St. Louis Adventure - Part 4

Tuesday morning we woke up to more clouds and rain.  Oh, well.  This was the day we had planned as a split day, with Ethan and Kate having the opportunity to explore a space that would not be appropriate for Anna ... City Museum.

Whenever we mentioned our Spring Break destination to friends in Madison, each and every one of them recommended City Museum.  Wikipedia describes City Museum as "a museum whose exhibits consist largely of repurposed architectural and industrial objects, housed in the former International Shoe building in the Washington Avenue Loft District of St. Louis, Missouri."

From our friends' reports, it is an awesome, several story climbing adventure.  This place sounded just right for 2/3 of our children.

This life is still a balancing act for us.  We do our best to provide our family with appropriate opportunities to build memories and experience the world around them.  However, some things just aren't accessible for Anna.  Sure, City Museum's website gave a variety of ideas of how we might be able to make it work for Anna, but in the end we decided that it wasn't worth it.  Some things are; this one wasn't.  We'd rather be able to spend our entire vacation together, but sometimes Kate and Ethan need to be able to experience things Anna can't.

Anna and I dropped the three others off at City Museum in the morning, then headed to the St. Louis Science Center.  We had an okay time, but it was also busy, crowded, and not nearly as exciting as The Magic House.

City Museum lived up to all the hype for Matt, Kate, and Ethan.  Here's a few moments that Matt managed to capture.

Anna and I picked the others up in time for another "indoor picnic" and then we decided to visit somewhere off the beaten path for the afternoon; we were all tired of crowded spaces by then.  We had seen signs for the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site nearby and decided that would be a fun stop.

Ethan was a bit reluctant to go in at first, but about half way through the movie portion of the tour, he got my attention and said, "You were right, Mom.  I DO like this."  Maybe it had something to do with all of the music playing in the background :)

We toured the upstairs, watched a video about Scott Joplin's life, focusing on his time in St. Louis, and then came the highlight of the afternoon ... the opportunity to watch/listen to a player piano play two of Joplin's songs.

Afterwards, we decided this was a nice change of pace from the crazy tourist destinations of the previous 48 hours.

By the time we finished our tour, our brains and our bodies were done.  We joined Bonnie back at her house for the second half of a movie we'd started the night before before going out to dinner and later ice cream at Ted Drewes.

Other memories from Bonnie's house include the kids playing "monster" in her living room, having ice cream for dessert every night, and watching movies in the evenings.

Wednesday morning we packed up, make Bonnie some cards, and headed back home to Wisconsin.

The trip home was much less eventful than the trip down on Saturday had been.  We stopped in Bloomington/Normal (again) on the way home.  This time we visited with my Uncle Paul and Aunt Patti at their new home.  The kids got a chance to stretch their legs and play; we all enjoyed some delicious Monical's pizza; and the adults had a chance to catch up and visit with one another.

Overall, the trip was a good one.  In spite of the weather, all of the logistics worked out smoothly.  The good memories outweighed any challenging times and everyone is excited about the next time we can go somewhere together.  As Kate and Ethan get older, they can do more and more for longer periods of time, and as Anna continues to recover she can also participate in more and more activities for longer periods of time.

So ... hooray for the St. Louis Adventure trip!

St. Louis Adventure - Part 3

Monday was our first family sight-seeing day.  Unfortunately, the weather was cruddy for our entire stay in St. Louis (we saw the sun in WI when we left on Saturday and then not again until we returned to WI on Wednesday), but we made the most of it.

We opted for visiting The Magic House (a.k.a. St. Louis Children's Museum) in the morning and early afternoon, with a planned trip up the Gateway Arch in the late afternoon.  Apparently, most of the rest of the midwest also had Spring Break this same week and a good portion of them decided to visit St. Louis.  Needless to say, almost everywhere we went was very, very busy.  But the kids did well.  The craziness only really got to us on Tuesday.

Our first stop, The Magic House, was bigger and better than Matt and I remembered it from our childhood; our kids thoroughly enjoyed it all.

Anna LOVED just about everything that was in the math/patterns hallway.

She spent a good portion of the morning creating different geometric designs.

Kate and Ethan liked the Children's Village best in the morning.  Pretending, whether it was fishing in a stream or taking care of pets at the vet's office, was just what they needed on Monday morning.

 

Sometime mid-morning we ventured up to the third floor for Kate and Ethan to experience the three story slide a few times.  After that, the kids discovered more tinkering supplies and proceeded to create a variety of courses for balls.

Finally, we needed to stop for lunch.  Instead of hauling all of our food into The Magic House for lunch (or paying exorbitant prices for the food there), we hauled the kids out to the van (through the rain) for an "indoor picnic".  Not only was it relatively easier this way, but we also all were able to give our ears and brains a break from the loud, busy environment of indoors.

After lunch, we headed back in to explore the second half of the magic house.  Anna and Matt found an oversized lite brite,  

while Kate and Ethan made music in the large instrument display.

They also climbed the giant beanstalk several times about the point in the day that Anna needed more of a rest.  She used her crutches the entire time at The Magic House and was very fatigued by the end.

Activities that were fun, but not pictured, were the train layout, the mural made with the ends of crayons, and the mock governmental offices.

We ended our visit with a stop at the construction site.

All three kids (and the big kid, Matt) hauled pea gravel, worked on transporting bricks to the second story of a building, and practiced installing water pipes.

It was a fun place to round out our trip to The Magic House.

Next stop ... Gateway Arch!

This one we'll summarize in only a few words.

Raining.  Wait.

Line up.  Wait more.

Ride up.

 CROWDED.

Wait more.  Ride down.

Go home!

It was another day of adventures.  The kids are already talking about how "the next time we go to St. Louis" we should visit the arch on a sunny day, and go back to The Magic House.  :)

St. Louis Adventure - Part 2

Sunday morning we enjoyed a delicious breakfast prepared by Bonnie before joining her for Palm Sunday worship.  At the last minute, the kids decided they wanted to participate in the "Parade for Jesus" with other children in the congregation.  They all had a memorable time and loved being able to wave their palm branches during the remaining songs.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the opportunity to worship with family and friends in different places.  The depth and breadth of the community of followers of Jesus is awesome to witness.

After some down time and lunch at Bonnie's house, we ventured into the city for our first actual adventure IN St. Louis ... a trip to the zoo!  Knowing that we couldn't possibly be able to see everything there is to see in one afternoon, we let the kids pick their top choice of animal to visit.

Kate wanted to see the big cats (of course).

The snow leopard was a favorite, but the entire big cats exhibit was pretty cool.

Anna wanted to see the okapi (perhaps because Bonnie had a stuffed okapi at her house?).

All of the giraffes and other African savanna animals were housed indoors, since the temperature in St. Louis hadn't exactly warmed up to real spring weather yet.

Ethan wanted to see the penguins.  We happened to arrive just as one of the zookeepers was feeding the penguins.

Ethan wasn't the only one in our family who liked watching this event.

Even though we had brought along Anna's wheelchair for this outing, she was still getting fatigued by this point.  Actually, no one in the family typically sleeps well the first night of a vacation, so everyone was starting to drag after a couple of hours.  We headed back to Bonnie's house for games, dinner, and a movie.

The whole family slept a little better on Sunday night, which was just what we needed for the next day's adventures!

St. Louis Adventure - Part 1

Spring break began on Thursday, March 23, at 2:55 p.m.  The kids were very, very ready for a break from the school routine and we were all looking forward to spending some time together as a whole family.

Our destination this year was St. Louis, MO.  Although both Matt and I had visited St. Louis when we were kids (multiple times for me), our family had never completed this particular road trip to see the sights.  Partner the family's interest and the possibility of seeing extended family and friends along the way, and we had ourselves a well-planned vacation.

Friday the kids played merrily all day while I worked to prepare for our departure.  Although we had been conscious of the weather forecast for St. Louis for the days we would actually be there, we didn't pay too much attention to the weather of our travel day until Friday evening.  It turns out Central Illinois CAN have snowstorms at the end of March, and one was predicted for all day on Saturday.  Bummer.

Saturday morning we added a new term to our general family guidelines ... adventure.  Matt and I checked various online resources and gathered some "on the ground" data from our different relatives in Central Illinois.  After weighing our options, we decided to brave the roads, and only ended up leaving about a half hour later than what we were originally planning.

Here's a couple of screenshots of the weather in Illinois that day, first the actual weather at 8:47 a.m. and then the predicted weather for 2:30 p.m.  Our route was straight down the length of the state.

 

It's a good thing we chose the word "adventure" for the day.  We had clear sailing for the first half, but then the snow started.  Conditions progressively deteriorated until we reached the low point during which the road was covered with an inch or so layer of rough ice.  The kids kept track of how many vehicles we saw in the ditch that day ... our total was somewhere between 35 and 40.  But Matt's careful, slow driving kept us safe.

Needless to say, the first leg of the trip took longer than normal, but we arrived at Matt's Aunt Kathy and Uncle Martin's house mid-afternoon for a nice visit.

The kids had a good time stretching their legs, eating their first round of special treats, and playing some good imaginative games.

The snow continued while we visited with them for a couple of hours and our trickiest driving was probably getting from their house back to an interstate.  Once we reached about 30 miles south of Bloomington, the roads were fine and our only precipitation was rain.

We ended up in St. Louis at my godmother's home around 6:30 or 7, with some kids who were very ready to be out of the van.

4H, Music Program, and Conferences

October and March have their own set of extra activities.  In October the kids all usually have a back-to-school night as well as fall conferences.  March includes music programs for some of the kids and conferences all around, too.  Add in a few other activities, and we have another busy month.  (Now that I've written this down, maybe I'll remember this calendar trend in years to come and plan accordingly.)

Let's start with the 4H activities.  Last Thursday Kate spent the evening at a local trampoline park with her 4H club.  None of us realized until we arrived that the Madison school district didn't have school on Friday, but once we learned that little tidbit, we understood why the park was so busy on a Thursday night.  Oh, well.  The kids all had fun, and no one got hurt.

Friday after dinner Kate and I traveled to Upham Woods for the 4H sponsored ArtBEAT camp.

This one night getaway is designed for kids in grades 3-5 and allows them to experience a few of the different artistic endeavors that you can learn through 4H.

Creative arts, drama, music, origami, dance, and communication were all enjoyed.  Of course, the outdoor experience of camp was a hit, too.

Parents were allowed to come along for this particular camp and we ended up with about a 3-to-1 kid to adult ratio.

Plenty of experiences were packed into the 24 hour camp, including sleeping in the cabins.  Somehow one end of our cabin ended up with about 15 girls and only 1 adult.  Kate and I were in the middle section of the cabin, so Kate was able to get a little more rest than some of those girls.  However, I would venture to guess that few of the kids got a decent night's sleep, especially considering the number of tears and/or frustrations shown by our group in the sessions after lunch on Saturday.  Oh, well.  That's part of camp, too, right?

Despite the lack of sleep, I think it was a good experience for Kate.  At least she has some good memories from it.

Fast forward to Monday evening ... the 5th grade art and music program.  We started our evening looking at some of the artwork in the library.

We found some seats and watched the solo and ensemble performances.  Anna participated with a small group, singing one of the songs to be performed by the whole grade later in the evening.

Our family had some awesome seats for the first round, but then we were some of the last to enter the gym for the main show, which meant we ended up sitting on the floor across the gym from where Anna (and the rest of the action) was taking place.  But Kate tried to get us a few pictures.

Overall, the show was fun and impressive, especially considering the music teacher put it all together and about half of the 5th graders had multiple speaking/singing/playing/dancing roles in the performance.

The action packed few days ended with Ethan's final preK conference on Tuesday morning.  He's doing well and very ready for kindergarten next year.  We hope that transition will go as smoothly as the rest of his schooling transitions have gone thus far.