Our Trip to St. Louis

Growing up in St. Louis I never ever thought I would live anywhere else.  In fact, when I met my crazy husband, it even terrified me to move counties!  But it's so faaaarrr!!!  LOL  I don't think anyone would've been able to convince me that someday I would follow that man to the other side of the country & raise our family in rural Vermont.  Never!

But I did, & I'm so very glad that I did.  But my biggest objection all along was that I didn't want to be so far away from our family.  Even in the age where there's cell phones & emails & Skype & FaceTime, it still is oh-so-very-hard.  We've been here for two years now, and things have been getting pretty stressful.  Who wouldn't be with the amount of work we've taken on with the house on top of working full time & trying to raise three kids??  We were really needing a break, & taking time to see family was the perfect respite.  (The time off that I requested from work was initially supposed to be for our trial vs. Nationwide, but that's been postponed indefinitely.  Sigh.  We won't dwell on that part...)

Anyway, it all started out with Matt & the kids picking me up from work after a busy 12 hour shift to start our 1250 mile drive.  (Self admitted crazy people, I'm tellin' ya!)  Well, it turns out, when you're not carrying a 24-foot loaded trailer behind your vehicle, the drive is not that bad!! lol  20 hours of driving, with Matt & I trading for naps, & we were there.  The kids are so used to being stuck in the car for long drives they did wonderfully.  (And it helps that the first 10 hours they spent sleeping!)

We spent 9 wonderful days with family, staying with his brother Martin, his wife Sarah, & their two adorable girls.  I've barely gotten to know those two since we've been so far apart, so it was SO great to be Aunt & Uncle for a while like I wish we always could be.  Isabel is just eight months older than our Natalie, and they became best friends right away.  We were all amazed at how well they got along the WHOLE time!  They're 4 & 5... we figured the attitudes would come out sooner or later! lol  But they were great!!  (Makes me even sadder that they're not closer together to hang out more.  :().

Natalie & Izzi playing with Doc McStuffins.  They played so well together the grown ups actually missed them! ;)

Natalie & Arianna playing with their coincidentally matching "Waddles" penguins.  Too cute!

 We only got to see Arianna a couple of times before we moved.  And now she's a big 2 1/2 year old!  She really took to Gavin & Uncle Matt.  She was too cute with them!

Ari & Matt

The day after we arrived, my dad drove across the state to meet up with us for the day.  We were so happy we could make that work!!  First we had breakfast, then we went to spend some time at the Butterfly House.  Hard to believe, but we'd never been!  After that we went to this pretty waterfall in Forest Park for a photo op.  (You guys thought I was crazy with the camera.  You should meet my dad! lol)  

Bubbles make everything more fun!

Snuggles from PaPa

All of us with PaPa & Nancy... and some random kid in the background... ;)

 We were sad to say goodbye so quickly, but hopefully we'll see them in Vermont soon!

After that, we tried to cram in as much family time with everyone that we could.  It started off with dinner at Matt's Aunt Zarah's.  This lady is about as incredible as you could imagine.  She just got back from visiting her family on the other side of the globe, and instead of sleeping the day away (which is probably what I would be doing!) she instead spent two full days making Matt's favorite Persian dishes for 20+ people.  OMG so amazingly good!!

Love this lady!!!

It seems we took Vermont weather with us while we were there, because it was such a gorgeous week.  The kids took full advantage of the mild evening & played outside at Zarah's house that night with all of their cousins.

Playing catch with their cousins Jordan & Jack.

I want to frame this. lmao!

So what's a trip to St. Louis without a trip to the Zoo!  We of course took a short detour there while we were in town.  It's been a while since we've been able to go! 

The girls learning about elephant skin.  We got to see Baby Priya!

While we were there, we got to meet up with my dear friend Angie.  GOD I was so happy to see her!  Have you ever had a friend that you've known for years ~ one that you sometimes get caught up with life & lose touch a little bit, but any time you get together it's like you can pick up right where you left off??  I'm lucky enough to have that with Angie.  I've known her since I was 14, and I love her to pieces! :)

Angie with my silly kids

After a little while in the Zoo, we went back to Art Hill & had a picnic.

Yet another *beautiful* day!

Afterward, we decided not to walk all the way back to the Zoo, but to stroll around the Art Museum instead.  Some of you may not know, but our 13th wedding anniversary is coming up.  We actually had our wedding reception at the Art Museum!  After checking out some of the art, we thought we'd head on up to see the old reception hall.  Turns out that they've turned it into office spaces now :( but we still thought it would be fun to go see.

Right down this hall was where our reception was held.  We have photos of our cake in front of this chandelier!

First comes love, then comes marriage...  Thirteen years ago, I had to climb up into this window well in my wedding gown for a photo with my wedding party! lol  Now we get to duplicate the photo with our three beautiful kids! <3

One of the other fun things we did with Martin & Sarah was go play Frisbee Golf.  We'd never gone before, & it turned out to be super fun!  The kids really enjoyed it! 

While we were there though, Gavin thought it would be a good idea to jump over a little creek bed.  He made it over, but we learned a couple days later that he landed face first into some poison ivy.  Awesome.  Poor dude!  (He's all better now.)

We also spent plenty of time just hanging out. 

Missing one, but I like this picture of the guys!

Pretty rare to get all of these boys together.  Can you tell they're brothers or what! lol

Fire pit & wine.  Perfect night! :)

On Friday night, we joined Martin & Sarah for their Friday night routine at their local Mexican restaurant.  And we brought along the whole family!!  Margaritas abound!

(Almost) the whole fam!  Fun times!

John & Caroline & their *massive* margarita!  Yum! :)

Mitch, Martin & Sarah sharing some laughs.

 So much fun!

Oh!  And one more thing!  We have been planning all along to get a cat.  We'd planned to get one once we moved into the new house, but we wanted a specific kind & Matt wondered if we might have some luck while we're in St. Louis finding the one he wanted.  Well his musing aloud turned into reality.  We added a new member to our family while we were there!

Meet Todd!

We found him online from a rescue shelter & just had to bring him home.  Now Copper has Todd to play with!  (Get it?? ;))

We had such a wonderful time in St. Louis.  We were so sorry to see it end. :(  We hope that we'll be able to head that way every couple of years at the very least.  But in the mean time, we hope that all of our family & friends will be able to come up here & see beautiful Vermont!

P.S.: 
Sorry for the pic-heavy post.  I had to narrow it down from the 1100 pictures I did take!  Not even kidding!!