St. Louis and Thanksgiving

The Trip
We decided on Monday night to take a quick trip to St. Louis, so we pricelined a hotel and Tuesday we were off! It's a three and a half hour drive, but when you get closer to the city, you get to see really pretty things and stores, like Costco and malls, that was fun. We got into the hotel, the Hyatt, it was downtown and in the old Union Station, so it looked really cool especially in the lobby, no pics, sorry. We went out to eat at Hard Rock Cafe. How do you eat with a 1 year old? Seriously? Ridiculous! These were at the mall and we thought they were hilarious.
Sawyer "sleeping"
So when we went to bed that night, we wanted to take full advantage of the next day so we could do everything we wanted, and that meant a full nights rest. Well, let's just see how Sawyer felt about that. We had all his familiar stuff, blankie, binkys, things that lights up and plays music. We did the regular bedtime routine and laid him down, and went into the hallway. The room was small so the pack and play is just next to the bed. Well he started to cry, and then he sounded scared so we went in and got him. 99% of the time, I am grateful to have a baby who sleeps on his own, in his own bed and he won't sleep with us. So we tried to put on tv to see if he would fall asleep, no. I carried him around like an infant, singing to him and rocking him, nothing. After thirty minutes of this, we decided he had to go to sleep himself, so we laid him back down and left, and this time no crying. Wahoo, we did it. Wrong. 2 a.m. he's crying, and I am literally a foot from him. I think I got him before he really woke up, because I pulled him next to me and he was asleep in seconds. He tossed and turned the next three hours and woke up at 5 ready to go! He was hitting us and laughing...so we tried the same routine for the next 45 minutes, tv, trying to get him to lay down...finally we put him back in the pack and play and just went around the corner and sat in the dark. Well he didn't cry, but he was playing with his music thing for like 20 mins! We could see him, his eyes heavy and red, but he wouldn't close them! We decided to sneak back into bed, so we crawled to the opposite side and climbed in. And then...he stood up! We were a foot away from each other. E and I were both looking at him, and he yells "hey!" We just froze! So he tries yelling hey a few times, kinda whimpered, laid back down and soon was to sleep! Wahoo!! Long story, I know, but it was so crazy! Then he got up at 8:30, now that's acceptable without all the stuff in between.

The Zoo
The zoo was fantastic! We loved it, FREE, not even to park because we were able to park on the street! When we first came in, we thought we were going to die, no other people and all this rustling in the bushes, so scary. But after an hour we started to see more life. Sawyer loved it, since he's getting all his animal sounds down lately. He especially loved the monkeys, and two that were fighting he thought they were really funny. His other favorites were "nakes". The whole reptile house he was running around looking in different cages, talking about who knows what!

City Museum
This was the craziest place! It is not a museum in the traditional sense at all. There are not exhibits like that. The whole place is made out of recycled materials. It used to be a shoe factory apparently. The first pic is the outside of the museum, and there are hundreds of people climbing and crawling through all the slides and tunnels. There is an old plane, school bus, all sorts of stuff. It's probably 4-5 stories high. The inside is similar, caves and slides, it is such a cool place and definitely a St Louis must.

This is a tunnel that E went through, it was tiny and probably went 50 feet, I have no clue really but it was a good amount. Halfway through you can stick your hand through a hole, so that's the pic with Sawyer.

You can use elevators and stairs from level to level, but they also have slides and tunnels to go from one to the next. As you can imagine, I avoided anything of the sort. I did take Sawyer down one slide.
Does that look comfortable?Sawyer slept the first hour we were there. When he woke up, he sat straight up and pointed straight ahead and said "Whoa". He liked the place instantly! (They also have a circus that performs a couple times a day...no pics)
So you MUST click on the pic below to get an appreciation of where E was and what he was crawling through! And there were 3 and 4 year olds crawling it as well!


The Arch

On our way out of town we stopped at the arch when the sun had just gone down. E and I were much more impressed with it then we thought we would be! It was very cool, we didn't go to the top though.Thanksgiving

Thank you for all your calls on Thanksgiving! We can tell we were loved! Just kidding, apparently the only one who loves us is my sister Amy and her kids, thanks AMY! But I didn't get sad, and you are all lucky so don't pull this stunt on Christmas, because I was so busy the whole day, I didn't even get Amy's call. We had a great Thanksgiving with a few friends, and I think all of our mother's would have been proud. We had all the food covered, I was impressed. Unfortunately I only got about three pics. And, Friday morning, I kept the tradition alive with a friend Megan, and we hit the WalMart (everyone in Kville was there) at 5 am, it was great.