let's eat some corn

Every year we love stopping by the Normal sweet corn festival to celebrate...

eating corn, of course!!!

We brought Sarah & Owen along for the yummies!

It may not look like Owen was eating corn, but in his heart I'm sure he was :)

Wow, I look exhausted here and I only played mom for like 5 minutes!

Kevin took several pics of me and Owen, but this was the best one... I seriously was having a fun/relaxing day so I'm not sure why I look like I'm overdue for a nap! Work has been a bear trying to get this project done, so maybe I DO need a nap!

callie gets a haircut

Callie's hair was getting a little shaggy - as you can tell from these two pics...

Cute, but definately shaggy

So I got the clippers out on Saturday morning and went to work. I am very fortunate that Callie loves attention and doesn't mind sitting for a haircut too awful much (not that she looks that comfortable in this pic, though).

This is only the 4th doggie haircut I've done so it still takes me about 5x as long as it should, but my mom says I'll be able to hang my shingle out soon enough! haha!

Next we had to wash off all the extra hair. Even though Callie is so patient for the haircut part she never likes the bath part!

please get me out of here!

she becomes a crazy dog after a bath! apparently smelling clean just isn't the doggie thing to do!

This short video is the post-bath obsessed Callie :)

She'll be this crazy for a good 10 minutes!!!

Once she calmed down and smelled a little more to her liking she sat in the window to finish drying in the sun.

For being such a patient doggie, she was rewarded with a new piece of jewelry (and one for Mia to!)

Here she is showing off the new bling!

and Mia showing off hers

I love my doggies!!!

cards @ wrigley

Remembers how we just got to see the Cards @ Pittsburg here? Not even a week later we're off the see the Cards @ Wrigley - another new stadium for me! It was a fun day, but I told Kevin, it was too bad we were able to do all this stadium traveling in a year when the Cards are playing... umm let's just say, less than their best.

It rained poured almost the whole drive up, but then it turned out to be a beautiful day!

Unfortunately our seats were right behind this very beautiful pole - which apperently is pretty common at Wrigley. It wasn't so bad though - I got to snuggle close to kevin to see the action around the barrier (awww, sappy.).

our new pitcher

our star player (besides Molina, of course)

Enjoying the game

After the game, I somehow convinced Kevin that we needed to go to Ikea! I've never been before and have been dying to see what all the fuss is about. It was huge and not something you should ever take your shopping-adverse husband to, but it was a fun experience and got me thinking about lots of new house decorating options!

cards @ pittsburg

Wanna know the truth??? We spent a couple of extra days hanging around Pittsburg just so we could see the Cardinals play the Pirates on Monday night... I'm not complaining or anything, just putting the truth out there/

This is how excited I was to be at a new stadium!!!

Here's the view of the stadium from our boat tour the day before.

Here's the view from inside the stadium. We were a little early so there's not a lot of ppl there yet, but it was a really nice stadium and it was smaller so you were pretty much right on top of the game!

Not sure why we're happy at this point b/c the Cardinals definatly lost this game :/

See how close we were we got some decent player pics even with our wimpy zoom!

Go Pujols!!!

more of Pittsburg

Our last full day in Pittsburg we started at the botanical gardens - I love going to botanical gardens so, of course, I was very excited for this part of our trip!!! It gets more exciting though... Kevin went up to buy our tickets and it turned out to be a free day!!! Apparently they have 2 free days a year and we'd hit the jackpot (or the flower pot anyway)!!!

This was the very first picture of the day and it might just be my favorite!

It sprinkled a little off and on, but it made this pic turn out really neat

I always love the orchid room,  probably because they are some of my mom's favorites

The butterfly room was aslo very cool and I got several good pics to share

Ok, sorry. Enough butterflies. Here's me and Kevin!

I thought this room display was pretty cool - it reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.

These next two are from the outside gardens

The botanical gardens were in the same area as the University of Pittsburg so we also stopped by the cathedral of learning. It was really cool on the inside with great places to do homework and study... you know, if you still have to do that type of thing ;)

This church was right next door and had lots of pretty stained glass windows.

Here, I'm actually waiting on Kevin, who was taking pictures, it's usally him waiting on me!

the city of pittsburg

After our morning at McConnell Mills State Park we headed into Pittsburg to actually see some of the city.

First we rode up the Monongahela Incline to see the view of Pittsburg from Mt. Washington.

Pittsburg residents used to ride this to/from work everyday.

Here's the veiw from the top!

This hellicopter was actually filming for the new batman movie - we also got to see the "batcave" and a bat tumber - so fun!!

Next, we took a boat tour, since downtown Pittsburg is set between the Allegheny & Monongahela Rivers, you can see a lot of the city this way!

Finally, we stopped for dinner at Joe's Crab Shack

the guys really enjoyed their crab legs!

and I was just happy to get to eat!

We ended the night by driving back up to Mt. Washington and taking some night pics of the city.

I think they look really cool!!!