St. Louis Getaway

As luck would have it, we did indeed make it to St. Louis this weekend. Ryan woke up Friday morning and was completely fine and wanted to go to school so I sent him. Guess it was just some freak fever. We left early on Saturday morning and arrived in St. Louis just in time for lunch.

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The Arch, which Ryan and Ashley were fascinated by, so we took the kids there this morning.

We stopped at Sonic for lunch. I'm not sure I'm crazy about ordering and eating lunch in the car, especially when it's already a total mess from spending 3 hours driving in it.

After lunch we headed on over to the Magic House/Children's Discovery Museum. It really put the Bloomington, IL version to shame. Bret and Ryan had fun in the mock grocery store.


The kids and I made our own TV news broadcast.


Ashley got a new hair do with the Electro Static Generator.

After leaving the museum, we headed over to our hotel to check in. While the lobby and the pool were pretty nice, the rooms weren't as nice as the pictures they showed on the internet. The kids were excited that they would be able to sleep in bunk beds and we were happy that we wouldn't be getting kicked by them all night, so all was well.


Bret took advantage of it not being our own bed and joined Ryan in jumping on it.

After spending a couple of hours in the pool and the game room, we headed over to the nearby Walmart to get snacks. Ryan and his new fixation on Star Wars managed to talk us into buying him a couple of Star Wars action figures. He's already making a mental list of what other's are available and has been asking for them every hour, it seems.

Bret and Ryan play with Ryan's new toys.

Since the kids seemed so fascinated with the Arch on the way in, we stopped there on our way home this morning. The walk from the car was unbelievably and very painfully COLD! (But I managed to get a picture anyway.)

The kids found a train whistle on the way to the little elevators that take you up to the top of the Arch.

Bret and Ryan pretended they were in Star Wars Pods. (Told you Ryan is becoming a Star Wars nut-he and Bret watched both of the newest episodes on the car dvd player both ways.)

The kids really enjoyed the Arch...

...but didn't care too much for the cold walk back to the car.

Now we're back home again and unpacked. I'm finding it hard to stay awake after all the driving so I think I'll go kick back and relax. Or maybe not since the dryer just buzzed. Sigh.

You'll find more pictures over on Flickr.