A Three Hour Tour...

I promise I'll catch up eventually. Apparently I posted the draft I'd been working on from our trip last week. Here is the revised version...with pictures!

I spent 4 days last week taking my parents to St. Louis, Missouri and Nauvoo, Illinois. We only spent a day in St. Louis, but we squeezed in dinner at Max & Erma's, the Arch at night, the St. Louis Zoo (AWESOME) and lunch on The Hill-the Italian District of St. Louis. The drive was BEAUTIFUL!

I am officially a hater of the GPS. I am not a fan of "Nora". She is annoying and my directions are better and don't get us lost. I also do not have imaginary entrances to the highway like "Nora", and I can accurately estimate my time of arrival, and be within 2 hours of my guess...unlike Nora.
Here we are at the Zoo. I was actually surprised that the girls were not afraid of the animals. I'd prepared myself for the typical "that thing is trying to get me" meltdowns, but the only thing quincy didn't enjoy was the carousel. SHe threw a total fit because the zoo carousel had zoo animals to ride instead of "horsies"...which is apparently what she'd had her little heart set on riding. She settled for a nap in my lap.

It's hard to believe she will be 2 in a couple of months. Sometimes it seems like she's still my little baby...probably because she hasn't hit the rotten phase yet.

Reese was pretty relieved that grandpa 'wrastled' that snake down before he could 'get us'. Phew. Thanks grandpa.


While we waited for my dad to finish getting directions to The Hill (which he would later ignore, because his GPS would rather take us the long way around, through the ghetto, where we would have the privilege of waiting 15 minutes for a train to move out of the way), I found a funnel cake stand to keep me from having a total meltdown.

The woman who made it handed it to me with a smile and said, "That there is the best one I never made, and I not EVEN kidding you.Some people likes 'em real brown, but I lets 'em crisp up on they own." DOn't be fooled by the less-than-enthusiastic look on my face...the picture was taken BEFORE I partook of the deep fried delicacy. It WAS pretty fabulous. Funnel Cake at the free zoo is now on my list of important stops in St. Louis.

The Hill. Everyone was named Vinny or Angelo (Not kidding), and we ate at a little brick sandwich shop called Adrianna's.
In Nauvoo, we stayed in log cabins that were built in the late 1800's, then moved to Nauvoo and restored. They were pretty incredible...and pretty tiny! We had our choice of which we would sleep in, and the owner told us the story of the original owners as we walked through each. I sat on the bed in one as the owner said, "yep, the original owner of this cabin gave birth to 4 out of her 5 children in here. I leaped off the bed and we decided on a different cabin.

The girls fell in love with the bunny outside our cabin. His name was butterscotch, and Reese wants Santa to bring her a bunny for christmas. Can they live outside? He was pretty cute, I might give in if I knew bunnyman would never be hopping around my living room.
Check out their "pioneer outfits" Reese is wearing Q's bonnet in this picture. I'll post one later of it on Quincy's head...she was quite the crowd stopper with her "BonDet". She loved it. The pioneer dress is from Grandma Lynda...some of you might recognize it as reese's halloween costume when she was 2...
I may raise my children to be haters of the GPS...but they will forever be LOVERS of CANDY!

As usual, the rest of the pics are on my mom's camera. Hopefully, I'll have time to burn them to a cd before they leave town tomorrow. Otherwise, maybe you'll see more pictures on their "blog" (hahaha....scotty you can do a post for them!)

I am really glad to be home. We had a great day today making homemade rolls and watching conference together. The girls played quietly and napped and I actually got to listen this time. They were great, and so were the talks. Maybe it's just that it wasn't interrupted a million times like usual, but I thought general conference was really REALLY great...and also, YAY! A temple in KC! That shaves a good 2 hours off the trip for us!