Meet me in St Louis

Well, I promised it, but took a while to deliver...a summary of our trip to St Louis!  Let me start by saying it was an excellent trip, and, unfortunately, my pictures do not do it justice.  I missed out on some great photo ops with family that we don't see very often...let me justify it by blaming it on pure exhaustion...traveling with 1 year olds is not NEARLY as hard as traveling with 2 six month olds...but it's still not easy!  Luckily, I had EXCELLENT help!

Anyway, we've been trying for a while to figure out how to work in a trip so the girls could meet members of their family that they hadn't been able to meet yet.  With our busy lives, it's just hard to figure out an ideal time to make a trip to the other side of the Mississippi...when we started thinking about doing it over the Kansas City race weekend, all logistics seemed to make sense...except the fact that I knew I couldn't do the airplane trip solo, so we were able to (easily) recruit Mimi, and everything went like clock work from there.  Gary left on Thursday for Kansas City, then rented a car and drove over so he could meet us at the airport on Friday afternoon.  Marian came into town late Thursday night and we got up Friday morning and hit the road.  I am THRILLED (and a little bit surprised) to say that our trip couldn't have been better!  The girls were in great moods and handled the airport and the plane ride like pros.  We were all getting a little bit cranky when our plane was an hour late to leave, but that turned out to be our biggest problem, so I'd call it a success!  Coming home was even easier, and both babies even squeezed in a few zzz's, much to my surprise!

When we landed in STL, we hit the ground running...we went straight to lunch with Grandpa Ken, Great Grandpa Don, and Aunt Sis.  It was such a whirlwind lunch (with 2 tired little ladies) that I didn't get pictures, but I have some coming from Don and Ken's recent visit to our house...after lunch, we headed to the hotel and crossed our fingers that the girls would be tired enough to pass out in a strange place for a couple of hours.  No such luck, so we packed them in the car and headed to our "1st Dinner" with Uncle Kevin and his lovely family.  It was so great to see them, since Gary and I hadn't even seen them in at least 10 years!!!  It was a very nice visit, except that Macy had kind of hit her limits for "sitting pretty", and Gary and I had to work pretty hard to keep her from causing a scene!  After that meal, the fun wasn't over, since we were already a few hours late for a party (and "2nd Dinner"...IMO'S, of course) at Aunt Sally's!  Luckily, even as tired as they were, the girls were happy to have some time to run around and play, and LOVED the car and bubble-blowing lawn mower that awaited them.  Aunt Sally had also bought a few toys for the girls, and they loved playing with those and the dogs before finally passing out for the night.  We put them to sleep so we could hang out with the adults for a while, then headed back to the hotel...WHEW...what a day!!!

The next morning, we headed to Sainte Genevieve to see Great-Grandma Carol and John, and were able to squeeze in one more visit with Aunt Sis as well.  The girls had a WONDERFUL time.  Ma had bought all kinds of toys and books to play with, and the girls enjoyed those, as well as the unexpected favorite toy, the new doggie stairs to help Honey (the dog) get onto the bed easier.  Macy and Makayla were thrilled that they could practice their stair obsession in the bedroom AND the living room, and just couldn't get enough!  After a great lunch and playtime, of course we had to eat more, so we all had dessert and the girls enjoyed snacks at the big table with Grandma!  When the need for naps overtook us, we again packed up the car and headed back to St Louis. 

Since this weekend also just happened to be the weekend for the Christening of Gary's cousin Rachel's new little one, Nathan, Mimi headed to the services.  We knew the girls weren't quite ready to sit quietly through full Catholic mass (nor were we, to be honest! :)) so we decided to find other ways to fill up our time.  We decided to make the quickest trip on record through the St Louis Zoo.  By this point in the day, it was quite chilly, the girls were quite tired and grumpy, and apparently most of the animals were cold too, so they'd gone in for the day.  We practically ran to the various corners of the zoo to try to find the most exciting animals, but when we arrived to an empty space after about 5 tries, we finally decided to call it a day and get in the car to get warm! 

After that, we grabbed dinner, then headed to Rachel's house to have one more quick visit with the gang.  The girls were bashful at first, but then decided they just didn't care anymore and spent the entire time just wandering around among the grown ups...as long as no one besides us or Mimi tried to pick them up!  You'd have thought they owned the place!  :)  We were able to meet little Nathan very quickly, the girls got to meet a lot of new family, and then we headed to the hotel to crash.

Sunday morning, we got up fairly early to catch our flight out and Daddy headed back to KC.  We were back at home by 1pm, so it was a short day, and the girls were home in time to eat lunch and NAP!!!

It was a great trip, and hopefully our next trip won't be so long from now...we also hope everyone else will come visit us soon too!  ;)