St. Louis - Part One

Last week we took the girls (along with the Stevens, Grandma and Papa) up to St. Louis to visit their Great Grandma.  We haven't been up there since Audrey was Bridget's age and this was our first trip with B. We were about 4 miles down the road on the way to St. Louis when Audrey asked "Are we there yet?"  :) But, between the games on my iPhone and the DVD player, the girls did great in the car!  Bridget had to pose on the hotel bed as soon as we got our luggage to the room.

We got to Grandma's in time to go out to a late dinner at Grandma's favorite Italian restaurant.  That was the first time we have gone out to dinner with all 5 kids and considering that they had been in cars for 9 hours, it turned out well.  I learned at the restaurant (and throughout the weekend) that Bridget loves to color.  I don't let her do it much at home because she usually eats the crayons, but she sat with the boys and colored and colored and colored!  Audrey is just now started to enjoy it too.

On Thursday we stayed around Grandma's house.  Uncle Ronny filled up a little kiddie pool.  We left the girls swim suits at the hotel, so Bridget got to run around naked and Audrey wore Jack's suit (he stayed in his shorts).  Audrey had already met Mom's brothers Ronny and Jerry, and when Uncle Bob came over on Thursday, Audrey looked at me and said "Who's this other brother??"

That evening, our second (or third - I'm not sure how that works!) cousins came over with their little girls.  We used to play with Angie and Heather all of the time when we were all little and we haven't seen them in years.  Thanks to Facebook, we were able to reconnect with them.  It was cool having our kids all play together in the same yard that we used to all play in!  My camera was acting up again, so I'll have to get the pictures from Mom or Tina (which means I may never see them!).

We headed straight to the St. Louis Zoo on Friday.  I wasn't expecting a lot because it's an old, free zoo, but it was better than our zoo here!  It was huge and it appeared that a lot of the exhibits had been recently renovated.  Uncle Butch and Aunt Jaynee met us at the zoo ("Mommy, what is this other brother's name??") and we were able to use their zoo pass to see the sea lion show and ride the zoo train for free.

Towards the end of our zoo day, Audrey kept saying that she wanted to see the flamingos, so we headed back to the flamingo exhibit.  Once we got there, she sat on the ground a burst out into tears.  She was upset because she didn't think the flamingos were making the correct noise.  She plays a Fisher Price game online and the flamingos go "Ah Eee," so when the real flamingos didn't make that noise, she kept saying "The flamingos don't make that noise.  They say Ah Eee."  I kept trying to explain that these were real flamingos, so that was the real noise that they make, but she was just insistent that these flamingos were making the wrong noise!

Although we were at the zoo for close to 6 hours, we did not see everything.  We were all getting beat (plus is was 92 degrees outside), so we headed to the gift shop where Audrey picked out a stuffed pink flamingo that she named Sarah.  We held up different stuffed animals to Bridget until she grabbed one - she picked out a baby penguin.

This post is getting much longer than I anticipated, so stay tuned for Part 2 of our trip!  I know it's boring to look at other people's zoo photos, but here is a link to our trip photos if anyone is interested!  I had to edit a bunch of animal pictures out and in doing so,  I learned that Andy has a thing for camels.  Seriously, there were more shots of camels than there were of the girls! ;)


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