Staycation '11

For our summer vacation we debated taking the kids to some place warm with nice pools and a hotel room, but after many discussions we decided it just wasn't worth it this year. Noah is so young it made more sense to stay home and discover some of the locations we don't usually see right here in St. Louis.

Monday was rainy so we started the week off at the St. Louis Science Center. This place is great, its free to get in and loads of fun. There is a paid lot outside the entrance but we always park on the Planetarium side and take the walkway across to the SLSC. Abby has a new love for astronauts. She loves the moon and loved looking at all the space shuttles they had along the walk.

The other plus, windows looking down onto Interstate 64/40. This is Abby jumping on one of those windows.

Noah was awake for the first hour getting in on some of the interactive exhibits with Daddy early on.

We've peeked into Discovery Room before but never paid to enter. We figured with this actually being a staycation we should splurge and let Abby discover! So we paid the extra few bucks for one adult and one kid. The Discovery Room is full of interactive activities just for kids 2-6 years of age, including a water table. I'm not sure who had more fun in the water, Dave or Abby. You pay for a 45 minute session so after the first 25 minutes we switched out so I could play with Abby and he could sit with Noah. We also saw a great show, Science Goes Splat. The science team dropped different items from the 3 floor of the SLSC.

This is what Noah did during the Discovery Room.

Monday night we stayed home. Abby spent most of the evening playing in her sand/water table. She loves it so much, can't you tell.

While we played outside Dave took down our microwave. When we moved in we knew the microwave was hung incorrectly and didn't vent correctly. So Dave finally took it down, we've been a little busy moving in right before Christmas and having a baby. He was able to make the changes that were needed but when he looked back in the vent he found a surprise: multiple dead birds. It seems they knew birds were getting in the vent so covered up the vent outside the house with chicken wire trapping the birds inside. Yeah its gross, but Dave got them out of there and now the vent works.

Tuesday morning, it was warm outside so we decided to head over to Dave's parents place to take the kids swimming. Abby had only been one other time this year and Noah had yet to check out the pool. Abby is our water bug, she had a blast with her water wings or in her words "fairy wings." Noah liked the water, at least he didn't freak out. He's just so calm.

It wasn't the warmest day of the season, but Abby didn't want to get out. Her friend Charlotte came along too with her Daddy and little sister Audrey. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of them together.

This is Noah most of the time, chillin' with his thumb in his mouth.

And look at her go, no fear this one. We've been working on blowing bubbles in the water and this past weekend we tried to get her to hold her breathe and put her face in the water. She wasn't too impressed with that.

Tuesday night Dave had a Student Council Lock-in so I dressed the kids up for the 4th and headed out to the yard for some updated photos. I know I already posted a lot of these photos but I still love them.

Wednesday morning we were up and going early. It was going to be near 100 degrees and Dave needed to get some stuff done around the house so he stayed home and the kids and I headed to the World Bird Sanctuary. Its not far from our house and its free. The owner and founder of the sanctuary, Walt Crawford, is a regular on our morning show and the 4pm. He's a great guy, last year he was able to get us a private tour of the place. Plus its only 20 minutes from our house.

Abby loved it. She doesn't really understand why its so cool to see the wild birds up close but she has such a strong love for animals that she is actually interested in everything she sees and wants to learn about them.

The downside, the camera battery died after about 20 minutes.

There are a lot of birds sitting out like this owl on perches outside their cages. The reason, in the wild most birds spend their days sitting perched in the trees watching the world around them.

Abby also brought her camera so she took many pictures... weird thing they all look like the Disney princess's.

The sanctuary has a lot of bald eagles that have been found wounded in the wild. I tried to explain to Abby that these are really special birds that need a lot of care but she just wanted to pet them.

Wednesday afternoon/evening was busy. We headed over to Kirkwood, a neighboring community to check out Dewey's Pizza. We've heard many people rant and rave about the amazing pizza at Dewey's and it was great pizza. I liked it because it wasn't the paper thin pizza that most St. Louis pizza places serve. Abby was a fan.

Just about a mile down the road is The Magic House a children's museum that started as a house and is now truly the size of a museum. This summer, every Wednesday night the Magic House opens to the public from 5:30 - 9p for free of charge. We got there about 40 minutes before it opened so we checked out the outdoor garden and took some pictures.

It's hard to tell in this photo, but Abby is wearing buns. She loves them, saying she looks "like a ballerina."

This is my new favorite picture of Noah and myself. He's just too cute.

The magic house has so much to do. We barely skimmed the surface, doing a lot of things for very short periods of time, including fishing.

And checking out the water table, its a huge water table, it even has high chairs in the table for the youngest fans of playing in the water.

Again Noah was in the stroller just chillin'. This is one of the reasons I'm glad we didn't go somewhere. He would have spent even more time in this thing and after a few hours he just gets too crabby.

Abby was very brave going down the twisty slide all by herself.

One of the other cool things the "Jack and the Bean Stalk" where the kids can crawl up three stories of stalk. They got most of the way up when Abby decided she had had enough and made Dave turn around and come back down, which was NOT EASY! All the kids were going up, so trying to squeeze around the other kids was quite the challenge. It made for some good laughs though.

The traveling exhibit right now is "Alice in Wonderland." There was a lot of drums and golfing games in this room. Even Noah got in on the noise making.

You can't visit "Alice" without a tea party. Yum yum. Abby is such a good big sister. And Noah adores her. The way he looks at her is amazing....like she's just the coolest thing in the world.

One of Abby's favorite parts was this outdoor garden. She loved picking "vegetables" from the garden. There is even a little house where the kids can pretend to cook. Some of the best behaved kids we saw were out here. The rest of the place was an entirely different story!! Very frustrating!

This contraption was very cool. The kids put yarn balls in the entrance and they shot around and popped out of different holes. Daddy loved this just as much as Abby.

One of the newest exhibits at the Magic House is a look at our 3 branches of government including an Oval Office. Abby didn't really understand why she had to sit here but whatever.

Our last stop was the outdoor construction site. She really liked moving around the rock.

When we walked over to the caterpillar no one was around, but by the time Abby climbed in the bucket there was a line, so I didn't have time to get her up in the seat.

And we topped the night by telling Abby we were going to stop and have ice cream, this is the look of a very happy and exhausted girl.

Gotta love some Culver's.

Thursday we took the day off. We spent the morning chillin' at the house and that afternoon we went and saw two of our favorite people: Bob and Laura. These two were probably the hardest part of leaving our old house. We loved these neighbors. Abby loves them too. So Thursday evening we went to their place, the first time we had been back to the neighborhood since the move in December. Bob and Laura are both retired and spend a great deal of time traveling the world so this was their first time meeting Noah.

These two are peas in a pod. Last summer she spent most of her backyard time showing off her latest find from worms and crickets to her latest yard toy.

They just got back from a cruise that started in Australia and included stops in Singapore and South Africa. They had some great pictures from their safari.

Friday morning we knew it was going to be hot, like 105 heat index, so we got an early start and headed out to The Transportation Museum. Of all of our stops this past week this was our least favorite. A majority of the museum is outside and what is inside is a lot of vintage cars that didn't keep Abby's interest long enough to read the signs in front of them.

Abby did enjoy crawling around some of the train cars that are open to the public.

This train is actually a snowplow train used to clear the tracks in bad weather.

We scored free passes to get in thanks Tom and Nancy but the train ride was $4 a person, not too bad for unlimited rides all day. The ride wasn't the most beautiful ride, I would have rather taken the train at the zoo. Abby liked it and that's what mattered.

Check out that grin.

Abby liked this game in the car exhibit where she could pretend to drive a car.

This concludes Staycation '11. Overall a smart idea for the little ones in our life. Now we have to wait and see how the trip to Minnesota goes in just two weeks.