St. Louis Friends

Time for more pictures from our trip to St. Louis! We were able to spend some great time with friends...

We stepped off the plane, jumped in our rental car, and made a beeline for Page Ave, our old home sweet home.

Josiah reuniting with Ella

Playing with Gillian

Cael sang & played his guitar for us

The playground!!

The next day, we had lunch in St. Charles with some of our favorite people - Kami, David, & Tyler

Are they kissing him or trying to eat him?

Mom, who is this crazy guy and what is he doing?

Man, we miss y'all. Thanks for a fun time!

Covenant Seminary Graduation 2008

We flew back to St. Louis last week for Covenant Seminary's graduation. We were there for 4 days, got some good time with great friends, went to our favorite St. Louis restaurants, & even squeezed in a trip to the zoo! Even though Andy technically finished in December, Covenant only has one graduation ceremony, so he was able to walk in May. The baccalaureate and graduation ceremonies were wonderful and it was soooo good to worship with our Covenant family. Here are some snapshots from our time there...I'll post more later. They'll be out of order, but y'all don't care, right?!? I feel like they're pretty self-explanatory...this post is of the graduation ceremony and includes us, the Woods, and our good friends the Andersons & the Porters. The pictures become less serious as the evening progresses...

Triumph

As some of you know, I am a fairly recent participant in The Grocery Game . If you haven't heard of it, it's a way to use coupons and save money while grocery shopping...a large database tracks store sales and newspaper coupons, allowing you to purchase items at the lowest possible price (or even free!) I am still a GG newbie and nowhere near as good as my thrifty friend Becky. Sometimes she even gets paid to shop...oh, I can only aspire to be that good. I usually save about 40% on my groceries. Today, I am boasting a bit because I ROCKED THE GAME! I saved over 50%!!! This morning, at my local Harris Teeter, I saved $25.90 and spent only $22.68. There was applause, a confetti parade, & dancing in the aisles...it was a beautiful sight. I acknowledge my nerdiness at this point, but somehow it just feels good to have gotten $50 worth of groceries for $22.68. If you have to shop for groceries, you might as well make a game out of it :)

Conversations

Conversations you may have heard around the Wood house recently...



Guest: "My, what a lovely downspout."

Us: "Why thank you, we just had seamless gutters, new downspouts, and gutter guards installed on our house."

Guest: "I can tell, they look fantastic."



Guest: "And your yard looks fabulous, whatever did you do?"

Us: "Well, we decided to cover the moss & Carolina red clay with mulch instead of trying to grow grass. We had 8 cubic yards of mulch delivered last weekend and just had so much fun creating this flower bed. So far, we're really good at growing hostas & vinca vine."

Okay, so these haven't really taken place, but I'm sure they will soon :) Thanks to school, moving, and having a baby, Uncle Sam was fairly good to us this year. Since we're such mature grown-ups at this point, we joyfully spent it on new gutters, tree-trimming, and mulch...not even once dreaming about a fun trip or shopping spree instead.

A Pea-Lovin' Mechanic?

It's a rainy day here in NC, so we're playing inside. Josiah is fairly obsessed with his red car and it's currently parked inside. So, we've done some laps around the house in it, walked around it, and he's been working "under the hood". It's pretty entertaining, especially if Mom keeps putting things in the car that he gets to find, pull out, and throw. Perhaps we have a future mechanic in the family?



This is such a fun stage for me...it seems like Josiah is doing new things everyday. This past week, these new things have mostly revolved around food. At his 9-month check-up, the pediatrician gave us the green light for giving him any table food - no more pureed baby food! Well, Josiah has loved it and likes pretty much anything we put in front of him. Just in the past week he's had his first mango, hot dog, apple, non-whole grain waffle, whole peas (aka not pureed), wild rice, and zucchini. He loved everything but the zucchini. He tried to get into a plate of chocolate chip cookies last night while I was driving...thankfully I didn't wreck the car and he didn't get any cookies, although they were strewn across the back seat - note to self, put food in the front seat from now on. Today at lunch, he kept pointing to the bowl of peas and wanting more, which completely floored me. Who actually likes peas? I guess he does...

A Good Weekend

We had a great weekend at Casa de Wood. The weather was gorgeous and we were able to spend a lot of time outside. We had our first annual Family Mulch Day! Andy & I created a few new flower beds and mulched the existing ones...our yard keeps looking better & better! We had a cookout with some of our neighbors - hopefully the first of many. It is good to get to know them.

And, best of all, we were able to see our beloved Cardinals play on TV twice!! We haven't seen a game yet this season and were going through withdrawal. For some reason, this area doesn't televise the Cardinals games...I have no idea why, as I'm sure everyone would appreciate seeing them :) Anyway, this weekend was a series against the evil Chicago Cubs. We "watched" Friday night's game online and we saw both the Saturday & Sunday games on TV. WOOHOO!

Josiah cheering on his favorite team

5 Seconds

I literally turned my back for 5 SECONDS...I walked into the kitchen to throw something away, came back, and found this.


Josiah had walked from the coffee table to the couch to the end table and thrown a pile of mail & books onto the floor. And he was laughing about it. I guess that's the end of piles around here!

Off to the next mess...