Family Vacation to St. Louis

We decided to take a family trip to St. Louis for a long weekend since the boys had a day off on the same day as Chris's off Friday. We left on Friday morning and got to St. Louis a little after lunch. This was our view as we approached the city.

Our first stop was the children's museum, called The Magic House. This place was probably the best children's museum we've been to, and we go to one in just about every city that we visit. We started in the lobby with a few big contraptions that kept the boys busy for a while.

There was a special Thomas the Train set up and Blake just loved loading the "coal" into the train. We were here for a good 30 minutes.

Brett made a new friend, Elise (in the purple shirt), and didn't want to leave her side.

We almost got her, her sister, and the boys on the train for a group pic.

Then the boys climbed down to the lower level while we took the stairs.

Blake loves these tubes that have suction and shoot things out of them.

Playing with magnets.

This grocery store setup was the coolest I've seen. It was so realistic and even had a touch screen for the self-checkout!

The next day we went to the St. Louis Science Center. 

The main lobby had a huge ball run.

We had so much fun building sailboats and racing them. This was Brett's design that set a time record.

Brett declared that he wants an electric car when he grows up.

There was a whole history of video games section and the boys got to experience arcade games.

A group pic on our way out to the car for some lunch.

Then we went back in and visited the agriculture part and Blake got to sit in a real combine (which is a huge deal because he wants to be a farmer when he grows up!).

We got to learn about farming options in a greenhouse.

Loofah plants!

And what are the chances that we would run into Elise and her family on our second day in town?!

Getting to use radar detectors on the walkway over the interstate.

Chris flying the lunar lander or something.

After we left the science center, we drove through Forest Park and stopped to check out the scenery.

Then for dinner we had some authentic St. Louis style pizza and friend ravioli at Imo's. Brett and I liked the ravioli alright, but the pizza was not good. It is very flat with a special cheese called Provelle which contains some sort of cheese product.

On our last day, we packed up and stopped by the Gateway Arch on our way back home. It was so big that it was hard to get a photo of it close up.

If you look really closely, you can see Chris and the boys in the bottom of this shot. I was backed up all the way to the water and this was all I could fit in the shot.

These are the viewing windows at the top of the arch.

We decided not to go up inside the arch to the viewing area, but at the bottom there was a test pod that you could get in and try out. It would've been a tight squeeze for the 4 minute journey to the top.

We did go to the underground museum at the base of the arch and learned a little history of the St. Louis area. 

Learning about how they built the arch was pretty cool.

My cell phone got fried when I tried to charge it at our hotel, but luckily it hung on long enough for all the pictures to get uploaded and backed up to Google.