Show Me MO Part I

**It's long - but hey there isn't any poop talk.**

We arrived in MO on Monday, August 4th after 12 hours of driving. We made two "big" stops one in Texas for lunch and one in Oklahoma to stretch our legs at the park (it turned out to be too hot to do much playing). We had several stops on the way to make use of our own personal port-a-potty, in my attempt to not lose any ground on our potty training we brought Z's little potty. We stayed at my Mom & Dad's house on this night, only to get up the next day and make our way to St. Louis to stay with Jason's folks.
Tuesday before we left for St. Louie we went to see my grandfather, very quickly. Once in St. Louis we went to my VERY favorite restaurant - Stefanina's. Um yummy!
Wednesday we slept in for a little while and when G'pa John got home from work we headed for our first adventure, the St. Louis Science Center. Z was initially afraid of the big dinosaurs but once we assured him that they were only robots he got over it quickly and was ready to jump out of his stroller and go exploring with his brother, sister and grandpa. The four of them - G'pa and BKZ all went to watch a dinosaur omnimax movie and A and I took off for some of the fun, kid friendly exhibits - she really enjoyed learning about gears, I beams and checking out the cars zooming under her feet on the bridge.
Thursday, August 7th was a little more eventful - we went to spend a day at the pool with a family friend (Vicki - she's the Mom of The Martin blog on the side of this blog). We were all loaded in the car and I distractedly started the car, or at least I thought I did. When I turned and realized that the car wasn't running I tried again - NOTHING! Not good. I opened the hood (after some searching in the owner's manual) and realized that the only thing I was qualified to do under there was add some windshield washer fluid, hmm speaking of which I could use some of that.... wait a minute distracted much Sherry? I gathered my composure, convinced myself it was probably the battery and that my all-knowing father-in-law would be able to figure it out when he got home from work. We borrowed my favorite mother-in-law's car and headed to Vicki's for some really fun swimming in their way cool pool. Thank you Vicki for the fun pool date, thank you Bonnie for allowing me to use your car (and bring it back with hardly any gas - since I took a wrong turn and ended up in St. Louis instead of St. Charles) and thank you John for replacing my battery - even though it was pouring down rain.
August 8 was the initiation of my little Z to the cool pool, Wapelhorst - which I've already shared. Z had so much fun that we decided to go back on Saturday evening and take A this time too. Here's the shocking news - A went down the yellow slide! She actually went down twice but the battery on my camera had died so we have no pictorial evidence, you will just have to believe me. I am looking forward to taking all four kids there next year - they'll all love it! When we got home Saturday night as we sat down for dinner I asked Z to go look at the TV to see what was happening, he came back and told me - their swimming... the butterfly. I had to go check it out for myself - he was right! Think there's much swim talk happening at our house?
We stayed an extra night in St. Louis, originally we were going to leave after church on Sunday but we ended up staying and going to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (aka Arch. This was a lot of fun because it was the first time that Z actually understood what was happening. It was a really great time and I was so proud of how well behaved he was. In all it took us 2 hours to get from the end of the line, to the top of the Arch and then back to G'ma and A. When John and I realized that he said, "Wow, Z did good. If you had told me that we would have to keep Z in line for that long I would have said, here's a stick poke me in the eye now!" Thanks John! Poor Z - he gets such a bad rap!
Well - that is all they wrote in St. Louis! If you made it through all of this then just wait, I still have to tell you about Springfield! Oh and we must NOT forget the trip in pictures - montage to come when I get home and download 400ish pictures!