Camping w/ Tate

These awesome fall days and nights gave us the idea to set up the tent for Tate and camp out at Wakefield State Park (a.k.a. our backyard). In hindsight, setup would have gone faster if we started while the sun was still up.
Tate was very excited to have a tent in the yard (and upset when it came down today).
Tate and his mom. She, being..."great with child"...opted to sleep indoors. Good call, considering the air mattress gradually lost air until I was basically sleeping on the ground.
Tate likes camping. He slept straight through the night. It was a little cool, but that just made him hibernate all the better. He's a happy camper (sorry, I couldn't resist).

More STL Pics...

Tate at the Science Center.
Watching traffic on I-64 through the triangle. Never gets old.
The STL zoo had a baby giraffe. It was pretty cool, especially after all of Tulsa's giraffe issues. If you don't know what I mean, go to images.google.com and search "Tulsa giraffe." Unless you're squeamish; then don't.

The STL

The pained look comes from the fact that Tate likes to steer by pulling my hair. He was a pretty good trooper and walked most of the way, though.
We got to see the chimps eating veggies; I made sure to point out to Tate that even monkeys eat their vegetables.
Tate by the penguins. I forgot how much I love this zoo. You could literally reach out and touch a penguin in the indoor habitat (that is, if there wasn't a guy watching to make sure you don't). As it was, the penguins were doing belly flops, so we got a little penguin water on us.
And of course, we had to take a choo-choo ride.

FL2...

Tate loves the beach! So, it worked out that we planned a joint family vacation with the Witt's this year to the Florida panhandle. In case you're wondering: no sign of oil except for the anti-BP shirts in the souvenir stores, BP claims office in one strip mall, and cheaper rate we got on our rental house. Works for us!
Tate got to spend the whole week with some of his best friends in the world (he's the one on the right with the super-white hair): Walker, Lanie and Jackson.
Our little surfer boy. Tan skin from swimming a ton this summer to go with his bleached-out hair. The kid is a fish.
Tate and Walker: 4 months apart in age, used to live 4 houses apart (now about a mile), and pretty much best buds.

Accommodations...

Did I mention that we had the ultimate "pastor hookup" for the wedding? The couple who owned this condo on the beach go to one friend's church in Ohio in the summer and Nate's church in Florida in the winter. All that added up to us getting to stay in a place where we were serenaded by waves hitting the flour-soft white beaches. Oh, yeah. I could get used to that.

Nate Gets Hitched

Good times with college buddies 7 years after graduation. What's that? We should go on another baseball trip. Well, okay...
Tate and Dean were pretty much the only little kids there. The good news is, they carried the cool factor and brought all the right dance moves.
Now, there have been Concordia pictures taken in various settings: Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota...none of those places had palm trees in the background, though.

Mickey's House

I took this picture for the express purpose of posting it on this blog without my wife's permission.
And this picture I was fine with being on the blog, because I make such a fine pirate.
Despite the scowls for pictures, he really was having a good time. Really. No, really.