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A family vacation recap

By Dawn Sailors In Just Dawn

Well I finally got through vacation pictures. There were a lot of them, and I promise not to drag out vacation posts this time so I’ll just touch on the highlights here.

After a long car ride, we spent the first night lounging in our swanky hotel suite and swimming.

Yeah, that was the best photo I could get. She was antsy to get in the pool and not in a camera mood. Ha.

The next day though, we kicked it off early with a long walk around down town. We visited the local library, window shopped antique stores, and ogled mansions in ritzy neighborhoods.

That afternoon, after a short rest, we headed out to what I had been looking forward to the most, visiting the City Museum. I’d highly recommend that if you ever find yourself in St. Louis, you make a trip here. It was indescribable and amazing. None of my photos really do it credit, because even when you’re there, it’s overwhelming to look at and hard to figure out exactly what you’re seeing sometimes. Here is my best shot to give you a glimpse into the wonders:

Essentially, it’s an ‘architectural museum’ where everything you see is something you can touch, climb on, climb in, slide down, crawl through or play with. The above photo is part of the outside section, but the entire interior is a maze of tunnels, slides, games and so many other things. There are restaurants, coffee shops and even a vintage clothing store in the giant building. There are also giant ramps, propellers, the world’s biggest pencil, huge fish tanks, over-sized ball pits, and too many other things to list. Here are a few more photos:

Clearly you can tell by how many pictures I took that we really enjoyed the City Museum. I think if Vera would have been a few years older, it would have been even more fun, since there were a lot of things that we couldn’t explore with a toddler in tow. But even so, we had a blast. We want to plan another trip when she’s old enough to remember and appreciate it!

After the museum, we were pretty worn out, but we thought it was necessary to make a quick obligatory trip to visit St. Louis’s most famous landmark. We didn’t wait in line to go inside, but we spend some time walking in the surrounding park.

The next day, was the first rainy one in more than two weeks in SL. It was much needed, so we didn’t let it get us down. Instead, we headed to Forest park and explored the history museum, and the art museum. First up, history. Brett was excited about the World’s Fair exhibit, and Vera was thrilled with the stuffed dalmatian “puppy” we got her from the fire exhibit. My favorite by far though, was the underwear exhibit. I know! But it showcased different styles of women’s undergarments from the early 1900s through today and it was so interesting! My favorite part was that they showed the underwear alone, and then an example of how it looked under the fashion of the time. They also had explanations of each piece and why they were popular during the time period.

[Right here is the spot where I had planned to show you awesome examples of women’s underwear, however my computer seems to have eaten all the photos from my phone, and then deleted them. It was raining when we ran in, and I left my real camera in the car for this one. I am trying to remain calm and hoping a trip to the Apple store can restore the 1300+ photos I am currently missing spanning the past year or so. Trying. If you’re interested though, you can visit the museum’s website for photos from the exhibit.]

After the history museum, we stopped at the art museum for a quick visit. It was beautiful and contained some amazing artwork from a few folks you may have heard of– like Picasso, Monet, and Van Gogh. Yeah, I’m an art nerd. It was fantastic.

When we left the art museum the sun was coming out again and we hit the road for home. We did stop halfway in Kansas City for the night and enjoyed another relaxing hotel and some more pool time, but we were all ready to get home.

As I mentioned in an earlier post this week, I still had the rest of the week off and we’ve been using it well– working our butts off on that guest bathroom! More on that to come soon, but for now, have a great night!