St. Louis--2006

It has been a while since I have posted anything new! We have been so busy with our vacation, and I have only had time to post about Melissa's puke ride so far! This time I will tell about the first part of our trip to St. Louis. We left our house at 11:30 p.m. on Monday July 17, 2006. Ben likes to drive at night so the kids sleep and we don't have to hear a lot of fighting or "I'm hungry!" "I'm thirsty." "How much longer?", etc. So, he slept all day to get ready for the drive. It took us about 9 1/2 hours to get to our hotel--The Adam's Mark--and then we had a full day! When we stopped for breakfast we took a pic of the McDonald's (it is in the Video) because we thought it was weird that you can rent DVD's at McDonald's, but when we mentioned it to Jimmy and Melissa once we got to Colorado, they just acted like, "Who DOESN'T rent movies at McDonald's?" So, it must be a trend in the states above Texas. Anyway, after we checked into our room, we set out to see the Arch! We went in the entrance under ground and made our way to the ticket booth. Jacob was in tears....he DID NOT want to ride the tram to the top. After questioning him about his fear (because it is very unlike Jacob to be fearful) I found out that for some odd reason he thought it was like a Six Flags ride and it was going to shoot us up to the top, loop us around and have us flying back down! Kids are so funny! I assured him we would be going slowly and there would be no flying involved. We bought tickets for the Riverboat ride down the Mississippi and the tram to the top of the Arch. We had about 2 hours before the riverboat would leave, so first we visited the museum under the Arch. It was very cool and interesting. The riverboat ride was first and it lasted an hour. I was good and dizzy by the time that was over, and we are beginning to find out Cole gets motion sick also, so he was not feeling too great either. Then we went to the loading area. It was very interesting to me how they get you to the top, because I kept trying to figure out how they were going to make an elevator go up a curved building without tilting sideways....anyways things like that don't always make sense to me. There are eight "pods" as I like to refer to them. They are connected and take you to the top like a train...or tram. Each "pod" has 5 seats and no seatbelts....which made Annalisa a little bit worried. We went to the top at the amazing speed of 4 mph...which is also how fast the riverboat took us down the river! Jacob was very scared the entire way up and would not let go of my hand! Once we got to the top though, he was fine and running around to look out the windows. Annalisa loved it until it was time to go and she got a horrible nose bleed. It was not going to stop bleeding, which just made her cry worse. The policeman came to check on her, but we had to wait 8 min. for the next tram to get there. Once we got close to the bottom, it stopped bleeding and she was fine. She kept telling us, "I had fun, but my nose didn't want to go to the top." I just love kids! We had a lot of fun doing all of that, then we headed back to our hotel room for a nap before the Cardinal's baseball game...which I will post about another time! I hope you enjoy the pics from the Arch and the riverboat I included in our Photo Story. Also, the kids helped make the Photo Story this time and it was lots of fun! It is about 4 1/2 min. long, though. Enjoy!