Day 3 - Citygarden

It was a really hot day, so, after Grant's Farm, we headed over to the Citygarden.  This is right down the road from the Gateway Arch. 

 

 

The kids went wild cooling off in the water.

 

Some event had just finished up in front of the old courthouse and a really sweet lady ran up and asked the people that were taking everything down if they would give our kids some balloons.  They were too big to fit in the van, but fun to play with for a few minutes!

 

 

 

 

Day 3 - Grant's Farm

A much better day!  We spent the morning at Grant’s Farm.  This place was a lot of fun for the kids.

Grant's Farm starts off with a tram ride around the property to view the old cabins there and all the animals that are now on the land.  We saw buffalo, deer, donkeys, ducks, geese, ostrich, peacocks, and a lot of different kinds of cows. 

 

 

 

 

After the tram ride, we checked out the baby goats.

 

 

 

 

Next, we went to the Animal Encounters show.  This was mostly a bird show with a pig and some rats thrown in.  Elaina's favorite part was the parrots that could roller skate and do math. 

 

 

Brielle wanted to volunteer to be part of the show, but I was very happy she wasn't chosen when I saw that the kids that went up had just volunteered to be part of a rat race.  Ewwww!

 

 

After that, it was off to the elephant show.  We had the perfect seats, back far enough that when the elephant sprayed water at the audience it stopped just at the row in front of us.   

 

 

Finally, we walked around the farm to see the kangaroos, wallabies, guinea pigs, chickens, eagles, owls , hawks, and Clydesdale horses.

 

 

 



Days 1 & 2 - Camping at the car dealership

We headed out at 8:00 AM the first morning in our, new to us, home away from home.

 

After a trip over to Brett’s parents’ house to fill up the water tanks, we finally headed out for real at 9:30.  We made a dozen potty breaks, stopped for gas, and then stopped at a rest stop to let the kids play on the playground and eat lunch.  Off we went, until the next potty break.  This is the stop, in the middle of No Where, Iowa, somewhere between Mason City and Waterloo, at 3:00, that Brett noticed something was wrong with the tires on the van.  He thought it looked like we needed an alignment.  There happened to be a car dealership across the street.  Unfortunately, after they took a look at things we found out the ball joints were bad……  Bummer since this is something Brett normally would have fixed at home for a LOT less money.  We were told it would be a six hour job to fix it.  The people at the dealership were really nice and let us park the camper and spend the night in their lot.  The mechanic stayed late and came in early and amazingly we were on the road again by 10:00 AM the next morning. 

Not the way we pictured our vacation starting, but, a night in a dealership parking lot and over $1000 later we were on our way again trying to make up for lost time.   
 

The drive through the rest of Iowa was insanely windy, but it got much better once we got into Missouri.  We made it to our campground in Cahokia, IL (just across the border from St. Louis) in time for the kids to burn off a little bit of energy on the playground before bed. 

 

 



Update

Graham's surgery went perfect this morning.  He has been his normal, happy self all afternoon.  Thank you everyone for your prayers!

Prayers Please

After testing Graham's hearing a couple of times we discovered that he has fluid behind his ear drums that are not allowing them to vibrate at all.  He is making a lot of progress with speech (he put two words together, without prompting, for the first time last week!!!), but we have decided that trying ear tubes might help even more. 

 

His surgery is tomorrow morning.  Please pray that everything goes quickly and easily as planned, for a fast recovery, and that this will get him communicating even more with us.

Zucchini Bread Surprise!

Last week one of the girls decided to make some zucchini bread for us.  She loves to cook and spends a lot of time in the kitchen, so I told her to go ahead and make some.  She did everything on her own, mixed the ingredients, poured it in the bread pan, and popped it in the oven.  The only thing I did was take it out of the oven when the timer went off (by this time she was off playing outside).  When I removed the bread from the pan this is what I found.

 

 

I'm so glad God provides us with a little giggle every now and again.  And very thankful for three daughters that are turning into wonderful cooks (much better than their mom!). 



Global Warming?