St. Louis Memorial Weekend

A now annual event, we decided to head down to St. Louis in May to try to beat southern midwest heat. Success! It was a beautiful weekend. We couldn't rally all the troops on short notice over Memorial Day weekend, but we did dear friends the Narwani's on board for a two family trip to the city under the arch.

 Already a monument has been made for our amazing son. No, wait, I spoke too soon, it's for that super famous Cardinal left fielder, Lou Brock. Well, fine then, we still can pose darn it.

The day has come! We wait all year for this day! The City Museum! Brock has come miles in a year when it comes to climbing and he took off without hesitation, embracing most slides and almost all holes dark, and all latter-ish things that went up up up, down down down and all other which ways.

 So as you know by now, when we don't have our wonderful sister-in-laws, we take a limited number of photos. It's also the City Museum, we're down on our hands and knees lost in the catacombs or physically defying pre-middle age bodies, so a little slack must be given.

 This year there were only a few slides that Brock was too scared for, otherwise, he was game for anything. Except for maybe sitting through a terrible escape artist that was very loud. We came prepared this year with knee pads and I for one can say that I was very grateful for them. We explored so many new areas that 2 year old Brock couldn't quite navigate, and we just had an amazing, exhausting time. Brock asked if we could go back on Sunday and Monday morning, but we had other places to go. "Will there be tunnels to climb through there?" He's starting to understand that there really isn't any other place like it.

 

 Having discovered the "Magic House" last year, St. Louis' wonderful children's museum last year, we revisited this year without disappointment.

 I feel like all children's museum pictures are now running together. We had this last year, then also at the children's museum near Seattle...  

 But...this year Brock made his own!! This is his own Murray drawing. Which he has been doing a lot of lately, and getting quite good at. 

 I am totally making one of these for Brock for his birthday. Notice my fox, which I am obviously quite proud of to point out, up in the right corner.

 and who do we have here? Matt made this, not Brock, to be clear.

 Sand was the summer exhibit.

 Brock, as ever, is quite the naturalist. He noted the "perfect" flower, which I agree with wholeheartedly. By the way, we are on our way to dinner at Bridge, a place we really like that we go to every year (remember Jim and Julie that amazing cheese!?) with a larger time buffer to play in the awesome fountains and the city garden playground.

 Brock and Dash (who Brock says is his best friend now) and Matt playing in the dangerously interval-ed squirts.

 This is actually a new thing. Brock was never much of a get-wet-with-surprise kind of guy, but had a blast. Here he is playing with Kiran and Liam.

 A lovable hydrant...

 dressed up for a night on the town!

 We also had a great meal at Bridge, as usual.

Next day, looking for new stuff to do, we decided to check out the famed Forest Park. We rented a paddle boat and had a fabulous time meeting the local creatures and picking up any trash we saw.

Brock adamantly wanted us to take a picture of this log. 

We saw a duck family and slowly crept up on them to not scare them off. Apparently everyone feeds ducks here, so as soon as they saw us they were glued to the side of the paddle boat for a good ten minutes. They did not like pretzels. Sorry for my fingers in the way of all the action. I was scared of dropping my phone in the lake and it was too bright for me to see my fingers on the screen. (Matt's fingers here, btw)

 We saw a really cool "crane" which we found out was an egret, in the heron family (which is not in the crane family).

Lazy Monday. Looks like Brock is giving a colossal meh to the paddle boat. 

Yes, we were looking at a turtle!

As shown at the City Museum, Brock is really kicking some climbing booty (booty is his favorite word, I'm sad to say. Right up there with penis and buttface). Sigh.

A perfect finale shot! It looks photo-shopped, but it's real!! oooooooo. Love you St. Louis!