City Museum

Well, it was time for the annual MHBC Youth roadtrip to do something fun and go shopping. This is a fun event that we take every year on the Saturday of MLK, Jr. Day weekend. We try to go to different places each year, but they almost always include a mall, for spending the Christmas gift cards! Last year's trip was less than spectacular, because we went to Crown Center in Kansas City, thinking it was a good mall. But, it's not a great mall for kids to run amuck in, because it just didn't have a lot of chain stores that they would like (i.e. AE, Hollister, etc.). About the only chain was Victoria's Secret (not so appealing for teenagers). So, this year we wanted to make sure that we would have lots for them to do! We headed to the other side of the state this year, to St. Louis for the City Museum and then to the Galleria.

The trip was pretty uneventful, until we got into St. Louis, and then we took several wrong turns because the driver had directions to the art museum, instead of the City Museum! Then the bus lost me (in our van, with Elena, Ruth, and Mom) in the middle of Forest Park due to a yellow light. And when we called Charlie to ask where they had gone, he told us "Go to the end, then turn right on Delmar." Well, if you haven't been through Forest Park, about every 15 feet there is a "Y" in the road... so, which one was the end?! Needless to say, we never found the bus, but everyone did manage to find their way to the City Museum! The City Museum is really like a giant jungle gym... it has all of these cracks and crevices, a fake cave you can crawl/walk/squeeze through, these giant spring things that you climb through to get to other levels, an arcade, an aquarium, just more stuff then you could ever do in one day! Ruth and Elena and I mostly stuck with places that the stroller could go- so no crawling through caves for us! But we did find some fun stuff to do, and had a blast going through the aquarium. We even got to pet sting rays, which were a little weird feeling! Then Elena and I got to slide down a tunnel that went through one of the tanks in the aquarium. Anyway, we had a great time running around, even if we had to stick to areas that were stroller accessible!

After the City Museum, we headed to the Galleria. We spent a couple of hours shopping, which was interesting because of the rules at the Galleria- any kids 16 and under have to be with an adult, and adults have to be 21 or older- so Ruth and James didn't count as adults. But we had a good time anyway, even though everyone had to go to some stores they didn't care about... see Charlie and Scotty at Baby Gap! :)

To finish up the evening, we stopped off at White Castle, where James and Charlie just couldn't resist splitting a case (yes, A CASE) of burgers. The case holds 30 burgers, so they each ate 15!! We discovered afterwards, that 15 burgers and an order of fries is the same as 2900 calories! They were both looking a little sick by the end of the case, but managed to make it home anyway!

All things considered, it was a great youth trip. Only the one snafu with the directions, which mostly just gave Mom, Ruth, and I a chance to do our "I love to be right" dances, and provided the priceless quote now used for all direction-giving- "Just turn left at the end and right on Delmar!" And I can't wait to go back to the City Museum, maybe without Elena, so I can really enjoy it!