Archive for September 5th, 2010
Day 1 technically started out a little further North than St. Louis…Lafayette, to be exact. On Saturday, we kicked things off by helping Riley and Taylor celebrate their 5th birthday! We ate some rockin’ grub, unwrapped some rockin’ presents, ate some rockin’ cake, and danced to some rockin’ tunes before we smashed our guitars against our amps and packed in to the tour bus to head south.
Now, a note about Sunday morning…we’re on Central time which means that we’re up even EARLIER than normal. 
We rolled out of bed and got ourselves all polished up to hit the St. Louis Zoo! We had all sorts of energy and sprinted down the walk and around any sort of crack, barrier, wall, fence, or rock to the entrance of the Zoo. They had a special deal for the holiday weekend, so we all got hooked up with wristbands for all of the special stuff. That means we got to do the Children’s Zoo (playgrounds, petting zoo, etc.), the train, the 3D Dora & Diego movie, etc…and we sure got our money’s worth! That’s on top of all the animals and exhibits. My favorite animal was the bat eared fox. Parker says his favorite was the same, but I think he is just being a big stupid copy cat. My favorite thing we did was playing in the farm community. Parker’s was…PARKER…STOP SAYING YOUR FAVORITE IS THE SAME AS MINE! Ok, so, now he says his favorite was the train ride.
After the zoo, it was too late in the day to try to hit the City Museum, so we decided to light up the night (afternoon?) with a trip to the Anheuser Busch for a tour of how they make beer. It was super busy, so we had to kill some time in the gift shop and milling around the lobby of displays and beer stuff, but we eventually got our move on. We show how they make beer cold. How they make beer hot. How they make beer stinky. How they put stinky beer in bottles…all of that stuff. Then, when we were done, we got to go to the Hospitality Room where they had free fruit punch and pretzels! Man, I wish they would have showed us how they make that fruit punch…it was good!
Finally, the adults had their fill and, before they lost the legal right to drive, we decided it was wise to pack in and hit the street for some St. Louis style pizza. After some searching, we landed at Imo’s Pizza. We chomped some super cheezy garlic bread while they cooked our cheese pizza. I don’t know if you’ve ever had St. Louis style pizza, but it was wild. The crust is super thin and the cheese is…ummm…different. It was very good, but definitely a new experience for us, which is what our adventures are all about.
Now we’re back at the hotel and hanging with Ethan and Caden in our room. A little hide and seek while we watch Home Alone is rounding out our night while the adults fondly remember the brewery tour.