Road Trip!

We're back, and we had a wonderful time! I have tons of pictures which I will post as soon as our computer and the photo transfer cable are out of storage. For the time being, though, I will have to regale you with the tales of our trip.

We left early Thursday morning with the hopes of beating the traffic. For the most part, our drive was uneventful, and the kids did really well in the car, singing, counting, and making silly faces the entire drive. We arrived in St. Louis around 11:30 and serendipitously happened upon a fantastic restaurant that I had actually heard of but hadn't written down any of the information for. We had a great lunch that included some of the best butternut squash soup I've ever tasted, and then we set off to play at the City Museum.

This may have been one of the strangest places I've ever been (in a good way.) The museum is housed inside of an old shoe factory which has since been converted into several showrooms of interesting and odd attractions. There was a room of balls that the kids could jump in, a room full of architectural artifacts such as doorknobs and columns, a random piano that we could play, a train that children could ride, a room full of assorted art supplies with free reign to make whatever one was inspired to create. There was a circus room, a museum of Mirth (with the world's largest pair of underwear), an aquarium, and a ginormous play area with tons of slides. It was quite an experience.

After we were sufficiently worn out by the museum, we took a quick driving tour of STL and headed west to Columbia, my old college town. We had a great time exploring all of my favourite old haunts. We had planned on going hiking on Friday, but of course it was a torrential downpour, so we had to settle for some shopping instead. By the evening, it had cleared up quite a bit, so we were able to walk around the campus and explore a little bit.

Columbia has changed quite a bit in the ten years since I lived there. All of my favourite places are still there, but there are lots of new things to see and do. It's a quintessential college town in many ways, but there are also a lot of outdoorsy things to do, which really attracted me to the area.

Saturday was Jon's birthday, so we decided to spend it exploring Kansas City. We went to the City Market (why, oh why doesn't Chicago have a big public market???), ate some Ethiopian food, saw a bunch of fountains, had a dance contest with another set of twins to the music of some street drummers, played at an amazing park, watched some ducks and fish, and ended the day with dinner at a little bistro that had gotten excellent reviews.

On Sunday morning, we woke up early and went hiking at Rock Bridge State Park. The kids were awesome hikers, and did a great job climbing up and down the steep steps. They loved watching the water flow down the river, and had fun throwing leaves into the water and watching the current carry them away.

After our hike, we went back to Columbia to check out the Earth Day celebration and get some lunch. We also bought our trip memento (every vacation we go on, we try to buy something for our home to remind us of our trip): a Sticks plaque that says "Life is Sweet"

How true that is!

The ride home was long, but the kids did incredibly well in the car. They slept for the first 2-3 hours (all that hiking wore them out!) and then practiced their ABC's and other songs for a while after that. Elijah loved seeing all of the different trucks on the road, and called out the colours of each one. We took a quick break at a rest stop to run around, but drove straight through otherwise. We did stop for an ill-advised dinner about a half hour away from home. What was supposed to be a quick meal turned into a 2 hour epic disaster. We were all excited to crawl into our beds at the end of a long day.