Part 4 - Visiting and the St Louis Zoo

Like I mentioned, we had a lot of visiting to do. And, surprisingly, we were able to get almost all of it done. Along with meeting Bella for the first time, we had another family member to meet. We got to meet and play with Griffin also. His older sister is Grace and his mom is my cousin Bethany. Grace and Anna are about the same age, so they get along well....for the most part. They also have a new house since we left, so we got to see that as well. Monday we headed to Red Bud to play. Of course, the weather was not cooperating, so it wasn't a good day to be outside. (I know I shouldn't complain since we had been wearing shorts and our backyard in MN had about 2" of snow.) But, the kids still had fun playing inside and us big kids got to talk, talk, talk. Doug didn't do a lot of the talking, but he had fun bouncing back and forth from the little kids to the big kids. My Aunt Kathy made it down for lunch and we ordered pizza.

Tuesday we went to the St Louis Zoo with my dad. The kids really wanted to go and he hadn't been since Leah was little. So, he was due for a visit. He hadn't even seen the new Penquin and Puffin Coast. Well, it is over 5 years old, but to him it is still new. =) We had a cool day, but it was nice not to be hot walking all over. We saw all the animals the kids had on the list - penquins, bears, flamingos, praire dogs, elephants, zebras and giraffes. We didn't get to see the monkeys because they were not out playing. Big Cat Country was closed so we didn't get to see the lions and tigers. We did get a glimpse of the lion from the train, but not very good. We did get to take a ride on the train to get to the other parts of the zoo. We were tired by the time we left, but we were happy.

I mentioned we didn't get to see everyone we had planned to see. That was because on the way home from the zoo I started to not feel good. Then after Gabe woke up from his nap he wasn't feeling well. That turned into the stomach flu for us both. Isn't that great to be sick away from home. Then Doug started not feeling well that night and my sister got sick the next day. Oops!! So, by that time, I was ready to just be home.

It was a nice trip. It was both too short and too long all at the same time. We were ready to get back home and be in our own beds. The kids did excellent on the way home also. Anna was a tad crabby about mid- morning, but she fell asleep before lunch time and slept until after 3p. So, we didn't stop for lunch until we were into MN. She was much happier after that! We did have one fight in the back seat, but that was about 1 hr from home. I thought that was pretty good considering we were all tired, recovering from the flu and sick of driving.