Weekend in St. Louis



we took a long weekend before school started and headed to St. Louis for some fun and family time.  We left on Thursday night and stayed at a hotel that evening and on Friday we went to the City Museum downtown.  Upon hearing the word "museum" , Jonah decided this was not going to be fun.  It is SUCH a cool place and I highly recommend it for younger kids.  J & J were a little too old to truly respect what an amazing place it is, but I think ultimately they had a fun time.

There were so many cool bridges and tunnels to crawl through!

The boys were acting bored so Tony bribed them with $5 if they would go down one of the slides inside that went down like 3 stories.  Here they are waiting in line to go down being smart alecs!!  So scared!

Here goes Jensen down the slide!!

Trying to balance and knock the other 1 in the water...

Jensen found another slide to try out!

There were so many cool things, one of my favorites was the indoor caverns and waterfalls, the caverns had tunnels and it kept winding up and up, probably about 4 stories in all.  It would have been very easy to lose our kiddos had we wanted to!!  ;-)

Lunchtime fun at Lucca's Bar and Grille downtown

Time to go visit the Arch!!

We all watched the film on how the Arch was made, which is truly incredible how it was done. Then Tony took the boys to the top, I had gone before 20 years ago and had no desire to go again...CLAUSTROPHOPIA!!!  Jensen wasn't sure he wanted to go, but was glad he did it!!

Looking at Busch stadium from the top!

After spending a great day exploring the City, we headed to Dennis and Carolyn's house to spend the weekend.  We were there to celebrate Dennis' 60th birthday.  Friday night we grilled out and Saturday was spent hanging out at the pool and getting ready for the birthday dinner.  Dennis had some special surprise visitors~ Matt and Ellen came home to celebrate with their dad and Steve and Becky made the trip from Ohio.   He was definitely surprised by Matt and it was so fun to see Dennis' reaction!!  

The Plummer family~our gracious hosts.  A lovely birthday dinner Saturday night with ribs, shrimp, sweet corn salad, and the BEST cupcakes I have ever had!!! And I must say I have had a few!! Such sweet people that I am lucky enough to be related to!!

We look evil with our red eyes!

Jonah and Jensen were so glad to get to see Matt and Ellen, it had been a few years! Matt was so thoughtful and brought the boys each a Nike USA speedskating shirt.

The birthday boy, making his speech

Here are the sibling birthday buddies~ Tony born on  August 25th and Becky and Dennis born on August 26th!!!  Kind of cool!  Lots of cake in that house in August growing up!!

Happy UNBIRTHDAY Dennis and THANKS for a wonderful weekend!!