St. Louis in the beginning

Ok is it finally time to post.  I am overwhelmed with all the things I want to say and write about the trip.  I am going to break it up into several posts to keep it on a simpler scale.  So much happened in St. Louis; it really ranks in the top 5 great moments of Jake and Is life together with the kiddos.  We brought the kids to St. Louis so our kids can see service in action.  It is great we go to church, but like our Preacher John said Church is a verb.  I wanted them to see intentional living.
Blake and Kimberlyn had so much fun.  You would have thought we took them to DisneyWorld.  :)  Kimberlyn became best friends with our Girl's Youth intern Lora Witcher.  Lora (and many of the teens) played more duck duck goose with Kimberlyn and Blake than I could ever imagine doing. Even Jasmine, a local, said she has never seen a group play so much Duck Duck Goose.  Kimberlyn ate with Lora, sat at the baseball game with her, basically if there was an event and Lora was there - Kimberlyn was attached to her hip.  Blake pretty much made friends with everyone.  He loved having the freedom to go play in the common room while we were working/playing.  He loved going outside finding any teenager out there to play with.  Whoever was out there he would say, "Come on" (time to play and your are coming with me).  I will say Blake had a strong preference for girls (Sarah Kalgren and Amy Kay Tietjen were his girls :) ).  Trey told me that Blake actually played with him one day - he said no one else was around "so I guess I was better than no one."  ha ha  You would think they might have gotten tired of our kids, but several of the kids posted pictures of themselves with Blake and Kimberlyn as their FB profile picture.  So sweet!  And if we go to any Youth event without them, the kids will ask where are Kimberlyn and Blake.  My cup runneth over with the love for our RE Youth Group.  They did an amazing job serving the St. Louis church and it community as well as loving their own (and of course, all of this was done to glorify God).  I am not afraid of teenagers anymore b/c of these precious teens.  :)  Here are some pictures in the beginning before it all got started. 



Prayer before our 10 hour trek to St. Louis, Missouri

1st Day - City Museum after church - The slide took us from the 2nd story down to the first





The cave is amazing - apparently if you go all the way up, it leads you to a 10 story slide.  The cave had so many different avenues to go (I was a bit overwhelmed and afraid we were going to lose K and B, but still an awesome cave)

This is Father's Day - what a way to spend the day with the kids.  This museum is amazing.  They climbed up this squirrly ladder and I had no one idea where I would find them next.  I finally found them over by the fish.  Great museum, but stay with your kids b/c you cannot see them once they start climbing around.