Teen Visit

Last weekend we had quite a treat.  Two high school seniors from Moline came to spend the weekend with us.  Anna B and Matthew D drove down Friday and stayed until Sunday after church.  We had an absolute blast with them (just FYI, they aren't dating).  

They brought us some Quad City favorites...Whitey's Ice Cream, Boetge's Mustard, and homemade jellies from the Dollenbacher family.  

Saturday morning we just hung out until 10 and then headed to the zoo.  

Esther's favorite thing to do now is to have people "weed" to her.  She is incessantly grabbing a book from the child's book shelf, walking up to someone, handing them the book, and then intently saying "weed," to them.  She gets pretty upset if they can't.  Anna did a lot of reading during down times.  

We went to the park Saturday morning and had a blast.  Perfect weather until we were already planning on leaving.  As we were making our way back to the car, it started to rain.  As you can see, Esther loved the elephants.  

Here is Hope and Matthew standing on a huge beetle outside the butterfly dome (which we love going into each time we go to the zoo).  

Their new penguin exhibit is AMAZING!!!!  You can get so close to them you could touch them. They were slapping water around so much that I left the building soaking wet!  

Checking out the sea lions.

Esther walking, as she's getting sick of riding in the stroller.  

The kids wanted to see some of the huge houses around us, since we live in a very affluent area.  I took them out driving around us, and took them to the street that houses (get it) the largest houses I've ever seen.  They were amazed!  

This is in the front of a house close to where we leave.  It was stunning.  The flowers, though the house was okay, too!

More reading!

Saturday night, Kathee and I had already signed up for Parents Night Out on campus, which means the kids go to the Log Cabin while Kathee and I get like 3 hours for a date.  All free...with my education costs, have you!  So Kathee and I went on a date and took these two as chaperons!  We took them to our new favorite pizza place in St Louis, called Pi.  It's as close to Chicago-style deep-dish as possible.  The crust is made of corn starch, so it's different, but very good.  It's down in the Delmar Loop, which is my favorite area in St Louis.  

The other place they wanted to go to was Bubble Tea.  I'm an enabler!  So we went to the one in the Delmar Loop.  This is the place I used to take kids every day when we were on the mission trip.  During that time, I've developed a sort of friendship with an employee there named Julian.  So he was working and it was good to chat with him a bit, too!  

Sunday we went to church and had a great time.  It was so fun having them visit.