Last week we had fun at the Missouri Botanical Garden checking out their new art installation, and at Eckert’s, where we enjoyed tulip-themed sundaes:
Chickadee Thursday
Eckert’s
Chickadee Thursday
Here’s a couple more photos from our visit to the Tulip Trail at Eckert’s…it was so much fun!
Holy Week and Easter
Lent went by especially quickly this year, and Holy Week was no exception…it was a complete blur!
On Palm Sunday, Ladybug turned my palm into a cross as she always does:
On Monday, we baked hot cross buns:
Tuesday, Chickadee and I visited the Tulip Trail at Eckert’s with the hope of cutting our own tulips for our Easter table…that didn’t work out, but it was still a beautiful experience!
On Wednesday, I made one of our favorite Lenten dinners, fish tacos:
Thursday found us at church for the first service the Holy Triduum:
Before Church on Friday we made this year’s Paschal Candle, and Bunny and I did some pre-Easter baking:
On Holy Saturday I prepped some salads and our mini donut tray for the year…I found a record 18 different kinds!
The Great Vigil of Easter is still my favorite church service of the entire year (even when we have to start indoors because rain made the church garden too mucky)!
After church, we stoped at Wendy’s for fries and a Frosty for everyone:
Easter morning was a bit chilly, but clear and beautiful!
The church looked glorious, as always:
And we got a nice family photo after the service thanks to our field worker from the seminary:
Easter is the one day a year we have a big, fancy breakfast…I even put a little extra effort into setting the table, using some pretty plates I found at Aldi a few years ago that are just the perfect color palette for the day:
We had a pretty traditional meal…biscuits with a choice of sausage gravy or Pflaumenmus (plum butter), scrambled eggs, sausage patties, brie (also good with the plum butter!), fruit salad, pomegranate and orange juices, and did I mention mini donuts?
We had a fun afternoon watching the first two Big, Fat, Greek Wedding movies, and then it was time to reset the table for dinner:
We went Italian for Easter dinner, featuring Peposo (beef cooked with garlic and peppercorns in red wine), lemon-parmesan risotto, braised radicchio with a balsamic glaze, breaded baked artichokes, antipasto salad, and Colomba di Pasqua (a sweet Italian Easter bread) with more Pflaumenmus.
And for dessert, panna cotta with a blueberry-lemon sauce and fresh berries:
This was a great, although busy, Holy Week and Easter! Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
2025-26 School Year–Week Twenty-Seven
Fun things first…Chickadee and I went to Eckert’s to experience their new spring event, the Tulip Trail!
Chickadee worked with exponential growth and decay functions in algebra, and learned how to graph them. In history, we read about JFK, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Vietnam War. She is re-reading one of her favorite books in preparation for one of her final writing assignments of the year. In science we talked about currents and resistance, and did a fun experiment with a battery and aluminum foil. And for this week’s recipe from the American Girl Sweet & Savory Treats Cookbook, we made plum fruit leather (using three different kinds of plums), inspired by 2019 Girl of the Year, Blaire!
Now that it’s April, the end of the school year is coming fast…I can’t believe Chickadee is almost done with 8th grade!
On the Tulip Trail
It’s tulip time in Belleville!
Eckert’s is offering a fun new spring event this year…the Tulip Trail!
Tulips are my favorite spring flower, and I have always wanted to experience rows upon rows of them like you see in photos of Holland, so of course I had to make time to follow the Tulip Trail. It did not disappoint…there are 300,000 tulips in every type and color you can dream of, in neat, orderly rows just like I imagined!
It’s amazing just how many different kinds of tulips there are, from ones with spiky petals to the traditional rounded variety, and some with ruffled edges, too. I also really liked the stripey ones!
There are lots of fun photo spots throughout the trail…I especially liked the bicycle!
The main attraction, though (other than the flowers themselves, of course!), is a windmill made in the Eckert’s workshop:
There is something fun and beautiful to see everywhere you look!
This is such a unique experience…I don’t think there’s anything like it anywhere else in the St. Louis area. It was super busy, so it’s obviously something people are interested in, and I really hope it becomes an annual event. The only disappointment we had while we were there was that they weren’t offering the cut your own tulip experience at that time, and we were really hoping to choose some for our Easter table. I would love to have the chance to go back in the future and create my own bouquet!
Tulip time never lasts long enough, but they’ll be around for a while yet, and if you have the opportunity to visit, I highly recommend it!
Chickadee Thursday
Last weekend, we went to Eckert’s and picked asparagus…Chickadee thought “spargeling” was so much fun!!!
Es ist endlich Spargelzeit!
Yesterday, we did something new…we went to Eckert’s and picked asparagus!
I was really curious about this whole process. I had no idea how asparagus grew (I figured either in single stems like grass, or in bunches like celery…they grow singly). I also had no idea how you harvest them…do you cut them, or just pull them out of the ground? (They give you a flat spade-like tool with a straight edge that you angle next to the asparagus, and then give it a push through).
It ended up being a beautiful day to be out at the farm…we had a break in the weather, it wasn’t even that muddy, and we really enjoyed the tractor ride (plus our driver was really, really nice!).
I’m so glad we got to have this new experience, and I’m really looking forward to enjoying the, um, fruits of our labor, if you will, when we have our first-ever Markel Family Spargelparty…stay tuned for details!
An American Icon
We’ve seen the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile three times now (today it was at Eckert’s), and based on their license plates, it has been a different vehicle each time!
Pumpkin Picking 2016
Today after Moose was done with school, we headed out to the most sincere pumpkin patch in Belleville to search for our “Great Pumpkin.” This is a little earlier than we usually go, but the weather today was perfect (and Eckert’s was offering 50% off on pick-your-own pumpkins), so I figured there was no time like the present!
It’s always fun to see the children rush off in search of the perfect pumpkin. Especially Chickadee, who still can’t lift most of them off the ground! It’s also fun seeing how seriously Turkey takes the search…he puts more thought into what the pumpkin should look like than any of his siblings!
After much searching, finding, replacing, and arguing, everyone had their idea of the perfect pumpkin. In the end, we only took one home (I decided a few years ago that buying 80-plus pounds of pumpkins every year was a bit much), but we certainly had a good selection from which to choose! Our prized pumpkin weighed in at just over 15 pounds (if you’re wondering which one we brought home, it’s the one in the picture with Ladybug).
We spent some time admiring all the fall decorations in the store while we were there:
This was the nicest day for pumpkin picking I can remember, and we had a great time at Eckert’s!
Apple Picking 2016
Since Moose had a half-day of school today, and it wasn’t too terribly hot, we decided to go apple picking at Eckert’s.
The wagon ride to the orchard was fun. Picking apples was…not. We were told that due to the extreme heat and excess rain this summer, many of the apples were blemished, so we should look them over carefully before picking. This may have been an understatement. We discovered many apples rotting on the trees…even ones that looked good from the front would be completely rotten in back. The whole orchard smelled like bad wine, I assume from all of the rotting fruit on both the ground and the trees. We picked only about 13 pounds before we gave up (that may sound like a lot, but when you have five children, they disappear quickly!). It was a good lesson in the many obstacles that farmers have to overcome, though!
After our less than successful trip to the orchard, we visited the play area. The children always want to have their picture taken in the big apple!
They also played some miniature golf and visited the goats and zebu. The animals always make us laugh!
Of course we had to visit the country store, and buy some apple cider!
This wasn’t our best trip to pick apples, but at least it put us in a fall kind of mood!
