St. Louis

A family vacation for Spring Break wasn't looking too promising.  Doug was super busy farming--

Hallie was off to Utah so the boys, Nadya and I decided to check out St. Louis!

 I invited two of my teacher friends to join us.  We had a blast!

Our hotel had a beautiful view of downtown St. Louis.  

We visited The Arch first.  The kids enjoyed it and they weren't scared at all. 

 Alex had the most questions about safety, and I could tell he was a little timid, 

but he once he saw the capsule we were riding in all was good in his world.  

The arch is amazing!

Going UP!!!!!!!!!

 

630 Feet High!!!

 We walked around downtown a little bit and ate dinner at Hard rock Cafe.  After dinner we continued to explore and stumbled across a few statues.  Alex had to pick this Statue's Nose!

The next day I took the boys and Nadya to the City Museum and Leah and McKenna spent the day shopping and sight seeing.  The City Museum is the coolest museum we've ever visited.  It is a 600,000 square foot "playground" which was formerly home to the international shoe factory.  Everything has been reclaimed and re-purposed. It's full of curved steel, slides, fiberglass, and loads of stuff to climb on and through.  It even has a ten story slide that use to be an old shoe chute.  We bumped our way down first thing when we arrived!  Pretty awesome slide!  The boys could have spent another day there!  Because it is so difficult to describe, I took many pictures!  We can't wait to go again!

 

The Ten Story Slide

On our last day we visited Six Flags.  It was their opening weekend and surprisingly wasn't too crowded.

It was such a great weekend!  Thank you Leah and McKenna for joining us!

Nine

Alex turned nine in November.

I still can't believe he is half way to 18.

He celebrated his birthday party with three of his friends at a fun place called Fun City.

We opened presents and piled in the van for the drive.  

It was a little over an hour.

The boys ate lunch, played arcades and drove the cars.

After we went swimming.  The boys enjoyed the tube slide.

And before we left they attempted to rock climb.

For Alex's actual birthday, we had Uncle Joe and Aunt Diana over for dinner, ice cream and cake.

We ended up using Alex's cupcakes that were meant for his class treat as a cake,

as he couldn't pass out his cupcake because the cupcake policy was not made clear to us.

(Yes, they were store bought, but they were the wrong brand.)

Alex had a good attitude about it though and that's what counts.  :)

And they were yummy!

NINE!!!!!!!

(Don't mind the kitchen mess, we were in the process of getting new appliances.)

We tricked Alex and put one of his presents in an old box.  (A gift he had already received.)

I love his look of disappointment on the left and how happy he is on the right once he realizes our trick.

Shortly after Alex's birthday, Doug and the kids piled in the Van and headed to Utah for Thanksgiving.  

I couldn't go as I had to work so I had an entire week of "me" time. 

Of course, my family couldn't resist another reason to celebrate so Alex had

 another birthday celebration in Utah too.

And he and Doug even managed a little hike while in Utah.

So, there you have it.  We now have a 9 year old and it's a great age!