Bethany's First Day of Preschool

Bethany started preschool on Wednesday.  She goes 5 days a week in the afternoon, which is really nice for us because we still have a whole year left before we'll be forced to get out of bed at an early hour.  She was very ready to start school and make some new friends.  Most of all, Mommy and Daddy were ready for her start so she could finally have someone to play with and stop asking us to play with her every hour of the day. :-)

Heading out the door with her backpack.  I called it a book bag once, but she quickly corrected me.  "It's a backpack, Mom."

Walking to school.  It's only a couple of blocks away.  So as long as the weather's nice we're going to walk everyday.

 Showing her friend her backpack.

 Bethany and Trinity, a little girl she knows from church.

When she got home, I asked her how it was and she said, "It was GREAT!"  Upon more questioning I found out she played in the kitchen center and drank 3 glasses of water at snack time.  And they read a story together.  The teachers were quite impressed and wondered if she had been in preschool before since she knew all about raising her hand and such.  What can I say?  She's a star!

St. Louis- Day 3

This day didn't start out too well.  Mostly because it started at 12:30 that morning.  William woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep.  My mind is fuzzy on all the details. (I think I blocked it out, so I would still claim him as my child.)  But I know for the longest time, we just let him cry it out.  It became apparent that wasn't working after 45 minutes or so.  We tried bringing him  in bed, but he just wouldn't fall asleep.  And I just couldn't let myself relax with him in there with us.  It went on for quite a while.  Finally Shane thought to give him some Tylenol.  After 20 - 30 minutes, William drifted off to sleep.  By this time, it was 4:30. I don't know why we didn't think to give him Tylenol right when he woke up.  I don't think he was crying at first.  I think he was just talking and talking in the pack and play.  If that ever happens again, he's getting the Tylenol right away.  Amazingly, Bethany slept through the whole thing.  Once she's asleep, she sleeps like a rock.  So that was one thing to be glad of.  Needless to say, we didn't hop right out of bed in the morning.

When we did get up, we got ready and headed down for breakfast.  Funnily enough, the shirt I had planned for William to wear that day said, "Dad's Best Friend".  Well, after the night we had, nothing could be farther from the truth.  We had a yummy breakfast at the hotel and said good bye to Grammy and Papa who had to head back for a wedding.  Then we loaded up the cars and set out for our destination that day:  The Magic House.

The GPS managed to find this place with no problems and we were there just a little bit after they opened.  Before we even got inside we saw some amazing sand sculptures.  It was themed after their traveling Alice in Wonderland exhibit.

We had a little bit of a line, but we didn't wait too long.  Once we were all paid for and given our stickers, we set out to explore.  One of the first stops was the bubble room.

 Trying to meet in the middle.

This was a pretty cool exhibit where you felt inside the cubby hole to guess what kind of ball was inside.

We skipped over a few exhibits that were just over the kids' heads.  They involved math and other things.  They definitely looked neat and I'm sure we'll be checking them out in the future.

Next we came to the Children's Village.  In hindsight, we should have ended here and spent the majority of our time here.  Bethany loved it.

First stop was the grocery store.  Bethany was in heaven.  She wouldn't stop moving long enough for me to get a good picture.

Checking out with a real scanner.  And she did it like a pro.

Grandma took William into the toddler area to have some fun.

Bethany was taking our order at the pizza parlor.

Meanwhile, William was enjoying the toddler slide.

We moved on upstairs to some other cool exhibits.

Down the three story slide.

A hair-raising experience.

She loved this too.

She sees the green boat.

"Daddy will you get the green boat for me?"

"Just send it down the river."  Who's supposed to be playing here?

The bridge was a hit.

One more look at the sand carving.

The Magic House was really neat, but it was also really crowded on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend.  It wasn't as great as I was expecting.  We had a good time, but the crowds and lack of sleep the night before, kind of put a damper on things.  If/when we go again, I feel like we'll enjoy it more because: 1. We'll go on a less crowded day. 2. I kind of have the layout down and we'll end in the Children's Village so Bethany can spend lots of time in there.  The morning felt rushed because we were trying to make it back to the hotel in a timely manor for William to get a decent nap.

After The Magic House, we were going to stop by a cake shop I had found on the internet that makes Gooey Butter Cakes.  It was called Gooey Louie and sounded delicious.  We put the address in the GPS and looked and looked with absolutely no luck.  However, we did find gas for 3 dollars and 50-some cents.  That was way cheap compared to home.  So even though we never found the gooey butter cakes, we did score some cheap gas.  We ran through the Arby's drive through, and after one French fry, this is what I see in the back seat:

We got back to the hotel and tried to put William down for a nap.  Amanda and I went to the outlet mall and did some power shopping in two hours.  I got some good things for the whole family.  Shane and Grandma took the kids swimming after naptime, but it was questionable if William ever settled down for a nap.

After we got back from shopping, Shane and I got ready and headed to the wedding of a college friend.  The whole purpose of our trip to St. Louis.  It was a really lovely wedding, and they are such a refreshing couple.  They are so others focused and are so sweet.  We had a good time, but didn't last long into the reception.  That short night was catching up to us.

While we were out, the kids found a way to have some fun in the hotel room.

A little game of cabinet peek-a-boo.

One more day left in our exciting adventure.  Find out how the trip wraps up.

"Sink" Louis - Day 2: The Rest

After lunch we went to the monkey house.  It was a really neat old building that I think was from the 1904 World's Fair as well.

There was a green house-like area in the center of the building.  It was really cool.

William enjoyed watching the monkeys.

Bethany wanted to go back to that "monkey eating the salad".

 

Next we went to the reptile house.  William was having a great time because we let him get out of his stroller.

Hmmm. What's in here?

William really liked this snake.

Bethany did not share the same opinion.

Then the snake fell down the glass towards Bethany and she was out of there!  Good thing Aunt Amanda was close.

We had moment where we couldn't find Bethany.  I thought she was with Amanda and she thought Bethany was with me.  We just went back around the last corner and found her.  It shaved a few moments off my life, though.

William and Grammy had some fun with sunglasses.

"Here I am Grammy!"

Next up were the rhinos and hippos.  However, it proved to be a little tricky to get there.  The zoo was doing some major construction on a new sea lion exhibit.  So the route we were going to take was blocked off.  Since we couldn't go that way, it seemed like a good time to ride the train.  We had to backtrack a little, but there was a train waiting at the station, so we quickly folded up the strollers and hopped on board.  The train normally costs $5, but that was included in the Safari Pass as well.  This Safari Pass was really working out for us.

It was a really fun ride on the train, and the conductor told us a lot of interesting facts about the zoo.  Did you know that the St. Louis zoo has more visitors per year than any other zoo in the US? We were very surprised by that fact.

I couldn't turn around to take pics so I just pointed the camera back there and blindly pushed the button.  I ended up getting one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip.

It was nice to a break from walking, and all too quickly we pulled into our stop.  Next visit I must ride the train all the way around the zoo.

We found the rhino and this guy was HUGE.  There's no way for a picture to do him justice.  He seemed kind of agitated and was pacing back and forth.

The hippos had a really neat exhibit where you can watch them swim underwater.  It was such a different side to big old hippos. Shane said that he always wondered why they portrayed hippos as ballerinas in the cartoons.  But when you watch them swim, they really are graceful.

How would you like to brush those chompers?

The cheetahs were up next.

So what's William do while we're all looking at the cheetahs?  Try to stick Daddy's sunglasses up his nose.  Boys.

Bethany found some neat things to look at.

And William found a rock.

Then he found a blade of grass.  Hmmm, what should I do with this?

How about try to stick it up my nose!  Boys.

The elephants were next.

The very cute baby elephant.

Then we posed for a family pic.

I know you were wondering what kind of crazy animals those were. ;-)

We were all starting to get tired and the zoo was noticeably more crowded than when we arrived.  So we decided to skip the children's petting zoo.  Bethany and William can visit Uncle Jeremy's petting zoo sometime.

We wanted to take a quick look through the insect and butterfly house, mainly to see the butterflies.

But we got distracted by some cool leaf cutter ants.

There weren't many butterflies out, but they did have some pretty flowers in there.

We managed to spot one or two butterflies.  The zoo keeper said they are much more active in the morning.

Another pretty flower.  I thought it was really unique.  Plus, I like taking pictures with my new camera. :-)

We made our way back for one more ride on the carrousel. 

Then we decided to call it a day.  We left the zoo, and tried our luck with our GPS.  I think she managed to get us back to the hotel with no problems.

We relaxed for a little while at the hotel, then Amanda, Dad and I left to pick up supper from a BBQ place.  We took the food back to Grammy and Papa's room and dug in.  It was really good.  After supper, it was time to get down to business.  Today was Papa's birthday, and Bethany had to help with the candles.

Happy Birthday to you . . .

Papa needed help with the candles, and Bethany jumped right in.  There really were quite a few candles.  It took both of them several tries.

We hung out in there for a little while longer.  I took William back to put him down for bed, and Bethany got her hair done by Aunt Amanda.

 

Before too long, the rest of them came back to room and Bethany went to bed.  Mom, Shane, Amanda, and I debated over what to watch on TV, but finally settled on a few different shows.  After a fun, busy day we were ready for a good night's sleep.  If only we would have gotten one.

Tune in next time to find out what happened.