Boys Birthday Trip: Day 4

Moving along to day 4. So in this fair city, as in most cities we vacation in, we did not get a rental car. Why do that and stress about driving when there is decent public transportation? We don't usually do busses, but the trains have worked out well for us so far. This particular day we exited from the train station and started looking at the map to try to decide in which direction to walk to get to the St. Louis Science Center. A kind student saw us and asked if we needed directions. We did, and when we told her where we were going she said "ooooh, you probably need to take a bus from here to get there". Hmm. No, we told her, we're walking. And walk we did, but it made me wonder if we were crazy to walk everywhere. Maybe. At least I had a stroller to push. Hehehehe. Not all of us did, you know. 

Halfway to the Science Center we passed a pretty cool and new-ish playground, so we stopped to play. The boys loved this one piece of equipment-C is on it below. It used gravity and your weight to spin you around and around. Notice how G is circling the equipment, like a person might circle a table in a seat-yourself restaurant hoping that a person might leave and you can have the spot. Also notice there are not any other kids on the playground, but G wasn't taking any chances. 

Everyone did get a chance to spin.

While they spun, we looked around to see if we could figure out where exactly this  Science Center was....there it is! See the gray dome towards the far right? In between the trees. Yes, there. That's where we were going. Not a bad walk, who takes a bus that short distance?

We were ready to walk on, but had a hard time getting the kids off the playground.

Promises of seeing dinosaurs convinced the boys that we should press on to our destination. It was another brisk 20 minute walk that I rather enjoyed, to be honest. And then we were there. We went right downstairs to the dinosaur area and walked up to Ms. Jessica's table. She was doing a cool demo about erosion.  The one side of the river had plants to keep the sand and soil in place and the other side did not. Both sides had dinosaurs on the riverbanks. Guess which side's dinosaurs were in danger of washing into the river?

Who cares, the boys wanted to say. THERE IS A REAL BIG DINOSAUR BEHIND US! They were terrified of this "real" dinosaur and did everything possible not to turn around and look. Was that T Rex real, you're wondering? Of course not, silly, dinosaurs are not alive anymore. If you want to gave a G-style 10 minute discussion on what animals are alive and why, give me a call. Otherwise trust that this is a mechanised dinosaur. Also, it's not a T Rex, as you might think, its a Gigantosaur. Yes, that's a real type of dinosaur. No, I don't think its a very creative name either. And yes, that was the same dinosaur that is in the Atlanta airport terminal. Turns out there were several dinosaurs that looked like T Rex's. The Allosaurus also looked like T Rex.

I am getting a little science-teacher on you, aren't I? Ok. Back to the vacation.

This Gigantosaurus had attacked the Stegasaurus, which now lay bleeding on the ground. Realistic? Sure. The best diorama for an attraction that all boys and girl around the ages of 4-6 would want to see? No, I dont think so. Let's terrify the target demographic must be the goal of the exhibit planning team. Nice work, guys.  What's wrong with depicting a few Brontosauri happily munching on leaves, I ask you?

Back to the erosion table. We were super focused. And Ms. Jessica let us place the dinosaurs.

And then we turned around and ran like crazy, so the Gigantosaurus looming over us wouldnt get us, into another room with real life fossils and play dinosaurs.  Here we learned C's favorite dinosaur is the Spinosaurus. We also learned that he knows the names of many, many dinosaurs. Which made me wonder if he really can read and was studying his dinosaur book with a flashlight at night in his bed, because I am not teaching him these things...also made a mental note to make myself dinosaur flashcards.

Even on the safety of this room, the threat of the Gigantosaurus loomed!

Next we moved on to a bird exhibit area, where K learned his wingspan is smaller than that eagle.

C dominated that bird, whatever it was.

And G dominated the owl puzzle.

And then we went downstairs for a little demo, and I geeked out on the stools. They were like the elements from the periodic table of elements! GENIUS! I sat on Hydrogen, but only because another little girl snagged Calcium before I did.

I forget our demo girl's name. She was pretty good.

She was telling us about gravity and her friend helped her by dropping things from the highest point in the science center. See her friend above?

We enjoyed the demo, and even volunteered. We were not selected, but it's a pretty big deal for C to volunteer for strangers, so we count it as a success.

After the demo we also found ourselves at a computer. Of course.

And built our own arches.

And knocked it down!

Played with some other things...

And then walked for an other 2 miles through an industrial park to go eat at this deli in the italian section of town. It was worth the walk, y'all, that sandwich was seriously good.

I have to be completely honest and say that right after this picture was taken I hit the wall. I was tired. And tired of being around K and the whiny kids. Unfortunately for me there was no escape, so we plowed on, Good times on family vacations, am I right?

What DID perk my spirits was the bakery we found shortly after, approximately one block past the deli. Still in the italian district, so there were all sorts of Italian cookies I had never heard of before, and naturally we tried one of each. Or almost, there were lots of cookies there. The boys ate their heart cookies right away, as  all the old lady patrons in the store fawned over them. Midwestern ladies love these two.

And then we walked on back to the train station, clutching our new goodies tightly. I've never seen G be more careful with any item as he was with this box of goodies.

Thank you, Missouri Baking Co., you saved the day. Also, your rum roll is awesome. Almost as awesome as the ricotta canoli i wish I didn't have to share with K.  And no, I don't feel bad that we ate it during nap-time so we didn't have to share with the kids. They had their cookies!

We also stopped into another bakery to check out their cookies. I mean, when in Rome, right? This place was written up in a national newspaper as being famous for some sub they make for the superbowl. We decided it made a good backdrop for a boys pic.

On the way back to the train we approved a request to get back on the playground. G let me hold the bakery box while he played, but he kept a very close eye on me.

You know what came next....naps, pool and playing in the hotel! And a little clean-up and packing for the next day when we headed home. And yes, more pastry eating. Looking back on this day it makes total sense that my jeans were tight the next week.

Boys Birthday Trip: Day 3

Greetings to you on this fine President's Day. I hope we're supposed to honor the presidents by doing a boatload of laundry, deep cleaning bathrooms and organizing closets. Good times. Almost as good as a time as the third day of boys' birthday trip. 

This was a chilly and cloudy, but rainless day and we were eager to go see The Arch! We walked for a bit. And argued about who would go into the stroller. And got carried. Luckily the arch was maybe two blocks away. 

Can't say that everyone was happy and cooperative here, but 75% of the family being happy at once isn't so bad, we decided.

Look how shiny it is! The last time I saw the arch Oupa and I were driving to Colorado and we only saw it from the highway, so I was really excited to get inside and check it out.

Before our trip, I knew you could go into and up in the arch, but I had no idea that there were other things to enjoy. Apparently neither did K, I caught him checking out this What Will You Do First? sign.

So The Arch is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.You know, from when we got the Louisiana Purchase and such and the country got bigger. Oh, sure, suuuuuure, you knew that. Part of the memorial is underground, literally right under the arch. And in the underground part is the Museum of Westward Expansion. We are suckers for museums, especially when they have stuffed animals. I mean, come on.

Let me preface all of these animal pictures, oh, yes, there are more later, by saying that right after Christmas we killed a whole tank full of fish and at that point the boys started wondering about animals being alive vs/ being dead. So whenever you see a pic like this, just assume that there was a 10 minute discussion the animal being dead, or being alive. And where did the animal live when it was alive? And why is it here? And we do people put dead animals out in a museum? And does the animal like being here in the museum? And what was the animal doing when it died? And how did it die? These are all excellent questions.

Just beyond the bear we first entered the history section. And unfortunately some museums don't quite get the volume of content right, because damn, there was a ton of stuff to read. Who reads all this? Not the family with 2 almost-four years olds who are on the prowl for more dead or not dead animals, I can tell you that.

Just past the overload of history was this guy.

And this teepee.

And a wagon. See how I'm pointing out that there is not a portable DVD player?

And a horse. Why does the horse have a fence around it if its dead? It can't run away....-G threw in that bonus question here.

Also underground is this old-timey store, which was our next stop. We tired of the museum after the fenced-in horse.

In this store I, wondermom, bought the kids fudge.

And I let them lay on the floor in the store while playing with 50 cent wooden tops while I perused. Yep, I was that mom. In my defense, the store was nearly empty and I did buy the tops. Best dollar I've spent in a while. Those "dreidels", as the boys insisted we call them, entertained the boys for many a waiting time at restaurants.

Next underground stop was a 30 minute IMAX movie about Lewis and Clark. Why Lewis and Clark? Well, they started their exploration from St. Louis. What's cool about this IMAX is that you can see the projector booth before you go inside.

Also cool was that we had the whole place to ourselves! Until 15 minutes in, when another small family came in.

So I took advantage of the empty place to move around and take pics while the previews were playing. Here the screen is saying something like come visit the other national parks!

And then get got settled and hoped like hell the kids would cooperate.

And they did! While clutching their dreidels.

Just to make you feel like you were there, here's a screenshot of the movie. It was surprisingly good, a nice combo of history and gorgeous scenery. And thanks to some Sassafras candy I bought at the old timey store, the boys lasted the entire movie.

But enough of the underground, lets go up! Off to await our space capsule for the trip up into the arch.

We were to go in capsule 2.

Our capsule opened. Space-agey, no?

In we went.

And sat for 4 minutes.

A good minute and a half was spent imitating the bear we saw downstairs. ROARRRRRR!

And then we were up in the top! Please enjoy the one pic we got the entire trip that has all four of us.

Lots of pointing here.

And peering into the world below. We spent about 30 minutes up top, playing games like can you find the yellow truck?, or can you find our hotel?

And got back into a space capsulre (number 5, if you're wondering) and set off to find food.

The food took a while. Thankfully we had dreidels.

The rest of day had a nap, some pool-time and some quality stroller pushing.