Thanksgiving in Missouri - Part 2

After Thanksgiving was over, we took a couple of days to see the sights.  We decided we would like to see the zoo since it was such beautiful weather.  Brynn was amazing as to agree to come with us, even though she still wasn't feeling well.  It was so nice of her to come and tough it out to give us a little more time to spend with her.   The girls got to ride in the special wheelchair van, boys in the regular boring van.  Here we are, ready to get loaded up:

 The zoo was really fun.  Cora always likes the seals and sea lions.

Everyone liked the red panda (I can't quite see it in this picture, but it was mostly a picture of the kids anyway:

Some other favorites included the hyenas, grizzly bears, penguins, polar bears, and one of my personal favorite, the okapi.  The boys liked the "Somali Wild Ass," or at least they liked to talk about it a lot. I wonder why.

The sun was shining brightly, and there were still some colorful leaves on the trees in Missouri.

 I love swimming hippos!  So huge and so graceful.  And pretty dang cute.

We stopped in the middle of the day for lunch.  It took FOREVER because they only seemed to have one restaurant in the whole zoo, and it was packed.  Brynn, poor thing, didn't want any food and waited outside the crowded restaurant in the sunshine with her mom.  

After I got the kids their food, I went out to bring Lori her lunch.  I found them outside, Lori standing behind Brynn's wheelchair, just bent over and holding on to Brynn and resting her head on Brynn's little shoulder.  It was so sweet and so hard to see at the same time, and just ripped my heart open.  I didn't want to disturb them, but I thought Lori probably needed some food so after a minute I interrupted them and handed over the pretzel.  Cancer sucks so, sooo hard.  

Brynn was pretty tired by the afternoon, but we got a stranger to take a picture of all of us together at the zoo:   

After the picture, Lori and Brynn left, but the rest of us stayed at the zoo a while longer.  Even Kohl hung around with us, which was so sweet of him.  He reminds me a lot of Dan.  He doesn't say much, but he is so funny and has such a good heart.

Also on our St. Louis to-see list was the Gateway Arch.  Brynn didn't come with us on this adventure, and Lori stayed home to watch over her (and probably enjoyed the break from all of our noisiness!)

We picked up our tickets, and I made the boys all pose for a picture.  The sun was so bright off of the arch!  Forgive me for picture overload here, I thought the arch was really cool and took way too many pictures of it.

 Tried to get a selfie.  That is Dax's hand flashing the peace sign, not mine.

 The sun was going down as we got closer to the arch:

 It really is impressive up close.  That thing is TALL!

We walked over to the mighty Mississippi, and....threw a bunch of rocks into it.  Because that is what you do if you are a kid and there is a body of water nearby.  It was pretty impressive, especially compared to the teeny tiny "rivers" we have in Utah.  Dan tells me it was pretty low, and showed us how high it is in the spring during its flood stage.  It would be cool to see.

Being the annoying person that I am, I made everyone stand still for another picture.  They are nice and mostly complied.  Not sure what Chase is doing on his phone, but it looks fun:

Then we headed over to wait our turn to go up the little elevator to the top of the arch.  It was quite a wait.  We had time to spend in the gift shop, and time to just stand around.

We finally made it into the elevator!  You can fit 5 people in them.  The little boys plus Kohl went in one (Thanks, Kohl!) and the rest of us in another.  You can't tell from the picture, but all of our knees are touching.  It was very...cozy. 

 The views from the top were worth it though!  The windows were very small, but they still worked.

 Here are the three musketeers, sharing a window.

We spent quite a bit of time at the top, and then braved another elevator ride back down to earth.  Here is a picture from right below the arch.  Scary that we were all the way up there!

 Sorry, one last picture as we were leaving.  Even pretty at night!

Dax was having sooo much fun hanging out with his cousins.  He gets stuck with a bunch of girls more than he would like, so he was in heaven this whole trip.

The night was so warm that after we got home and ate pizza, the kids decided to play a game of tag outside.  I was in the hot tub when Arden came running up to me, nose streaming blood.  Her and Dax had collided in the dark.  After I got it to stop bleeding, we noticed that her nose was crooked.  "MY NOSE IS RUINED!" Arden shrieked.  I assured her it would be okay, but off to the Instacare she went.  Her nose was indeed broken, though it actually looked a lot better after it had swelled up.  It doesn't look as bad, but if you look you can see it is headed a little to the right.

She was a trooper about it.  On our last day, we played all morning at the house, and then headed out for some St. Louis barbecue.  St. Louis BBQ has a sweeter sauce (according to Dan), and this place even had a weird BBQ sauce that was pink.  Apparently it is kind of like fry sauce, but with BBQ sauce instead of ketchup.  Kohl likes it apparently,  Next time I'll give it a try.   Arden wasn't excited about getting another picture with her crooked nose.  Poor little stinker.

After lunch, we packed up and got ready to leave.  Brynn had been resting in bed, but she was sweet to get up (no small feat) and wish us goodbye.  It was hard to say goodbye to her, but at that point I was still hopeful that the chemotherapy regimen she was on would work, so I told myself that this might not be the last time we would see her. (The very next week the scans showed the chemo was not effective, and the decision was made to stop treatment.  She passed away January 5th.  I am thankful now that at the time of our visit we had a sliver of hope left.)

Our drive home was fairly uneventful.  Lots of driving and tablets and more driving.  We went a different way, through Kansas and Colorado this time, stopping once to sleep somewhere near the border of those two states.  Lots of cornfields either way you go, but I like cornfields.

It was a good trip, and long overdue.