Whirlwind Weekend

 We have been hoping to meet up with my family again sometime this fall, but after all of Aaron's job craziness it was beginning to look unlikely. This weekend though we managed to snag some time to meet up in St. Louis. Aaron was driving home from Illinois on Friday morning, he called and told me he'd make it by 10:30 and wouldn't have to got back to work until 9:00 pm Saturday evening. So I threw a crazy idea out there....how about I call mom and dad and we meet up Friday evening and go to the St. Louis Zoo Saturday. I would say long story short, but mom and dad are always quick to jump on a fun idea, so it was all settled within a few minutes and everyone was on the road around lunchtime. We were in St. Louis just under 24 hours, but it seemed like a full blown vacation. We packed a lot of fun into those few hours. First off, the hotel was awesome! In fact, after sleeping on such a great bed we came home and on Sunday bought a new mattress. Ours had truly lived its life and the new one is oh so comfy! Back to my story, Friday we all went to The Magic House, St. Louis's children's museum. AMAZING. Somewhere between the small homey feel of our local CMOE and the monstrous Indianapolis Children's Museum. The children all had so much fun! I can't wait to go back....,maybe even before the year ends. You can easily spend an entire day, maybe more, in just that one museum. In fact, my littlest brother was so enthralled with the art studio, he could have spent all day there. Imagine a room full of every crafting supply imaginable, who wouldn't love that?! The next morning we greeted the day refreshed form the awesome sleep and ready to tackle the Zoo. The St. Louis Zoo is one of the nicest, if not the nicest Zoo, I've ever visited. And its FREE!!!! Could the weekend get better? Levi loved the animals and after a while Rebecca warmed up to them too. We began the morning with a chicken attack....or at least if you could have heard her screams you would have assumed a chicken was pecking her eyes out, not just walking by. We need to get some pets or something! LOL Finished up the day with a great lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory, housed in an incredible historic building downtown and made it home just in time for dinner and to see Aaron off to work again. Aaron worked some of each of the the seven days last week, put in 56 hours, and still managed to take us on vacation, I think he's a super dad/hubby!!!

 Art Studio at The Magic House

 Magnet fun

 The baby nursery in the Children's Hosital, part of the Children's Village at the museum.

 Here's one for Grandma Maryann, Rebecca playing librarian at the Children's Village

 Veterinarian Rebecca

 Levi, wondering what kind of funny milk comes in cans, at the Market in the Village.

 Was this place not cool?!

 Veterinarian Levi..."doggie, doggie, doggie"...he kept repeating.

 First Female President, Rebecca Lynn Alldredge. The oval office replica was so neat.

 Levi really liked the construction zone.

 Mama forgot the baby size gloves so these big ones from Wal-mart had to do. It was chilly!

 Loving the sheep

 I can't believe he touched it!

 You'll notice no shots of sister with the animals. LOL

 I liked the butterfly house!

 Neat shots of Rhinos and Hippos, the enclosures here are beautiful!

 Our 'zoovenir; drink was almost as big as Levi

 He got really excited about the giraffes.....but lost the smile when we got to the wild hogs.

Our pumpkin was in a better mood by afternoon, and was happy to cozy up to something that wasn't moving.

Little Time Travelers

 

Our children's museum downtown got the neatest traveling exhibit for the fall and winter. Until mid January we get to have adventure in the Magic Treehouse! The exhibit is based off three books of the Magiv Treehouse series, which I hadn't heard of until last week. We bought one of the books today while at the museum and I hope its a good read. The three featured books are about the Civil War, the first Thanksgiving, and one about a prairie school. There are costumes and props in each area and we are having a blast! I plan to get related books at the library and put together some little unit studies for Rebecca. Levi also enjoys the dressing up and playing with the props.

 

 The Thanksgiving table was all set this morning. We were the first visitors of the day and got the whole exhibit to ourselves for quite a while.

 The pilgrim's Kitchen with a spit that you can actually turn, and when you use the bellows the flames of the fire leap, just like real!

 Multi-tasking Pilgrim style, churning and sweeping at once.

 I think Levi's mouth is watering over that rotisserie turkey....doesn't sister make a cute pilgrim?

 Digging veggies in the garden for her soup.

 Soup's On

 Photo Op

 In another area of the museum we found a sandbox....full of beads instead of sand.

 The treehouse you must walk through to enter the exhibit.

 Ring, ring, time for school.

 The schoolhouse also had benches, slates and McGuffey readers.

 The Civil War Hospital tent.

 Bumping up and down in the wagon.

 Wee wounded warrior.

 Rebecca makes a good and very compassionate nurse.

 Trying out the crutches.

The wagon is lots of fun!

Parks & Pumpkins

   We are enjoying absolutely perfect fall weather this weekend! The past week or two we've gone back and forth from days where the kids played at the splash park to sweatshirts, but I think the cool weather is here to stay. Aaron has been working in Kentuckey the last couple weeks so we've been making mid-week treks to see daddy. The halfway point of our drive is this amazing park in Owensboro. The children love watching the boats as they play and mama loves that the turf is soft rubber and the grass is fake.....so no mud! This weekend we've once again been trying to cram in all sorts of fun while daddy is with us. Yesterday we went to Native American days at a local historic site. I was excited for Rebecca to see the Indians in their costumes, doing their dances. We even read a few books on Indians during the week. Unfortunately, the drumming freaked her out and she woulndn't go near the dance circle. LOL Today after church we visited Goebel's Farm to pick out the perfect pumpkins for our front porch. We are LOVING this season!

 A science experiment for school....what floats and what sinks?

Happy Fall Ya'll!!!