Day 6: Last Day in St. Louis

Our last day in St. Louis started with the earthquake. After getting packing the car, we stopped at the World Bird Sanctuary since the museum Alexandra wanted to go to didn't open until noon.

We enjoyed looking at raptors, but it started raining so we decided to go eat lunch while we waited for the museum to open.

We showed up at The Magic House just after noon. This is a neat children's museum with lots of hands on activities. We had a lot of fun playing with the above nail wall. We were making prints of our hands, faces, etc. I love how the above photo shows Alexandra's ponytail!

In the adds for the museum, they show a boy touching this electricity ball and Alexandra was anxious to give it a try. I didn't think her hair would work since it is so long, but it looks neat! I even paid a few dollars for them to take a photo and make a magnet for the fridge.

Alexandra's 2 favorite rooms were the library (where she played librarian) and the bank (where you could open a safe and use an ATM). I loved how they library talked about the Dewey Decimal system and had little mouse models about the various numbers. This one shows that the 400's are for "language."

Our last planned stop for the day was Meramec Caverns, and then we planned on heading to Oklahoma to spend a few days with family. The walking tour was a little over an hour and was a beautiful place I remember going to as a child.

Then, our unscheduled stop a few hours later... the ER... and then my new home for the next week, a hospital room. This was definitely a vacation week... I mean 2 weeks... we'll always remember. And, we're so glad to be home. :-)

Day 5: Paddle Boats

We ended up day 5 of our St. Louis vacation at the Boathouse which is near the zoo. There is a restaurant there, but there was a 2 hour wait. So, we elected just to take a paddle boat out for an hour. It was a beautiful evening and we had a lot of fun.

Of course, I enjoyed getting close to the ducks. We saw some more wood ducks! They're so beautiful.

There was a larger area to boat in - we chose to go around a decent-sized island. On the island, we saw more ducks and red-winged blackbirds. As we headed back to shore, we were shocked at how strongly the winds were blowing against us and it was HARD work to get back to shore.

Alexandra started out in back, but then she gladly took a turn paddling. It's nice that she's tall enough to help!

That night, we went out to eat in the restaurant that is connected to our hotel. Afterwards, I just stepped outside and took some photos of the arch lit up. From our hotel room, you could see about 1/3rd of the arch and Alexandra enjoyed sitting in the window just looking at the arch.

I just forgot to post this photo the other day. We went to several neat restaurants, but this was our favorite. In about 6-8 tables, there were board games set into the table. We let Alexandra choose and she picked the Clue table. We ate, then played a full game, and then had dessert. It was a great 2 hours of food & fun.