Epic Road Trip - Day One

We left in the wee hours of the morning in the hopes of getting to St. Louis in time to do something fun.  I had the car all packed on Wednesday night, so that all we had to do was throw the girls in the car in the morning and head out.  As you can see, I took advantage of every available space in the trunk!

Of course, the girls all woke up and thought it was a great time to start the day at 4 a.m.  They wanted to know when they were getting their first Road Trip Rewards.  I told them they would have to wait until at least 6:30 a.m. and that convinced most of them to go back to sleep.  Early on, we made a pit stop in Metropolis, Illinois.  The girls pulled their second road trip rodeo card and had fun following the instructions.

This rest stop was pretty cool because it had a playground.  We thought it would be a good idea for the girls to play for a few minutes before we headed on to St. Louis.

 Brian was bouncing Emma on the seesaw and she flew forward and slammed her head on the board in front of her.  For a minute, she lay their completely limp and I was convinced he had killed her or at the very least given her a concussion.  She ended up with a giant goose egg on her head, a scratched up nose, and a very apologetic daddy.

 We didn't make it to the giant Superman statue - we were all a bit preoccupied with Emma's head.  We did stop for a minute to get pictures as Superman.

 We finally made it to St. Louis about 1 p.m. and were able to go to the zoo.  A friend of a friend works there and got us passes to all the attractions. It was hot out and I'm pretty sure the girls' favorite attraction was this misting fan.

 The girls all perked up after getting some icecream and popsicles.

 Charlotte was really cute walking around the zoo taking pictures of everything.  The girls have taken a ton of pictures, but unfortunately, we have already misplaced the camera, so I have to find where it went missing in the car, so I can share some of those pictures.  We're missing all the pictures of the hippos at the zoo, where Emma was staring at awe at their sizes - amazed that they were almost as big as Brian.

 We spent the night at the Embassy Suites and you would have thought it was the Ritz-Carlton.  While I was checking in, the girls asked Brian how we could ever afford to stay somewhere like this!  They were excited to take advantage of the amenities.  We went down for the managers reception and in a span of seven minutes, Emma dropped and broke a plate, Charlotte ate six pounds of salami, and Ella fell out of her chair and started screaming her head off.  The day had been going fairly well up until then.  Charlotte cracked me up saying, "Flying plates, falling chairs, crying babies, too much salami...we're not getting invited back. Clumsy family. Next, we'll have drowning kids in the pool."  Then, we took the girls out to the pool where they had a blast. Emma taught Charlotte how to float and Ella actually wanted to get in the water.  We were about to head back upstairs when Cristina fell in the water and "almost drowned" - in her words.  Yep, we aren't getting invited back.