St. Louis/Evansville Vacation

This year for our family vacation, we didn't want to go to far, but we wanted to go somewhere different.  So we decided on St. Louis, Missouri.  Neither Matt or I had been there and it wasn't a long drive.  Plus we could stop and see Nate in Evansville, too.

In years past on our trips, I used travel tickets with the kids to help them count the hours down.  This year, I decided to give them each a bag of jewels and every hour or so they could exchange them for a small gift.  I figured I could also take them away if necessary.  The kids did so great, we didn't even start the gifts until we were almost there!  Emerson was thrilled about getting new gifts.  Once Landon got his full size Magna Doodle to make mazes on, he didn't care too much about the rest.  We didn't get to them all so I figure I've got some stocking stuffers now!
We started our trip at Grant's Farm.  It's a FREE animal farm that is run by Anheuser Busch (so there is also free beer).  There was a $12 fee for parking but there is no fee for getting in.  The kids had a great time checking out all of the animals.  I think their favorite part was feeding the goats!

                                                                                                                                                                   

Landon's new thing is taking a funny picture after all of our "serious" ones!

Picture of the parrots for Gma!

Some goats were more interested in our clothes than the bottles

Landon had fun feeding the goats too

Later that afternoon, we decided to head over to see the Gateway Arch.  It is so enormous.  There's no way to really tell from the pictures.

We got tickets for the 4:30 visit to the Arch, so we assumed we would get in line at 4:30 and then be at the top a few minutes later.  Little did we know that we'd have to wait in line for over an hour to check out the view for 10 minutes!  But the kids did great waiting and it was neat to see the view from 630 feet up!

The next day, we were debating between driving down to the Ozarks or staying in St. Louis another day.  Matt really wanted to catch a Cardinals game, but I didn't think the kids were old enough and I knew Emerson wouldn't really like it.  So we didn't.  We did decide to stay in St. Louis.  We went to the Science Center (which was also free and our Hotel, Drury Inn, had free passes to the Egyptian exhibit and the Omnimax Theater).  The Science Center was a little too old for our 4 year olds.

Then, later that day Matt found a Cabela's nearby, so we drove there and come to find out it was attached to a mall.  So we did a little shopping!  Not only did our hotel have a free breakfast, but they also had free "snacks" and drinks from 5:30-7:00.  So we took advantage of that and ate 2 meals at the hotel. 

Then the next day (after swimming in the hotel pool AGAIN :)), we drove to Evansville to spend the weekend with Nate.  We had much better weather this year.  It was gorgeous!  We went to play mini golf and went to a huge outdoor playground in Owensboro, Kentucky.  The men even got to play some disc golf together. 

Of course, I didn't realize Emerson's hair in her face until AFTER I looked closely at the pictures :)

We had a great week together as a family.  The kids were wonderful travelers and great at waiting in lines.  Which makes me wonder where we'll head to next year.  Maybe we'll venture a little further away.  Any ideas??