Hello St. Louis

Photo of the St. Louis arch as seen from our car. Partially blocked from the bridge but you know what it looks like.

My mom and I drove to Missouri with Jack and Macy to visit family for a few days. It was nice seeing everyone! We have not been there since Jack was 3 months old, so things have drastically changed in my family since our last visit! It took us 10 hours to drive there and the kids did fantastic. I couldn't have asked for better little travelers! We don't ever go on long road trips, so the concept of "driving far far away" was a little foreign to Jack. We departed from our driveway at exactly 6:00 AM on Saturday and at exactly 6:12 AM Jack said "Man, Missouri really IS far far away." Yes, honey, it is. At 7:45 AM he said "Mommy, I'm ready to go back home now." After that, he was fine and started understanding that we really were going to be in the car pretty much the entire day. He mostly just stared out the window. I had a basket of goodies to keep him occupied and he really didn't get into it much. He read a couple of books and watched a movie on the DVD player, but other than that, he barely touched any of his other car activities. He took a few cat naps too. Macy was also spectacular. She would sleep for a bit then play with some random baby toy that Jack would throw at her and then she'd eventually go back to sleep.

We stayed at my Grandpa's house during our visit. My Grandpa and his wife live in a log cabin in the middle of the woods and it is usually so much fun to go hiking on thier property and play outside. Well, this trip it rained most of the time or it was VERY wet, so we weren't able to get outside much which was a bummer, especially since I had a hyper 4 year old little boy who likes to explore and get dirty. We tried to keep him busy inside the house. He did get fairly ornery though.

Photo of my Grandpa with the kids. Macy is very into taking off her left sock right now. I am not sure if she thinks it is funny or if it is just another thing she realized she can do. It is her first order of business each day. Reach down, pull it off.

Grandpa's wife, Cindy, with Macy.

My Uncle Dave and Aunt Jodi had fun playing on the floor with Macy.

My cousin David and Jackson taking a break from all the action to watch a video.

My uncle Dave is a fire marshal and we visited him at the fire station one day. He kept telling Jack that the fire trucks in Missouri are yellow. Jack didn't totally beleive him till we got there. He of course loved exploring on and around the fire trucks. We also visited a local park that was on the top of a hill, so the ground wasn't quite as wet. They had this really cool excavator that Jack had fun operating.

On our last day in Missouri, we went to the St. Louis Zoo. It was pretty chilly that day, but we still wanted to go. This was a pretty cool zoo and they had a bunch of animals that we don't have at our local zoo, so that was cool. They have 7 elephants (that is how many we saw, anyway) which was really neat.

There was a big exhibit of hippos. Jack affectionately named this one "Lulu". The hippos are HUGE.

Macy willingly (she didn't really have a choice....) sat in the zoo-rented stroller all bundled up with the diaper bag right in front of her feet. She didn't really seem to mind. This photo was taken near the elephant exhibit.

After spending a good chunk of the day at the zoo, we drove further into Illinois and eventually stopped at a hotel to stay for the evening. The hotel had a pool, so Jack got to play in that for a while, which was great for him! We ate dinner in our hotel room while watching American Idol and giving the kids thier baths. It was a nice little trip. It was great seeing my family and I'm so glad the kids did well in the car!