Spring Break Day in St Louis

We enjoyed Spring Break from March 29 through April 2. We were living at Dunahee's while they were on a two week family trip. We were also finishing our rental on St Clair so it would be ready to rent by that Saturday (deadlines always make you move faster). The kids did really well, playing with each other, with no toys, while Eric and I worked and they helped as well. When we asked them what they liked about Spring Break, some even said working on the St Clair house.

We left Dunahee's house around 5:30 as it's a four hour drive to St Louis. We bought breakfast at Burger King after about an hour and then continued on our way. We played the ABC game, which was fun. Eric and I would see letters and tell the kids "There's a __ coming up." and sometimes they would totally miss it. I think the kids spent the longest time on the letter 'f.' Eric and I found quite a few that just flew by the kids. The letter 'q' was easier than I remember thanks to "DQ" signs. When the kids finished that game Eric read a book to the kids that they've been working on.

Finally around 9:30, the Gateway Arch peaked over one of the hills. The kids then spent the next 10 minutes or so trying to see the Arch. "I didn't see it!" "I don't see it!" were the next popular phrases until we were closer to the Mississippi and saw the city of St Louis. By ten o'clock, we were at the zoo. Because I forgot about the hour switch, it was nine o'clock and then zoo had just opened. We grabbed the water and food for lunch and headed inside to look at animals. (The picture above was taken before we saw the sign on the ground that we were not supposed to climb on the statue. Oopps!)

One of the first animals we saw were the...

HIPPOS!

The kids thought it was fun to watch these massive animals underwater. The kids still remember the kissing hippos.

Graigry is very into cheetahs lately so we made sure to take a picture of him with the very lazy cheetah. There were more cheetahs behind cages. The one in the picture is camouflaged on the top of the rock, sleeping.

As we made a turn toward the African animals, we found a cobra that the kids decided to play/climb on.

St Louis has a great collection of big cats and apes.

Xela took notes on the animals as we read signs and had a full couple of pages by the time we were done with the zoo.

There is a jaguar sunning himself on the rock behind Ro. My kids get jaguars and cheetahs mixed up so it was good to read about both and see the differences.

We had sandwiches, crackers, apples and juice boxes for lunch at a table near one of the zoo's cafes.
After they finished, or as a bribe to finish their lunch, Eric had bought bite sized candy bars at one of our pit stops. They were "golden." Everyone got three.

We saw penguins, tigers, chimpanzees, rhinos, giraffees, aligators, lizards, insects, tarantulas, roaches (yuck!), lemurs, snakes, and all sorts of other things.

After our over three hours at the zoo, we packed back into the car and headed to the arch. We had bought tickets for 3:20 so we were sure to make it, not knowing how long we were going to spend at the zoo. We'd forgotten about the time change so we had more than an hour to kill between zoo and arch. We let the kids run while we tried to kill some time outside of the arch.

Graigry and Ro, just hanging around, enjoying the monument and the 70 degree weather.

Finally we got through security and went to the...

...again trying to kill time.

Finally! It was our turn...

...to wait some more!

After another 20+ minutes, we got into the little saucer thing that took us up to the top.

We had talked to the kids about these things and whether or not they wanted to get in them. We talked to them before we decided to make the trip and they all said they wanted to do it after seeing a picture of the little capsule and us explaining how small it was. We thought we'd have to ride in separate things because only six are allowed and we were seven, but we ended up having our own Scott transport to the top and the kids all did much better than Eric thought.

We spent probably half an hour at the top. The kids kept going from the Mississippi side to the St Louis side so Eric and I each stationed ourselves on a side and occassionally switched posts so as to keep tabs on the kids.

Graigry's comment was classic: "It's HU-U-UGE!!"

After the Arch, we bought a family souvenir and got back in the car for the drive home.

They didn't last long before taking an afternoon nap.

They were all awake around eightish and we got back to our Dunahee home around ten.

It was great to spend a day "on vacation" as a family.