Alex's First Trip

Where do I begin? Keith had meetings in St. Louis on Wednesday and Thursday, so he worked from home on Tuesday morning, and then we headed out in the afternoon. Why not take advantage of travelling when it's paid for by US Steel? Gas & mileage, Keith's food, and two nights of hotel were free to us. We had to pay for my food, parking in St. Louis, and the other two nights of hotel stay. Not bad for a 5 day vacation.

Alex's first long car ride went all right. Not great, but good enough. He slept for 2 hours, we took a break to feed him and randomly wandered a Walmart to give him some "awake time", he cried for about 45 minutes when we got back in the car, and then slept the rest of the way.

He did GREAT sleeping in the hotel at night. Yay! I was so worried he'd wake our hotel neighbors, but he was an excellent sleeper!


Alex & I hung out at the hotel while Keith was at work, then we randomly explored St. Louis with a little help from the GPS, visited a cloth diaper store to check out some diapers in person rather than online, and found a Christian bookstore to buy Keith a birthday present. GPS is accurate, but sometimes scary...it doesn't know good neighborhoods/bad neighborhoods. Yikes! Oh well - all's well that ends well!

After Keith finished work on Thursday, we went to St. Louis, walked in the park, visited the Western Expansion museum under the Arch, and had dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Alex got sleepy at the Spaghetti Factory, but he didn't want to sleep with so much activity around him...so he screamed. As soon as we left the restaurant, he fell asleep on Daddy's shoulder. Most of the city trip was fun; we could have lived without the screaming, but that's life with a baby, right? :)




Daddy's not strangling him, I promise! But this was Alex's less-than-cheerful face in Spaghetti Factory. Here he is after we left:

On Friday, we spent the day at St. Louis Zoo. GREAT day! The animals were fun, the baby was excellent, and the weather was perfect! We couldn't have had a nicer day! :) Alex was fascinated by the animals, and he took short naps in his stroller when he got sleepy.


Daddy took this cool butterfly picture! I love it! (By the way, thanks to Mama, the Butterfly Garden now has one less butterfly...I checked our clothes on the way out, but one little stowaway snuck out in the stroller. Oops!)



These penguins were soooo cool! Penguins are always fun, but these guys were putting on quite the show! They were speed-swimming through the water, then jumping out of the water right in front of us and splashing us. Alex was giggling whenever he got splashed with water.
No need for a zoom lens - this bird landed right in front of us!
After leaving the zoo, we stopped at Mommy's favorite on vacation: SONIC!!!!! Half price slushies during "Happy Hour"...yum! We soooo need a Sonic in NW Indiana!




Can you guess what color Keith's slushy was? LOL! (oops, the picture is a little dark)



Friday was also Keith's birthday...Happy 35th, Keith! Keith made me promise not to get him any gift other than the GPS, so Alex bought Daddy a new CD at Family Bookstore! I narrowed it to two CDs, and Alex picked which one we bought! ;)


We enjoyed the hotel pool on Thursday & Friday night. Alex loved the water. He just kicked back and relaxed in his floaty or in our arms.

Saturday morning was spent at the St. Louis Science Center. That's a pretty cool place...and it's FREE! (So is the zoo, by the way...St. Louis has lots of free stuff to do!) We left at lunchtime, but I think we could have easily spent the whole day there.


You can stand on a bridge over the expressway & use radar to check the speeds of the cars! How cool is that?! I'm cutting the details short so we don't bore everyone, but this was a great first trip with Alex. The next trip is comin' up soon... my niece Danielle's high school graduation party is next weekend in Baraboo, WI. The whole family is staying in a waterpark resort in the Dells for 2 nights. I'm looking forward to it, especially since I know Alex can handle the travel and enjoys the water *Ü*

By the way, Jen Schaap...do you recall this hairdryer? It's at the Holiday Inn in Collinsville, IL. We once used it to reheat pizza on a crazy weekend road trip! Remember that? LOL! What memories! That was 10 years ago...man, times flies! I don't think they've changed anything at that hotel since we were last there! ;)