I Left My Heart In St. Louis!

corbis.com

Well, we made it back in mostly one piece. Geof brought back a cold as a souvenir. His symptoms started on Tuesday but he's doing much better today. Hopefully the cold will be short-lived. We returned home late Monday night and I'm still recouping! I think we did almost everything you could do in St. Louis! I absolutely love that city. I was surprised at how kid friendly everything is...and a lot of things are FREE! Here are all the things we did...

Wednesday...arrived in St. Louis early afternoon, drove through downtown, visited the Science Center (free),"date night" with Nathaniel, huge fight....that's a whole other blog post, that most likely won't happen...

Thursday...baseball game (Cardinals vs. Mets) the cardinals won 6-3...and I'll be damned if Pujols didn't play!! I almost wanted to cry, the man takes one day off a month and he picked the only day that I would be able to see him. Jerk! Weird fact, Don King was there to throw out the first pitch...um, ok. He wore some sort of sparkly jacket that could be seen all the way from our seats! It was funny. After the game we ate dinner then went to the Gateway Arch. That was pretty cool. I didn't know that there was a museum underneath and trams that would take you to the top! I was very impressed. We went to the top and the view was spectacular! I also have this perverse satisfaction of knowing that I totally took a dump under the arch! Don't worry, it was in a restroom, not out in the open! After all that we went back to where we were staying and crashed fairly early!

Friday...we went to the St. Louis Zoo. My mother-in-law requested a day for the zoo because she wanted to go with Geof. I really enjoyed it. It was the middle of the day, so all the big cats were asleep, but Geof got to see some pretty cool animals. His favorites were the monkeys and the grizzly bear. Nathaniel and I enjoyed the fact that they served beer there! Seems like we did something else that day, but I can't remember right off.

Saturday...we went to the Missouri Botanical Garden. I know it sounds boring, but Nathaniel and I are gardening enthusiasts, and Geof is a budding one...pun intended! We happened to go on Chinese Culture Day which was a nice surprise. They had dancers, a parade, booths set up to sale their wares, etc. Surprisingly enough Geof really like the gardens. They have several Children's Gardens and a big pond where you can feed the fish. On our walk back to our car we ran across the best off-the-wall store called Gringo Jones. Words cannot describe this place, you've just got to see it to believe it! After that we headed to the Budweiser Brewery for a tour. The tour lasted an hour, but went by pretty quickly. We got to see the Clydesdales in their stables and their reigns and harnesses. Blah, blah, blah, and at the very end there were 2 free beers each waiting for us! Yum! Tastes different when it's fresh...I'm talking made-that-day fresh.

Sunday...Headed home!

Now you understand why we're all still recovering. The best part was that even though we did tons of stuff, the days never seemed to fly by so we could enjoy it. I can't wait to go back to St. Louis!

In other travel news... On July 9th, Geof and I will be flying to North Dakota to visit my family up there! My Mom will be flying with us seeing as how she bought the tickets and all, and it is her family that lives up there! I haven't told Geof yet, but I know he's going to have so much fun. My grandparents still live on a working cattle farm and have the huge tractors and combines and such. Geof has no idea what's in store, I'm so excited to see his reaction to flying in an airplane, riding in tractor, seeing huge bulls and cow, riding a horse, etc. I'm ready to go today!

Well, that's all the up dates I have to share. Glad to be back home, but I sure enjoyed my time away...for the most part at least.