President's Day Weekend

We now have an annual tradition. A year ago, our friends from Chicago came down over President's Day Weekend and we took a trip to the Meremac Caverns together. This year, Mike and Katie came down again from Chicago with their two boys, Dominic and Alex, and this year they brought the latest addition to their family -- lovable Maggie. Ryan and I always enjoy finding fun and exciting things to do with the boys in St. Louis, and this year we visited the City Museum in St. Louis.

I had heard of the museum from when my friend Jessica was in St. Louis for my wedding. However, I had most often heard of it described as "tubes you crawl in", and I somehow imagined a giant McDonald's Playland. (It's probably because my old church had one of those two story playgrounds and we called it "The Tubes".) At any rate, I had no idea what to expect, and it was nothing at all like I imagined. The only word I can think of to describe the place is "hyperactive".

The entire museum is dedicated to crawling, climbing, touching, and experiencing. And nearly every surface in the museum is made of "found" materials, whether it's spiraled re-bar you climb through, 50 feet above the ground, or the glass bottles made into a wall, or the bank vault you walk through to get to the wood drum you can run around in. They had several two- and three-story slides made out of brightly colored roller balls from a conveyer sytem.

They also had a great big area outside, complete with two real airplanes, perched about 50 feet off the ground. A few brave souls climbed through the rebar from the plane back to the building, dangling high above the ground.

The museum also had a hands-on aquarium area where you could do things like pet stingrays and view sharks and stare down the giant turtle (who didn't appreciate me taking a flash photo right in his eye too much.)

The boys were happy to have the chance to run around for several hours. Meanwhile, Katie and I enjoyed spending time with Maggie. Her dad Mike had fun playing with her, too.

On Sunday evening, we went bowling in Mt. Vernon. (Alex still remembered the two strikes he made last year when we went bowling at the same place!) On a side note, it's wonderful having all of Illinois smoke-free now, because it means the bowling alley is a nice place for clean family fun, and not so nasty and smokey.