Our STL Weekend

Since we were in St. Louis on Friday to drop off our car, we decided to make a weekend out of it. St. Louis is about a two hour drive from Fort Leonard Wood, which makes it a bit much of a trip to do back and forth in a day. At least for me. I hate driving.

Luckily for us, one of our best friends from Georgia had to be in town for business, so we made it a whole Army family reunion. It was our second time getting together in St. Louis, the first being the 4th of July. This time we were determined to visit all of the hot touristy spots that we didn't make it to the first time.

Saturday morning was spent at the City Museum and Aquarium. I was disappointed, because it ended up only being a giant indoor/outdoor playground, rather than an actual museum. Had I known, we wouldn't have spent $17 a person. V doesn't like slides or caves, and Adri is too small to do that sort of thing. For older kids, it would have been a blast, but a children's museum is what I was hoping for, and this certainly wasn't it.

In the afternoon we had a late lunch, followed by nap time, and some drinking by the adults in the evening. We switched our original rooms to adjoining ones, which ended up being SO much fun.

On Sunday everyone met up at the Zoo after breakfast. Visiting the St. Louis zoo was one of my summer bucket list items, so I guess we can cross that one off now. Everyone raves about the zoo, and I have to say I agree with all of the hype. We spent the entire day there without getting bored or running out of things to look at. The girls were able to pet bunnies and brush goats. Unlike the zoo back home in Miami, all of the animal exhibits were close to one another, and the animals all looked alive.

Today will be spent cleaning like a mad woman! There is tons of laundry that needs to be done before they come to take everything away tomorrow. I can't believe we'll be leaving Missouri on Friday!

I apologize for not keeping up with your blogs, once everything calms down this weekend, and we make it to Florida, I'll get back on track!

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4th of July Weekend Recap

Wow! What an exciting and fun filled weekend it was for us! We had a little Army family reunion in St. Louis. Our family of eight formed while we were back at Fort Stewart. Now one couple is in Maryland, one half of a couple is at Fort Bragg, and the other half of the couple and our clan of four at Fort Leonard Wood. We've been able to meet up several times since we've all PCS's and it's been wonderful. This weekend was no different.

On Thursday we all met in St. Louis. We first met at the mall to get some lunch, and Hubs and I each needed to buy a pair of nice shoes since we never repurchased them after they were stolen. From there, we checked into our hotel, which was a dump. I was super disappointed that we were at a Sheraton, yet the furniture was worn down and torn, and the carpet was all stained. The staff wasn't exactly friendly either. The upside of the hotel was it's location. The Gateway Arch was just about a mile away, which made it walkable distance. Good thing too, parking would have been a disaster down there!

Thursday evening we headed down to the Arch to catch the fireworks and concert. Trace Adkins was performing! Even though we couldn't see him from where we were sitting, we could still hear him. There were vendors all over and amazingly, the beer line was the shortest. Yay! Shortly after the concert ended, the fireworks began. It was such an amazing expereince to be able to watch them from under the Arch!

On Friday we switched to a different and much nicer hotel and then hit up Six Flags. Over the weekend, active duty military was free, their dependents were like half price, and if you bought your ticket online it was something like $36. The water park  was our first stop. After and hour and a half wait in line, we switched over to the regular amusement park. It was a little difficult since we had two little ones with us, but we still had a great time. We spent some time in the kiddie area where both V and Adri got to go one rides, and then the big people got on a few coasters. Six Flags had fireworks all weekend so we caught them again on the 5th.

Saturday was our beer day! We started at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. While waiting for our tour to begin, we got a free beer in the lobby. We did a short tour where we were able to take photos with the Clydesdales. After the tour, they give you two free beers of your choice. They had a pretty good selection too! I was finally able to try a Straw-ber-rita and it was pretty good! I'll probably be buying them in the near future! From the tour we headed to Grant's Farm, another Anheuser-Busch property. It was like a small zoo with a petting farm.  Once we made our way through the farm, there were two more free beers waiting for us. At the end of the day, we were exhausted!

For dinner on Saturday night, we went to Kobe, a hibachi restaurant. It's been a while since I've been to a hibachi place, but it was just as good as I remember. Our chef put on an awesome show. V was a bit freaked out with the fire a couple times, but she ended up liking it. The food was fantastic, although I wasn't a huge fan of the fried rice. I was too stuffed by the end to eat it, so that doesn't really matter. After dinner, we sat in the hotel courtyard and caught up some more.

Sunday was our low-key day since everyone was getting ready to head back home. The morning was spent at the pool and the afternoon consisted of lounging around upstairs. We had a late lunch/early dinner followed by a chat with our brand new financial adviser. It's pretty convenient when one of your best friends is a financial adviser. I know we'll clash occasionally with money decisions, but it's comforting to know that he actually has our best interests in mind.

So that's it!! After a great weekend, we made the two hour drive home and arrived right around bedtime last night. I've got some unpacking to get done today, which means that meal planning and grocery shopping will have to wait until tomorrow. No biggie though. I'm pretty sure we have some sort of leftovers or something in the fridge that I can make up into dinner. You can still join the link up below.

It's going to take me the rest of this week to catch up with my favorite blogs and get some more posts up.

OH! And a GIGANTIC thank you to all of those that supported me in the Top 25 Military Moms competition. I finished in 14th place!!






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