I'm Back!!!

Yes, I haven't blogged for a week! But I have a reason. We have been on a family road trip! That's right- a road trip with a 2 1/2 year old and almost 11 month old. Have we lost our minds??? I sure felt like it a few times :) We drove over 2800 miles. There were hours of kids screaming in the back seat, not much sleep at night, and lots of listening to "Wheels on the Bus." 

We began our journey at 5:30 am last Thursday morning. And we started our trip on time! Yay us! We drove to a town about 100 miles away where we boarded our dogs. Two dogs added to the trip would have just been too much. I was sad to leave them, but we had left them at the place before so I knew they would be ok. We stopped at Starbucks, and I got a decaf Pumpkin Spice Latte, and we were on our way! 

 

The first day was the longest. We arrived in St. Louis, Missouri at 7:15 that evening. We were all exhausted and wanted to get out of the car! We decided to go somewhere where we could sit down to eat so that both kids to eat. We picked Olive Garden. The food was good, and the kids enjoyed it. Maddie loved having breadsticks and my ravioli! She's such a little eater :) We went back to the hotel and took the kids swimming. Gus was so excited! I told him a few days before we left we would be going swimming and he kept saying, "I'm going to swim like a fish!" Maddie loved the water too! It was her first time swimming, and she was a little fish too kicking her little legs and splashing. And y'all- I even ordered a maternity swimsuit so I could get in the water with them. Brave right?!?! We got back to the room exhausted and fell into bed. 

 

 

The next morning we planned to do a few things around St. Louis. We wanted the kids to not be in the car all day. First we headed to the St. Louis Zoo. On our way we stopped at a beautiful park. We were just in awe. They don't have places like this in Texas!

 

We got to the zoo, and it was HUGE! You really needed all day to see everything, and we had planned to be there for an hour. So we headed to see the elephants since we don't see those at the zoo near us. On our way we saw some hippos that were AMAZING! I was excited about seeing them so close swimming in the tank. When we got to the elephants, there was the cutest little baby elephant! The zoo made you feel like you were in a rainforest, it was beautiful. I highly recommend going if you are nearby.

  We needed to shop a little while we were in a "city", so we went to the stores we needed to visit and also replaced my broken cell phone. We got back on the road and headed to our next stop. The St. Louis Arch was closed, so we just took a picture as we drove by! I'll continue about our trip in another post- I don't want to wear you out reading about our trip!