{St. Louis or Bust!}

*BE PREPARED FOR THE LONGEST POST IN THE HISTORY OF MY BLOG!!*

Mark took a couple of days off work last week, so we took the kids to St. Louis for a little vacation. First, we visited the St. Louis Zoo....very nice! They have a new exhibit called Dinoroarus that was really cool. Dinosaurs in the zoo? hmmmmm.........anyway, Riley and Luke thought they were pretty awesome. Paige was in one of her moods, so she really didn't get into it as much. I think Riley and Luke's favorite dino was the one that "spit" at them. They kept standing in front of it just waiting to get sprayed, and every time it made them jump. It was pretty funny. Each of the kids had their request of animal they wanted to see: Paige wanted to see the penguins (of course), Riley wanted to see the monkeys and Luke requested to see the lions. Poor Luke, we didn't get to the lions until the end of the day and by that time they were in for their feedings. BUT he did get to ride the lion on the carousel, so he was happy about that.

(Rather than doing another slide show, I'll just post a some of my favorite pictures. )

The next day we visited The Magic House, which is a wonderful children's museum. They are building a HUGE expansion, so we'll be sure to visit when that is finished! There are way too many amazing things to tell you about, so I will tell you about two of their favorite things. The first is the fishing pond. They would get a little fishing rod with a magnet on the end and stand at the fence to try and catch a fish out of the pond. It sounds simple, I know...BUT it wasn't just a little plastic pool filled with water. It was like a real pond. The best part was when you caught the fish, you would take it over across the room and toss it into another little pond and watch your fish "swim" through the stream under the floor all the way to the fishing pond. So cool! We were there forever!

The next best thing was the beach. Outside, they put down a ton of sand, built a boardwalk, set up umbrellas and adirondack chairs, supplied shovels and pails and stocked the sand with seashells! We really did feel like we were at the beach.

(can you tell that I photoshop-ed this one of all of us? The background was the parking lot so I thought I would see if I could make it look a little more beachy. I'm not great with photoshop, I feel like I butchered the picture! Oh well....I'll keep practicing.)

This picture (above) makes me LAUGH OUT LOUD every time I see it. Just look at Luke's face! (not to mention Paige's)

Luke still has a bit of a goofy face in this one below, but it's cute nonetheless!

Our last stop was at the St. Louis Arch. We were only there about 5 minute before the skies opened up and rained on us. We were not planning on taking the kids up to the top anyway, but it kind of stunk because we were like :"okay here it is....let's take a picture.....go and touch it......okay let's go!" You really can't see the kids very well in this picture, but because the sun was not shining and I was too far away for the flash to make any difference....well, you get the idea anyway. It's kind of like a "we were here" type of picture. I had the kids stand on the bench there and I was laying on the ground on my back trying to get them and the arch in the same shot (while wearing a skirt). Tricky, huh?

THE END

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