The spirit of St. Louis

A few weeks ago Joseph and I decided that we really needed a little break from everything and so we decided to go on a mini-vacation to St. Louis! We dropped Jake off with Nana and Papa and spent a wonderful weekend with just the two of us. We had such a great time and took tons of pictures, so I will tell you the story of our vacation through the pictures.

When we got there on Saturday afternoon after we checked in at our hotel, we went to the City Museum in St. Louis. This place was AMAZING! Actually, I don't know that I would have called it a museum at all, it was more like the biggest, most incredible funhouse you've ever seen. I really can't even describe it, and I don't know if the pictures do it justice. It is actually a really old building that used to be a shoe factory, but it was shut down in the '70s. It had just been sitting there for years until someone went and made a "museum" out of it. The whole place is made out of salvaged materials...old planes, cranes, there's even an old bus on the roof! When we first saw it I thought it was a junkyard...until you look closer and you see the genious of it all. It's made for both kids and adults, so we explored just like everyone else!

This is HIGH up. The building is about 13 stories high, and all this equipment is about 6 stories up. Here is Joseph standing in front of just some of the equipment. Yes, that is a real airplane up there.

Joseph is climing up into the airplane (that's him in the wire tube rounding the corner).He made it up!
I'm climbing through a giant wire tube...not the same one that Joseph went through. This was about 9 stories high. This was a giant fish they made out of old junkie wire. You can climb all up and inside it.Like I said, the museum used to be an old shoe factory, and inside they let you slide down the 9-story high winding shute that they used to send the shoes down. It was extremely steep and dark and scary. Don't worry, I got it on video. This is how high we were (what looks like he bottom in this picture isn't actually the bottom...it's a tarp. It goes even further down than that. This is Joseph coming down at the bottom: There was a place at the museum where you could roast marshmallows! Have you ever been to a museum with a firepit to make smores? Like I said, this place was amazing... Here we are roasting our mallows:Inside the City Museum was an aquarium. There were all kinds of weird looking fish and turtles and other rainforest animals. The first thing that we saw when we walked in was this bird. Joseph wanted to pet it, but I was too chicken so I just took his picture. Then we saw a big fish tank with these giant, disgusting catfish. I was grossed out.Here is Joseph in front of the same tank. Are the fish freaking you out too? Next to the tank of the giant, disgusting fish was a small tank of "doctor fish" that eat the dead skin off of your fingers. Again, Joseph thought that was really cool. I was grossed out.

Here is a giant turtle that both Joseph and I thought needed some dental work done. I couldn't help but immitate him.We found Nemo in one of the tanks.

Here is a sloth. It moved REALLY slow and slept a lot. Pretty good life, eh?

Joseph with the sloth:

After a long and exciting day at the City Museum, Joseph and I took it easy that Sunday. We went to church and I showed him my old stomping grounds in St. Charles (a suburb of St. Louis where I was born).

Here is our old "new" house that was brand new when we moved into it when I was about 6. That makes it almost 20 years old! I remember my dad planting that tree in the front yard. Look at how big its grown! The house was also painted a different color. It still looks pretty good though.

After spending a relaxing Sunday together, on Monday Joseph and I went back to downtown St. Louis to visit the Arch!

This is us in the tiny little cars that take you to the top of the arch. You can't really tell, but our heads are actually up against the wall of the car, and it's slanted, so you have to kind of crouch. It's very caulostrophobic. At the top of the arch:The cool view from the top. You can see the shadow of the arch.

At the end of the trip we went back to St. Charles. I wanted to surprise one of my favorite teachers in the whole world, my Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Aul. We were going to surprise her in her classroom, so we stopped by Becky-David Elementary school only to find that they were on break! I was so sad, and Jill, you have a note on the door to your classroom from me when you get back!

Finally, the last piece of business that we had was to visit my brother, Justin's, grave and clean it off and put flowers in it. Since my family isn't in St. Charles anymore, it had been a long time since there had been flowers at the gravesite, so it was especially nice for us to be able to do that for my parents. It was a beautiful sunny day, so in order to get a decent picture Joseph had to cast his shadow over the grave marker. The place looks really nice and I know that my mom and dad would be pleased. Although we had a great trip, it was so nice to come back to Jake. It was the first time that we had ever left him overnight and he did great! We are so proud of him and grateful to Nana and Papa for taking him for this much-needed retreat.