Our last trip of the summer

Last week, we heard on NPR that gas consumption by Americans was down for the summer. We have been consuming more than our fair share and probably need to buy some credits to offset our huge carbon footprint from all the travel we did this summer. Despite all this, we loaded up the grocery getter one last time this summer for a trip to St. Louis! We visited our friends, the Jacobs and the Klings and met their new babies!

We stayed with the Jacob family and they were great hosts. The first morning, they took us to a place called the Magic House. It's pretty much a hands on children's museum. The kids had a great time and it was a good way to pass a rainy morning.

This is the statue on the way in. Evie and Adli joind in the fun.
Annalise had fun playing on the slide. She went down several times by herself and even navigated a net tube all on her own.

Yikes! Four Evies! That's a lot of Evie's asking questions!
We did some art and science too before we left.

Later, after a pretty good naptime, we braved the pouring rain for a trip over to the Kling house. It was so fun that we forgot to bring the camera inside until we were ready to leave. The girls had lots of fun playing on the stage that Chris built and there were so many toys to play with.
Evie, Campbell, McKenna and Annalise pose before we leave.
We got back to the Jacobs house really late because we got lost. After the kids went to bed, we celebrated my birthday with this amazing chocolate cake. The cel phone is there to show you the scale of this thing. It was delicious! Thanks Moe!

Of course, we got to meet baby Mazie. She was full of smiles in the morning, but wasn't interested in posing for the camera.

We loaded everyone up and went to the St. Louis Zoo.
Evie used her own camera all day. She is just like Grandpa Taller. It will be interesting to see how her pictures turn out and how many heads she cut off.
We walked the Dinosaur trail with Disney style dinosaurs. This one "spit" at us. Gross.
At the end, Adli and Evie dug for dinosaur bones.
Annalise gets in the action too, but was quickly distracted by the amount of sand getting into her sandals.

In the kids area, we all got to pet the snake. Annalise tried to kiss it on the lips. I think we have a future vet or zoo keeper on our hands.
Then there was the frog dome. Kissing frogs is ok as long as it is through glass, but how many germy hands have touched that glass? I don't want to think about it.

Also in the kid area was a goat pen that you could go in and chase goats around. You can imagine how excited Annalise was. All the kids had a chance to brush a goat.
Annalise couldn't choose just one. .
She would have loved them all if she had a chance
Mazie was unimpressed with the goats and surrendered to her sweaty confines of the baby bjorn.

Post lunch, we headed for the rides. I think it was the only time all week that everyone was in agreement on something.
We rode the endangered speices.
Thanks for hosting us! We had a great time!
We topped off the trip with a ride on the train. By the end of the ride, we had 3 tired kids and decided it was time to head home.

Evie slept most of the way through IL, and they were both good on the way home. I am happy to hang up the car keys for a while and just hang around home for an entire month before our next road trip!