On the Road Again..

We are on tour-heading towards a city near you!  Get your tickets before they sell out!  We have decided that our kids will only travel with us for so long.  We are hoping we have a few more years of vacations with them. There will come a time when they don’t want to travel with us, and I’m not ready for that!  So, we are headed across the country.  Slowly.  Today we’re heading to St. Louis, Missouri.  We’ve been there before, but not for two whole years!  It seems like a month ago.  Ethan doesn’t really remember it, so we’ll relive it all for him. : )  Our plan is to have dinner (we had Cracker Barrel) and hang out at the City Museum until bedtime.  It is amazing!  It’s ten stories, all built from scrap.  There’s a bus hanging out over the roof (yes, you can go out in it)!  A big metal (slinky-looking thing) spiral tunnel hangs out at about the fourth floor, and you crawl through it (well, *I* don’t) and out to an airplane fuselage (which yes, moves around as people are heavy-more reason why I don’t crawl through it), but the kids love it!  There are thick concrete slides and mazes, rope swings over half-pipes (look like skateboard ramps), etc.  It is a Must-See on your St. Louis trip, second only to the arch (yes, last time I was there I forgot to take my camera, so I only have crappy iPhone pictures!)

**Ok..a couple hours later..I’ve been lost in time on Ches’ iPad looking (for our last arch pictures) at old pictures of the kids as they grew up right in front of us.  (Can I just say that I love the fact that there are three lanes going both ways on Interstate 44? Room to move around!)  They were small together, then we moved, and our little bushes were tiny, and now they are so big!  Our backyard was rolling green, bare, and the trees were small.  A lot happens in five years!**

I’d say we’ve had a good trip so far.  The kids have watched a couple movies, I read to Clay from his Edison Thomas (yes, I wrote it right) book, then Ethan took a good nap.  We are almost to St. Louis, and we are getting hungry.  (and now we have four lanes each!)

Can you tell I’ve been writing all day?  I wrote earlier, then came back, Sorry-I know it’s confusing. : )  We partied at City Museum till 10:30pm-and the teens were just getting started.  They turned out most of the lights at ten, and we just finished up.  There are soo many cave/tunnels to go through, and the kids didn’t even get to finish!  There were ten stories of tunnels building up to the ten-story slide!  Everyone was so tired, and Ethan was getting whiny.  It got stormy outside, and I think he might have been afraid or something.

I can say this: our community needs a cool hang-out like this one.  It gives the kids something to do late at night, it’s dark and cool, but safe-big enough to get lost in and give you a thrill, and it doesn’t involve getting in trouble.  It’s basically made out of tough stuff with paint everywhere, so they couldn’t mess it up either!  I give them five stars!  (and the magic show was pretty good too-even though Ches and I had to go onstage for a card trick!)

We’re headed to the hotel for a good nights sleep, then tomorrow we are traveling on to Columbus, Ohio!