St. Louis

For our anniversary this year we decided to take a quick 2 day trip to St. Louis.  It's been on my bucket list since moving to Kansas, we are running out of time here so we decided now was the perfect time.

We stayed at the Drury Plaza Hotel right in down town!  Because it was downtown there was not room for parking so I loaded everything up with the kids and went up to our room while he parked the car.  When I got to our room (on the 6th floor!) my key wasn't working, Zoey was soaked through her diaper, and Jenson and I both had to use the bathroom.  I had to wait about 15 minutes for Matt to get to our room- it was interesting to say the least but we made it and when we opened our window the view was totally worth it! 

 Our hotel served dinner as well as breakfast so after a quick bite to eat we headed out to go tour the arch! 

 You have to go through some intense security (think airport security!) but after you go in they have a awesome museum at the bottom to walk around.  It talked about the history of the arch, settlers, and some pioneers, (probably a lot more too but it's hard to read everything when your chasing a 4 year old around!).   

 Waiting in line seemed like FOREVER but the kids did decently well so it wasn't terrible.  We bought our tickets on line a few days before and were told they would scan them when entering... No one ever checked our tickets or multiple other people going in too- we totally could of done it for free ;) haha but we were honest!  They finally called us into the area where you wait for the tiny tram to take you to the top.  Each tram has 5 seats and there are about 8 trams that go up at a time.  You have to step through this little cut out door, little to no air in the tram and you are squished in there like crazy- if we had another adult in there (not Jenson) I'm not sure how we would of all fit haha. It was like a 5 minute ride to the top, you can look out the door window and see the inside of the arch which was cool.

 When you get to the top you are just in a little room with multiple "windows" all along the walls that you have to bend over to look through.  It was pretty crazy with people coming in, leaving, and those trying to still look through the windows!

 I don't know what I was expecting but it was like a shock to me when we got to the top- totally not what I was thinking it would look like.

 Waiting to go back down- they give you a number and you send at the door (on the yellow squares) then the people coming up climb out and around you to get to the top- diffidently tight quarter (not for someone who gets claustrophobic easily lol).

 Luckily on the way back down we got the tram to ourselves! 

 After we saw it from the top we got to explore it from the ground! 

 ^^ Mississippi River! ^^

Across the street they had a fun playground for older kids that Jenson loved climbing on, we let him play extra long as a compromise to not have to go swimming when we got back to the hotel ;)

Day 2

After dinner the manager was handing out pennies for all the kids to make a wish in the fountain!

 We packed up and headed out, this time I wasn't going to attempt taking all the stuff by myself so we all just walked to the car together! 

 We went into Illinois to see the arch from the other side of the Mississippi River.  There was quite the interesting people up at the top, but we won't get into that haha

 Next up the Saint Louis Zoo!  You have to pay for parking but the Zoo is free (unless you want any of the "extra" things) It's quite a big zoo but from the head and humidity we decided to only see some of the animals and call it good! We still saw plenty of the Zoo but most of the animals were not even out due to the weather. 

 ^^ the only "picture" I have of Zoey for the whole day since she spent it all in the stroller haha #momfail ^^

 Jenson wanted to be the "egg" in the nest lol 

After the zoo we headed to the planetarium- you can walk though it, over the freeway to get to the science museum (more walking, but that way we were not paying for parking again!)

 The science museum was fun but I think a lot of it was over Jenson's head.  They had a smaller kid zone but you had to pay to go in.  There was still fun things to do so it was worth it.  We even got to go to build a bear and use our coupon from there.  He picked out his new dinosaur "Bob"!

We left the museum and headed home- we all slept pretty much the entire way home (except for Matt ;) haha It was such a fun mini trip, never enough time to see it all but we were glad we went!  Another fun vacation in the books!