St. Louis' Gateway Arch

At the end of day three we left the zoo and headed over to the famed Gateway Arch. The last time we were in St. Louis we only saw it from a distance, and boy did we miss out. It was pretty impressive! It is 630 ft. tall making it the nation's tallest monument. And not only is the arch itself cool, but the park where is sits is beautiful too! (A great place to stop and let the kids run around before getting back on the road to head home.) We didn't go up into the arch. Neither Jay nor I have any desire to climb into one of those claustrophobic little pods to ride to the top. Kids, you'll have to wait until you can go it alone! However, underground below the arch is The Museum of Westward Expansion. I honestly didn't even know it existed until we got there, otherwise I would have allowed some more time to walk through it. It was a neat peek into the Old West. There was also a cute little mercantile store (Amy, you would love it!) as well as a museum gift shop down there.

 It was a long day for little people...

 Henry and Charlotte were plum tuckered out.

 This is what one of the pods you ride up the arch looks like. Ummm, no thank you!

 Charlotte really enjoyed taking pictures. There were a lot of the pavement when I downloaded them at home. But look how happy she was!

 See, still taking pictures.

 This one is included simply because I love Charlotte's expression!

 Pretty sure that Chloe or Sophie took this one of me and Jay.

 Henry Jay really likes to ride on Daddy's shoulders.

 The big girls by the arch.

 Nice view of the arch by itself.

 All of the kids by the arch (did you ever imagine there could be so many pictures of the arch?)

 Charlotte took a picture of me taking a picture of her taking pictures. ("They don't know that we know that they know.")

 This is why I'm pretty sure that Chloe or Sophie took that other picture of us. Charlotte cut off our heads in all of her pictures.

And although I already included the picture of Hank on Jay's shoulders, I like this one of them too.

Goodbye Gateway Arch! We had a great time!

St. Louis Zoo

On days two and three of our Spring Break trip, we went to the St. Louis Zoo. We had originally planned to go to the City Museum on day three, but after a day at the zoo we still hadn't seen everything. We decided to go back and see what we missed and re-visit all the animals that the girls loved most the day before. (Also, the zoo is free and the City Museum is not... food for thought if you ever decide to go.) The St. Louis Zoo is big and beautiful - I highly recommend it!

Warning: there are A LOT of pictures in this post!

 One of the zoo keepers was putting out fruit for the bears, so we were waiting to watch them come out and eat.

 Happy boy!

 How can you not love the penguins?

 One of the chimps had climbed up to the tallest part of the tree.

 Just checkin' out the chimps.

 I think Charlotte wanted a picture with the snake statue, then Chloe wanted them all to hug the snake statue. Only our girls...

 One of the Asian elephants

 I love this! They were voluntarily holding hands. It's nice that they enjoy being together.

 Yeah, these animals came with us to the zoo!

 The butterflies were beautiful! We went to see them both days.

 The first day Chloe and Sophie both had butterflies land on their fingers.

 Charlotte and I kept pointing out butterflies to each other. She was never still long enough for a butterfly to land on her (much to her disappointment).

 Can you see the butterfly on her left hand?

 Here's a closer look. Notice the sign in the background: "Thank you for not touching the butterflies." I'm pretty sure it was okay for them to touch us though. The zoo worker kept telling the girls to hold still for a butterfly to rest on them.

 This was in the children's zoo. Charlotte is really into guinea pigs right now (thanks to G-Force), and I think she could've stayed there all day petting them. They were so docile and just sat on the bench being petted.

 The girls and I as otters.

 There is a Build-A-Bear at the zoo (as the picture shows). Our kids need more stuffed animals like they need a whole in the head, but yes, we bought them. The girls each got an animal (Hank doesn't know or care what he's missing yet) and a St. Louis t-shirt to put on it. Chloe picked a puma, Sophie chose a tiger, and Charlotte, well, she got a guinea pig.

 I love the prairie dogs! They are just so darn cute!

 This was inside the bird house. So many neat birds!

 This is a peacock in the bird garden. I really like this picture, but I'm not even sure why!

 This is pretty much how I see my legs. :-)

  Look at all those colors on one bird. Sooo beautiful - good job God!

 Sophie and Daddy

 One of many pictures of our cuties.

 Here I am ruining Sophie's pretty little photo.

 This is the goat yard inside the children's zoo. The girls loved them!

This was one of the things we did both days.

 Charlotte riding a frog statue in the children's zoo area.

Henry Jay did great on his first trip out of town!

 It was really hard to get a good picture of all of them.

 See?

A lady was nice enough to offer to take a picture of all of us. Too bad Hank didn't want to look at the camera.

St. Louis Science Center

We wanted to do a little Spring Break get-a-way as a family this year. Originally we were planning to go to Gatlinburg, TN, but the closer we got to Spring Break, the less that drive seemed appealing with Henry. So, we canceled our reservation there and decided on St. Louis instead. We took Chloe and Sophie there over four years ago and thought it would be a good time to go back. We didn't tell the girls that we were going anywhere. I like to surprise the kids with trips for a few reasons: 1. If you change your mind or, in this case, your destination, then you don't have to deal with any disappointment (same thing goes for sudden illness, etc.), 2. I can remember my parents taking us on one short "spur of the moment" trip (and I think in that case it really was), and I loved the excitement of that surprise, 3. Kids sleep much better the night before a trip that they don't know they're going on. So, we woke the girls up Sunday morning, grabbed breakfast at Panera, and headed to St. Louis.

This was just a cool cross on the side of the interstate on the way to St. Louis. Please ignore the blurry bug guts on the windshield. We had accumulated a lot already!

Our first stop in was the St. Louis Science Center. It was perfect for a partial day. In fact, a whole day would have been WAY too much time there. It was okay, and I think the girls enjoyed it, but I didn't find it to be spectacular. However, Star Trek The Exhibition is there until May 28, 2012, and for me, that was worth it!! I am a huge Star Trek fan... well, sci-fi in general, so I loved it! There was no photography allowed in the exhibit, so you'll just have to go see it for yourself. Yeah, I know you're all rushing to make plans now.

I'm not going to label each picture (mostly because I am lazy and way behind on my blogging already), but here are some from our time at the science center: