Destination: St. Louis! (Part 2)

I had to separate these into two postings, because the City Museum deserves a lot more page space than everything else. It's a museum in NAME ONLY. It might be the most awesome place on the planet - and everyone... EVERYONE needs to go there right away!

Basically, the CM is an old shoe factory (like 10 stories high and 600,000 square feet) of an artist's imagination gone WILD. It is packed with tunnels, caves, incredible sculpture, mosaics, art activities, INSANE outdoor climbing structures -- I cannot even describe its awesomeness. Even Ben was literally WOW'd. GO THERE! Did I mention it has a SEVEN story slide?

A team of 20 artists are constantly working on this place, welding, clipping tiny beautiful tiles, sculpting, adding nooks, crannies, incredible artwork, etc! We didn't even see everything that was there. We want to go back. Our kids said it was the MOST FUN THEY'VE HAD IN THEIR LIFE. Want to go there yet?

Everywhere you turn there's something to be explored... (keep in mind,

Note the INCREDIBLE mosaic tile flooring everywhere...

Remember that outdoor climbing structure I mentioned?

See that school bus hanging off the top floor? Oh, and yes, that's Ben and Jake climbing inside that arched wire structure waaayyyy off the ground!

Here's Jake inside one of the many caves we explored...

Hidden slides and chutes lurked around every corner. (and I have to mention there was a GIANT pipe organ inside the caves -- like huge. The circus music it was playing just added to the one-of-a-kind crazy artsy fun experience.

This is a view from the bottom of the caves up to the top of the 7 story slide. As you can see, there are steps going in about 20 directions... all different avenues to the top. NUTS!


I have lots more pics, but none of them does this place justice.

We finished off the day with the biggest ice cream floats we've ever had.

F.U.N.

Destination: St. Louis! (Part 1)

Since Spring Break around these parts no longer lasts a full week, it limits our options as to where we can go.. This year, we decided to make the five hour drive to St. Louis. The forecast in St. Louis for the week before and the week after was a wonderful 70 degrees. While we were there... a balmy 35. YEAH.

Our first stop was the National Transportation Museum. It consists of mostly trains, which the kids thought was really cool - BUT, it is a mostly outdoor experience, and considering it started to snow like crazy while we there - cool took on a whole new meaning.



Even though it was still chilly, the sun was shining the next morning, so we hit the ARCH. Obviously, a must-see. The kids really liked looking out the top (which actually made me feel a little carsick).


After that, we hit the Science Museum. We spent over five hours there! The kids were able to build model arches and bridges out of all kinds of different materials. We saw 'Tornado Alley' at the IMAX (awesome), and visited the Grossology exhibit.

Hmmm I wonder if I could install one of these in our house to help with the electricity bill?

Chi-ca-go... Chi-ca-go

Yesterday marked the last day of our Spring Break. We didn't really have anything planned, but we all had the itch to do something, so we made a spur-of-the-moment trip to Chicago for a few days. While the drive is just about at the maximum length I can tolerate with kids (about 5 hours), it wasn't too bad - and the whole trip turned out to be a lot of fun.

First, we hit a waterpark hotel for our first day & night. Since our break was so early, the waterpark was basically deserted, so we had no lines and all the space we wanted - super!


On Day 2, we stopped at the Fire Zone where the boys explored a real fire truck, ambulance, hydrants, hoses, etc. They loved it!

Next stop: LEGOLAND! The kids had a blast constructing and reconstructing lego vehicles, and racing them on the lego track.

Can you tell which vehicle I built?

We caught a 4-D movie


We hailed a cab
(and the entire time Jacob kept shouting, "WHO IS DRIVING THIS?!?!")


Next Stop: Sears Tower!


We finished the 2nd day with an authentic Chicago-Style Pizza down the street from our hotel. The kids thought it was really fun to walk in the city. The only down side was the pizza took about 45 minutes to bake. Ugh. The kids were a little wild while waiting!

After a little more walking around in the city the next morning, we wrapped up our stay with a visit to the Shedd Aquarium. Unfortunately I forgot my camera in the car, so I have no pictures of it! The kids really liked watching the sharks and searching for all the little creatures in each tank. We even saw a scuba diver in one of the tanks for feeding time - that was pretty cool. There were SO many exhibits to see, Will claimed he felt sea sick by the end - I kind of did too!

The boys are excited to head back for another trip to see and do more of what Chi-town has to offer. First on their list: PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION!!! Yup - they were BEGGING to ride on a bus or train. Oh Joy! Till then...