Babies Squared: 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.