The Pattersons: You can find me in St. Louis...

Hi friends! How was your weekend?

I'll just say it. Ours was great. Better than I could have imagined. My (and Kent's) apologies for flooding your Instagram feed these past few days but that and Vine proved to be the fastest and easiest way to quickly capture memories from the weekend.

Have you and your family been to St. Louis recently? If not, you should! The whole reason we decided on St. Louis this year was that one of Kent's customers at work offered him Cardinals tickets, then we sort of planned our trip around that.

Here's a quick-ish overview of what all we did! We fit a TON of stuff in!

We decided to leave town on Friday afternoon so we could stop in Ottumwa and see Kevin's new house and spend a little time with him since we would be missing his 33rd birthday bash the following day. Kev and Katherine spoiled the kids with millions of quarters at the Happy Joe's arcade which brought back sooo many fond memories of when I used to go to Happy Joe's when I was little. Why isn't there a Happy Joe's in Ankeny?? Keith and Cindy came too then we all went for ice cream and the big kids stayed at the hotel with Grandma and Grandpa while Kent, Kase and I stayed at Kevin's.

We hit the road early Saturday morning. I couldn't believe how smoothly the ride from Ottumwa to St. Louis went. I had seen some fun ideas on Pinterest about making little surprise bags to keep the kids entertained along the way so I made a few, but they each ended up only opening one of their bags. We were having lots of fun looking for license plates and all the other classic road trip things. Kase had a short nap and before we knew it we were in St. Louis!

Had a picnic lunch in Forest Park, where the kids had fun running up and down the giant hills. Then they spotted some guys setting up a tightrope between two big trees and soon the guys, some local college students, asked Kael and Kylee if they wanted to try. They, of course, did. Super fun and the guys had some good recommendations of things to do while we were in town.

Headed to our hotel, where we were very thankful to be able to check in early. We stayed in the Spring Hill Suites just outside of downtown. The hotel provided free passes to a nearby waterpark that also had a Jester Park-type outdoor playscape which the kids enjoyed.

Tired and hungry, we searched out a Mexican restaurant. The food there was definitely not our favorite and the service was super slow. The parking lot was a total zoo and we were all so thankful to just get out of there. Until I realized we had left the diaper bag at the restaurant. Doh! We had to fight parking lot traffic again but thankfully they had the diaper bag.

We decided to just drive around downtown for awhile and sort of scope everything out when Kylee needed to use the bathroom. We didn't really know where to take her but we were near the City Museum so we just hopped out and ran in there quickly. If you've ever seen the St. Louis City Museum from the outside, you know there is absolutely no chance you're going to get a kid to just run in and use the bathroom and leave without letting them play. See, the word "museum" is a bit deceiving in this case. It's more of a quirky, giant indoor/outdoor playplace. Not like a McDonald's-type playplace but more like...well just check out their website for a better explanation. It was a totally unanticipated stop but it ended up being so fun!

Sunday morning we planned to head to the Zoo. We knew that several things (Carousel, Children's Zoo, Sting Ray City) were free the first hour the zoo was opened so we made sure to get there ASAP, which turned out to be doubly beneficial because Kent was able to find a parking space super close to the zoo without having to pay the $15 zoo parking. Score! Admission to the zoo is free anyways, so we literally spent nothing and the kids got to do all sorts of fun stuff! If you're going to St. Louis, go to the zoo and go early! Totally worth it!

Back to the hotel for a quick lunch then loaded up again and headed to Grant's Farm. For me, this was an ok stop, but not my favorite thing we did. The tram was cool, but the farm was sort of anticlimactic since we had been at the zoo all morning. The kids were kind of like, "OOh. A cow from Spain. Neat." They didn't say that of course, but I could see it in their faces. We hung out long enough to get Sno Cones for the kids and free Budweiser samples for us, and then we were ready to get back to the hotel.

Kids swam for awhile then we looked for a fun place to eat. We ended up on The Hill, an Italian neighborhood in St. Louis. Lots of restaurants were closed on Sunday, but Kent noticed a little corner restaurant that looked open so we gave it a shot. So happy we did! Kent said it was the best pizza he's ever eaten. Check out Guido's if you're in The Hill!

We had pre-purchased tickets to the top of the Arch for first thing Monday morning, knowing full well that our kids would be awake. We had breakfast and were downtown by 7:15! Kids got a kick out of being the first ones in line and LOVED the little egg-like ("egg-avators" the kids called them, like "elevators", get it?) contraptions we rode to the top of the Arch in. I, myself, was extremely claustrophobic which the kids got an even bigger kick out of. :) It was really neat to be on the Arch and point out some of the places we had already visited, and show the kids the stadium where we'd be going later that night. Back at the bottom of the Arch, we wandered through the Westward Expansion museum, where Kylee had fun playing photographer. Girl got nearly 200 pictures on her little camera this weekend. So fun.

Back to the hotel for a nap for Kase, and one last swim for the big kids. Then it was off to Fitz's! I had seen this place come up on several of my pre-trip searches so I figured it was worth a stop. Totally was. Kids loved the bottled soda and the root beer float we shared at the end of the meal was epic. Epic, my friends!

Back to the hotel one last time to pack up and check out. Thank heavens for late checkout. They let us stay until 2:00 which proved to be absolutely perfect since we'd be hitting the 6:05 game later that night. In the meantime we had a few hours to kill and a baby that needed to sleep. Kent found the Science Center (again, free admission, people!) so I took Kael and Kylee in while Kent found a parking spot and let Kase sleep in his car seat for awhile. The Science Center was fun but the highlight was definitely picking out souvenirs in the gift shop. Kylee was absolutely determined to spend her own money (she'd been carrying a purse around all weekend) and was really concerned about finding something special for the small amount of money she had brought. I kept telling her I would be happy to buy something for her, but she was not interested. She finally found this little snake that cost $1.49 and she kept talking about how much fun we'd had in the Reptile House at the zoo and how if she could just buy the snake she would always remember the Reptile House. She looked at me with wide eyes and asked so seriously if her "one dollar bill, two quarters and four pennies" would be enough??? I didn't have the heart to tell her that tax would put her over the $1.54 she had, so I told her she had enough then I secretly slipped the cashier and extra buck and she smiled, gave me an understanding wink, and told Kylee that she'd even get some change back. Kylee was so happy and proud.

(To be fair, I'd offered to buy Kael something too (and Kase, of course, but he was still sleeping) but Kael politely declined.)

Then, f-i-n-a-l-l-y for the whole point of the trip: The Cardinals game!!! The tickets we had been given included a parking pass- we felt like such VIPs. We found our seats and you guys, we were only 7 rows up on the first baseline! Amazing seats and such a beautiful night for a game. I knew the kids were tired going into the game so I didn't have high hopes of lasting the whole game, but they were awesome. Kael really got into the game. Kase was a little squirmy so Kylee walked with him and me and we just explored for awhile. Back in our seats we lasted 'til the bottom of the fourth which I thought was pretty good. Kent wanted to get going anyways, since he had to work the next day.

Tired and happy, we loaded up and left St. Louis around 8:00 PM. The kids slept basically the whole way home. We stopped once for coffee and got home at 1:30. The last couple hours of the trip were a little grueling, but we made it! (Kent can't be away from work on Tuesday afternoons, for those of you wondering why we made the crazy decision to come home in the middle of the night. :)

I can't believe the amount of stuff we fit into just a few short days. I was also pleasantly surprised about the amount of free stuff St. Louis has to offer for families! I waded through all my photos and tried to find the ones I hadn't already posted. They are in no particular order.