Saint Louis

Saint Louis was truly the first big family of four adventure for this brood. It was our first time to stay over night several nights in a row in an unfamiliar place, take a pretty long (for us thus far) car ride with a 2 and 3 year old that are both in the middle of potty-training. Our first time to spend hours on end in "special" places with both kids, hoping that everything in our back-pack will provide for us, so an emergency Wal-Mart excursion was NOT in our schedule for the day.

So, you get the point. This may not seem like a big deal to many families with small children, but for Dad-O and I, it was a time to prove our theories on committing to a few years of staying close to home before introducing our sweet babes to the world beyond JoMo. We decided very early on (maybe even before E) that a few years of staying pretty close to home would be just fine. After all, it was easier on our pocketbook, (with me staying home that was good), and our kids would not remember the first few years anyhow? Our theory is that if parents choose to take the kids on BIG adventures in the first few years, it is for the PARENTS more than the kids, and we wanted to wait until the kids would enjoy it as much as we did.

When this summer came around, we were ready to tackle the world. Starting with THE ZOO!!!!

In true Roger's form, we were at the gate as soon as the zoo opened. The kids were excited, asking about all the animals we would see. E was ALL ABOUT the hippo. She had seen one being fed at a local zoo and she was hooked. It has been her favorite zoo animal for quite some time. B had a slightly different approach to the zoo. At the same local zoo we had visited once before, the train was not yet running for it was a bit early in the season, so ALL he wanted was to ride the choo choo train!!!

We saw the hippo and rode the train FOUR times.

Among other things....................