4th of July Getaway

Since senior session is fast approaching, (followed by family pictures, and then Christmas pictures, while also finishing out our busiest wedding season to date......) our family decided to take one more quick getaway to celebrate the 4th of July.

We left on Monday and headed to St. Louis for 3 days of fun. We arrived that night (with Wodney our family mascot) and just relaxed in the hotel. For my children, that translates to jumping on the bed and being as loud as possible.

We got up on Tuesday morning and headed to the zoo. We love the St Louis Zoo for a number of reasons, but far and away the most important is that it's free. That especially means a lot to Rick. We parked on the street and didn't even have to pay for parking.

The zoo wasn't all that hot, although some of the animals were sleeping, which was a little disappointing. We got suckered into paying $16 for the children's zoo, which really wasn't worth it. But hey, we did get to brush goats and we found out RJ is as tall as a Pygmy Goat and Heidi is just slightly taller than a Koala Bear.

We had some strange lady take our pictures as a family of otters, which has to rank as one of my ALL TIME favorite pictures ever.

Our kids favorite part was far and away the elephants. There was also a new little baby elephant, but Rick was taking pictures at that moment and so of course we don't have any pictures of it.

We stopped for a popcorn snack with Wodney (see photo), and then Heidi built an elephant at the Build a Bear at the zoo. She really liked that and she dressed it in a tutu with a blonde wig.

We went back to hotel, regrouped and we out to eat at The Old Spaghetti Factory with the Dorn family. The boys then headed to a Cardinal game while we went shopping at the mall.

Today we went to the City Museum in St.Louis (with the Dorn's) before heading back to Effingham to watch "Ratatouille" (which was fantastic!)

I recommend the City Museum to everyone, although there were many parts that absolutely made me fear for the safety of my children. Not Rick, he let them climb everywhere on all of the exhibits that were hand on (which was pretty much all of them). But hey, if it were up to me, I'd have my kids on leashes like those poor little kids at the mall that everyone feels sorry for.

-a