Kathee's dad, sister, brother-in-law, and their 4 kids (who were also in town last week) met us for supper there.  

Once supper was finished, we came back to our place and hung out, some of us went to the Bubble Tea that is a few miles from our house, and the rest watched the movie Ocean's 13.  By the end of the night, we had kids sleeping on our floor!  

It was a blast to see the kids.  I got to spend time with them each night.  We got to worship with them at church on Sunday morning.  We got to hang out with them all day on Friday.  I got to pray with them before they left on Friday night.  It was a great time to see and continue in relationship with so many people I have grown to love over the years at FUPC.  I know I am not their youth pastor any longer, and I can see them (and the leaders) moving on without me, yet I take joy in being their youth pastor, and will always have a sweet spot for those kids (and all the kids I had in youth group over the years).  What a great ending to a week spent with them!  

Budding Friendships

Bubble Tea

The youth group from FUPC is in town this week for their mission trip.  As a tradition that I apparently started in the past few years, the team goes to St Louis Bubble Tea each night after their Backyard Bible Club.  Each night so far, I've been invited down to hang out and talk.  Each night I've gone!  I'm having a blast catching up with them each day.  I miss them and love them all so much.  It's a treat for me to be invited to hang out with them.

Pirate Party

One of the families in our building owns this.  It took short order to make this a party this past Sunday afternoon!

Dress up

Batman

Jesus 

What's That Smell?

To help the community garden on campus, we throw stuff on the compost pile each day.

I've made it Gideon's chore, which he does without complaining.

Even though it stinks.  The kid is learning responsibility!

Frozen with Esther and Samantha

Gideon is spending a bunch o time with sisters Esther and Samantha.  We seem to be building a friendship with their family.  By the way, there are now 4 Esther's on campus now (a new family moved in yesterday).  They are sweet girls and Gideon enjoys them.  Here they all are watching Frozen?

To the Zoo, Alice!

One of the places Hope likes to stop is at the curly-que water fountain.

Both kids love going in the observation tube underneath the sea lions...

Because they get to see this happen right above them.

And now that Gideon can read, and he found that there are animals in the zoo from Ethiopia, he checks all the signs and then reads them to Hope.

The giraffe was quite close.

And the lioness was hanging out up the tree.  I videoed it coming down.  It was really neat to see it up there.  Apparently people forgot it is a cat, because they were wondering how it got up the tree.  Then a few people talked about telling zoo employees the lion was stuck and needed help down.  Some laughed when I told them that he zoo would merely call the fire department and they'd get the cat out. Others didn't get it.  

And with the zoo membership that my brother Aaron's family gave us for Christmas last year, we get free parking at the zoo and a bunch of free train rides.  Gideon and Hope loved riding the train!  We'll go back soon!