St. Louis Trip

   When Brian finished Spring Semester, he brought up the bright idea that we should party in the USA. There are a few intriguing, big cities less than 4 hours' drive away.  I guess that's the perk of living in the middle of the States. Woohoo Iowa!

     We set our sights to visit either St. Louis or Kansas City.  Kansas City apparently has fantastic BBQ, cool Jazz music, and some great Historic Church Sites.  So maybe next time, Kansas City!  Here's what hip-happened in St. Louis:

We checked into our cheap, smelly hotel. For $42 a night, totally worth it. Continental Breakfast, baby.

 Scarlett was soooo ready to get out the car and thanked us be running and climbing and twirling in circles.

That night we went to the coolest place ever.  They call it City Museum, but its more of an adult playground.  It was so cool.  I would go back to St. Louis just to go there again. It was the only place we paid  to get into, but by far the best.  We mostly got shots of the outside, for we were too busy the rest of the time exploring and having fun.  Mom, Renae and Andrew would LOVE this place.

The next day we went to the free St. Louis zoo.  It was cool, as far as zoos go.  It was pretty crowded--with people-- a lot of the animals were missing from their exhibits the day we went. Maybe it was their day off.

 Her new thing:  scoot everything.  With or without wheels. 

Yeah, Scarlett was on a leash.  She wanted to walk, and I didn't want to lose a child to a zoo, although I'm sure they'd treat her equally humanely.  She obviously didn't want to be held captive by me or the stroller; she even kissed the ground when she got back down:

Looks like I'm trying to tame the wild beast, yanking her bridle.  Wild monkeys can never be broken.

 After the zoo, we headed to some delicious BBQ place called "Pappy's".  Scarlett and I napped in the car while Brian wanted in line for an hour.  The food really was amazing, but had Scarlett been awake with us standing in line the whole time, I may have given up the dream of ribs and sweet potato fries.

We headed to the hotel to let Brian recover, and Scarlett did her best to keep Dad awake.  That evening we ventured out to get this kid to a park and eat at a fancy Italian place that was featured on Triple D.  We may be Food Network nerds, but the show's recommendations have never failed us. The toasted ravioli ruled.

For our last day, we went to the Science Museum in Forest Park.  On the way there I saw a taxi drive head-on into an SUV and some angry faces and thrown arms ensued thereafter.  Unfortunately it was a great example of St. Louis traffic.

 Scarlett's favorite part of the vaca was being set to roam free in grassy hills.  Of course.

 The Science Museum was neat and sciency and free. My brother Andrew would have loved it.

This strange matt used some type of nanoparticles or liquid crystals (right up Brian's alley)  to read your body movements, and the lilypads would jump away from you, just like in a real pond!!!!    Exciting.
    To conclude, we went to lunch and drove home and it was awesome.  I hope I did a good job advertising St. Louis.  Go there. Go.