Vacation to Columbia via St.Louis!
March 24-27, 2011
The goal of the trip, Brady Bell's blessing in Columbia, MO; however, we started the weekend in St. Louis to visit the temple and have some family fun! We got a great deal on priceline to stay at the Double Tree, which is always nice, but I think I would prefer complimentary breakfast instead of the complimentary cookie!
The highlight of the trip, for the kids, our first trip to the Magic House! I say first trip because of course we've never been before, and also because we'll definitely go back! It's an amazingly huge "house", more like multiple houses connected together, filled with everything a kid could imagine. This top pic is everyone on the musical chairs, literally they play music when you sit on them! This place was amazing, just look at all these fun pics below......
There happened to be a special Bob the Builder exhibit while we were there, that's Garrett and Mommy driving Bob's bulldozer! I love the excitement on Preston's face in the pic (top, right) when we entered Bob the Builder's "world", and this was our first stop, we had no idea there was so much more to do! Ashlyn and Preston (bottom, left) with their carnival masks. Ashlyn getting ready to swing down the slide (bottom, right)!
There was an entire construction site where the kids could look inside walls of a house, learn how to wire, plumb, even roof a real house. Ashyln and Preston are working the cement mixer. There was even an real bulldozer (top, left) to sit in, Preston's dream come true! I love the pic of Ashlyn (bottom, right) working intently as and architect, drawing up building plans for the house, she's the one in the pink bows:)
There was plenty of fun for Garrett too, they had an entire section reserved just for toddlers, they even checked you at the door to make sure you were short enough. This is great since the rest of the Magic House was crowded with too many kids and lots of them older. Ashlyn loved the colored window (top, left) she discovered in a tunnel she was crawling through! Ashlyn was so excited, and obviously overwhelmed at so many exciting things to do, she literally ran from one thing to another, never stopping too long at any one exhibit. As you can imagine this was a little nerve racking for Kendall and I to keep up with all three of them running in different directions!
Preston's favorite was probably working on this race car, changing tires, adding fluid, checking under the hood. I know its his favorite because its the longest he stayed and played at any one exhibit! I love this pic (top, left) of Ashlyn and Preston working their own pizza shop! Although I've included a lot of pictures, this doesn't begin to demonstrate all we did there, we were just too busy playing to get pics of all the fun. In the very top story of this house, it may have even been the attic, there was a electric static ball you could touch and it would make your hair stand on end. We waited in line to try it, but the boy before us accidentally touched the worker while he was still "charged" with static electricity and she screamed. We moved onto the next one, no science experiments for us:)
Another favorite was getting inside this giant bubble! Ashlyn actually did it after a few tries, I realize its hard to tell in the picture, but she's got the bubble still going, almost past her head before it popped!
Preston did really well, got the bubble around his entire body, with a lot of help from Daddy!
It was so much fun, we can't wait to go back! Maybe next time we'll learn something in the children's museum instead of just running from room to room playing:)
As if we hadn't had enough fun, we decided on another adventure, a train ride into downtown St. Louis's Union Station. Here we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the next train. It was an experience, for all of us and in many ways! Preston was just excited to ride a train, Ashlyn was enthralled with all interesting people we rode with, that she's never seen the likes of before. I was worried the entire time that Kendall didn't understand the train route, so we would miss our stop, and be stuck on the train circling the city all night!
Thanks to our Daddy, who never gets lost, not even on trains, we made it successfully, and safely to Union Station where we had dinner, fed the fish in the pond and jumped the train back home. It really turned out to be lots of fun, and was the first thing Ashlyn and Preston told everyone about their trip!
We can't forget the entire reason for coming to St. Louis was to visit our church's temple. We've been spoiled by Grandma Bell who usually meets us in St. Louis and take the kids so Kendall and I can visit the Temple; however, this time we had to take turns and its just not as much fun that way! I spent two hours in a hotel room trying to get kids to nap while Kendall went to the temple, then he got desperate enough and took all three of them to the Mall while I went to the Temple. This was a very big deal as Kendall rarely takes all three kids anywhere by himself, definitely never a Mall. Even one of the shoppers there commented on how brave he was to be there all by himself with three kids, no one ever congratulates me when I trek through the mall with all of them!
Ashlyn proceeds to flood the toilet when its her turn to potty. While Kendall is trying to stop the flooding toilet, keep Garrett from playing in the toilet, Preston pulls the security alarm! Kendall had reached his limit when he had to clean up Preston's poop on the floor, then everything kept getting worse! I think its good for him, a lesson in the reality of shopping with three kids, you never know where or what situation you'll find yourself in! He loves to tell the story, I think he wanted loads of sympathy from me, but all I could do was laugh!
After two days in St. Louis, we head back towards KC, but make another overnight stop in Columbia, to meet up with all my family who've traveled into town for Brady's blessing on Sunday. I decided why not make it a party, when everyone gets together, you might as well. It also turns out we had Preston's, Colton's, Shannon's, Kirsten's and Kendall's birthdays that were all within a week of each other! We ended up taking over the hotel lobby, ordering takeout, blowing out candles and making memories. Poor little Addison, Shannon's little girl, ended up sick all night. Luckily we were staying in the same hotel, so she had in room visits from Dr. Walker throughout the night. Unfortunately, Addison ended up having to go to the emergency room anyway to get IV fluids. You can read more about Shannon's crazy weekend on her blog, http://jshufford.blogspot.com/ (you'll have to go back to her entry for March 26)
her adventures get even better then ours.....
It was a great weekend, with a whole lot of fun packed into a few days,
as you can read about here for days......
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