Chicago and St. Louis

 In May, Matt needed to make a business trip to visit customers in Chicago and St. Louis. We decided he'd have more fun if the boys and I went along with him. So he rented a car (through work), reserved some hotels (also through work), and we all got a pretty nice low-cost family vacation out of the deal.

We'll take any excuse to go back to Chicago in the summertime. Here are the kids at Crown Fountain, getting soaked after an evening of shopping and walking the town.

They hold hands like that because they know it makes me all gushy and weak. Right after this they probably got me to say, "You're right, boys. Good brothers DO deserve candy for dinner!"

We spent the next morning at the Field Museum, one of our favorites. The kids had fun going nuts in the percussion room, digging for fossils, harvesting corn in the pueblo, seeing the dinosaur skeletons, and eating McDonalds next to some aggressive birds and teenagers. 

But overall, their favorite part of the museum was all the buttons. When I wanted them to move along or follow me, all I had to mention was the buttons around the next corner and they'd race to get there. I need to get some of these at my house.

That night, we drove to the suburbs and had dinner at the house of Matt's co-worker, Jeff. He has the sweetest family and lives in the cutest neighborhood. They were most excellent hosts. 

The girls took good care of my boys. Here they are very involved in a group game of Fruit Ninja.

That night we stayed at a hotel, and while Matt had meetings the next morning, the boys and I tried out the pool. They got all excited and had me blow up the floaties...only to head back to the room 15 minutes later. Aside from the air and water being a little too cold, let's just say I blamed a particularly disgusting swim diaper for our early return.

With our pool plans ending early, we had hours to kill before Matt was finished working. So we played a lot of hide and seek in the hotel room and got really good at pillow fighting. We had to get energy out somehow because we were driving five hours to St. Louis after lunch. It was nice for me to just spend time rough-housing with my kids, not having anything else to distract me.

Leaving Chicago, I remembered there are two things I definitely do not miss about city life:  crowds everywhere, and traffic. Oh, the traffic! Fortunately the boys were really good in the car. And it did cheer me up to look back and see this face.

That first night in St. Louis, Matt had a work dinner to attend. The boys and I went for a walk looking for a playground, but didn't find one. So we went back to the hotel and got in the pool. This time there were other kids there, so I could hardly get them to leave for dinner and bed time. We picked up some St. Louis style pizza next door and feasted in our room before collapsing into bed. 

The next day, we had free hotel breakfast with Matt's coworker Chuck. Then after a short meeting, we went to the enormous St. Louis Zoo, which we all really loved. Here's Jude with all his essentials: sunglasses, hat, binoculars, and plastic spoon from breakfast.

Josh was our little map-keeper. He made sure we got where we wanted to go.

Our favorites were the gigantic grizzly bear (not looking so gigantic here) and the emperor penguins.

After naps that day, we went to dinner at Fitz's Root Beer Factory, where we discovered some delicious black cherry soda, and then to the famous Ted Drewes for frozen custard.

Our last day in St. Louis, we went to the Gateway Arch. It's really, really tall. The tallest monument in America, in fact. 

It was interesting to learn the history of St. Louis and the symbolism of the Arch. The boys played on an old balance scale while we waited for our turn to go up.

The tiny little elevator cars they send you up in could cause some major claustrophobia. There's no room to stand up, just five seats for five people to sit in a semi-circle in this little egg-like vehicle. There's one tiny window that I had to look out to stay calm. They send up eight cars at a time (eight from each end), very slowly and rickety. But, it did its job and got us to the top.

The top of the arch is like an upside down pyramid, The sides both slope out diagonally so you can lean against the walls and look down and out the tiny windows. I was surprised at how small it was up there, but it offered a cool view of the city and the Mississippi River.

And that's a wrap. We had thought about visiting a couple more places on the way out of town, but decided we were all a little beat and just wanted to get on the road. We said good bye to the beautiful Arch as we left.

Instead of making the ten hour drive all in one shot, we stayed in a little place called Ft. Wayne on the way home. It's a small town, and we had a wonderful empty hotel with a big suite room and everything we could need. We took advantage of the pool again and Josh learned how to swim with floaties, which was a big victory! 

It was a great trip. The city sites were fun, but my favorite part was just being with my family for a few days without the usual distractions. I need that more often.