st. louis zoo

After we finished at the City Museum in St. Louis, the boys and their families had to hit the road. They had a long drive ahead of them. The rest of got hotel rooms in St. Louis. That turned out to be quite an ordeal but it all worked out in the end. Friday morning we took it easy and had a swim at the hotel pool. We played a pretty serious game of keep away. 

Our hotel just so happened to be right across from Tucano's, which is Ben's favorite restaurant, so we all went there for lunch.

I, for one, ate a whole lot of delicious meat. Too much, in fact. After lunch it was time for our last set of goodbyes.

These two are quite the little pals and got along so well this time around. There's just something so special about cousins

We had a heck of a time deciding what to do after lunch. We were quite tired and just heading home sounded pretty nice. But we were also considering going to the St. Louis zoo since we were there (and it's free!) but it wasn't terribly close and it was in the opposite direction of home. After much debating we finally decided to go and we were so glad we did!

It was a beautiful day and the zoo was really nice and the kids were great!

Up close and personal with the gorilla.

This indoor penguin exhibit was a lot of fun. The penguins were fun to watch and it gave us a great chance to cool off a bit.

We brought our double stroller to the reunion so Mara could use it for Lincoln at the museum. We were so glad to have it at the zoo. Declan fell asleep on the way there so we just transferred him to the stroller and it worked great as a way for each of the older kids to have breaks. And Emry was a trooper hanging out in the stroller pretty much the whole time.

After a few hours at the zoo we headed home. The kids slept the entire 4 hour drive home and it was great!