A couple of weeks ago we drove to St. Louis to pick up my sister from the airport. Since we were driving the 3 hours to another state we decided to make a full day out of it and it turned into a very fun mini vacation. We left at about 7:30 in the morning and drove to the Arch in St. Louis. When we got there we had a nice little picnic in the park.
Then we took our picture at the base of the arch. It was so tall and skinny! Talmage kept calling it the "march" and he said it so cute that I didn't want to correct him.
This is the arch, looking up from the base.
Our family in the little pod that takes you up to the top of the arch and brings you back down. It looked like something from the future, but this picture makes it look like we are sitting under a rainbow.
Once we got to the top there were these little tiny windows that we could look out and see all the tiny little people and cars and even some helicopters and school buses. Talmage was the only chicken. He didn't like looking down at the ground.
Partial view of the city from the top.
Waiting for our pod to take us back down.
We went to the Westward Expansion Museum after the tour of the arch. We found out that Talmage weighs more than Sadie (big surprise there!),
the kids really liked the stuffed animals,
and the tee-pee.
After that we went to the zoo. The zoo in St. Louis is free, so we went and had a few hours of great fun. By far the coolest things that day were the hippos (who we watched swim past and chase each other around), the tigers (they had like 7 of them and they were playing and climbing the trees and wrestling each other) and the penguins. The penguin house was SO COOL! You were so close that you could literally reach out and pet them if they didn't have signs saying "Don't touch the penguins." The Rock Hoppers really looked like funny little old men, and the Emperor Penguins looked just as high and mighty as their name suggests. This is Kendall pointing to one. The camera is not playing tricks, he is really that close! In fact we were told not to point because they think your finger looks just like a fish and they will bite!
Avri was waiting the whole day to see the giraffes. No idea why, but she was. She had to carry the map around the entire time and show us where the giraffes were and ask why we weren't there yet. So here she is with the giraffes in the background, holding the map that she intently studied for hours.
We took our wagon so that everyone had a place to sit and a place for their drink. You would have thought that we were an exhibit of the zoo. I guess we haven't been anywhere quite that public with it yet because we felt like we were being gawked at the whole time! But it was worth it because it worked so perfectly! We just need to get little shade umbrellas to suspend above each seat and then it will be perfect!
From the zoo we went to the airport and picked up my sister. She had no idea that we were going to be there, she figured it would just be my parents, so she was really surprised and excited to see the kids. We had a fun drive home, stopped for a great dinner and didn't get back until about 11:30. It was a long day, but so much fun!
Grandma and Grandpa took us all to see "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" in 3D, so we all got a pair of glasses and everyone had fun. It was my first 3D movie. Very interesting, and fun to do!
This is what the stairs in our back yard are looking like for the retaining wall. But we are now into rainy season and the clay just holds the water for days, so it isn't going anywhere too fast right now.
Back to nebulizer treatments again with Talmage and Sadie. But this time Sadie is old enough to hold it herself if she is feeling like it. That child is so fire-y! Crazy girl really holds her own around here.
