Thanksgiving in St. Louis ~ The BS Report

With our closest family members a mere 8-hour drive away, we decided to go to St. Louis for Thanksgiving where we stayed with Sarah's cousins, the Slezaks. It was a rather exciting weekend, and I'll try to cover as many of our adventures as I can.

On Wednesday, we took a trip to the St. Louis Zoo. (For those who haven't caught on already, Sarah really likes going to zoos and I'm sure our kids will love that.)

Highlights from the zoo :

Watching two chimpanzees walk in unison, swaying back and forth with each step. (I'm pretty sure they knew they were putting on a show.)

The new sea lion exhibit, complete with underwater tunnel.

(Yes, I am really proud of my live action shot of a sea lion.)

Sarah's aunt, Kristie (in the purple) and cousins, Anna (blue) and Lacy (white) checking out the sea lions.

Hearing a lion roar in real life (and capturing it in a life action shot).

Getting to see Sarah so excited (giraffe in background doesn't seem to be as excited).

Pretending to be sea lions (at least some of us). Sarah's grandma is in the yellow (visiting from Oregon).

For the sake of those involved, we didn't take any pictures on Thanksgiving (so they wouldn't have any of those "before" weight-loss pictures floating around online). Okay, the real reason is because we forgot. The morning began with Terry (Sarah's uncle) and me going to play football with some families in their stake. That was followed by Thanksgiving dinner with the Tuttles (a couple from their stake that they have had Thanksgiving with for many years - only this time none of their children were at home).

Sarah and I decided we would go Black Friday shopping for the first time. We were shocked at how crowded Walmart's parking lot was at 10pm on Thanksgiving, and even more blown away when we got inside. It was a mad house. After finding what we were looking for (you'll have to wait for the Christmas post to find out what may have been purchased), and looking at how long the lines were, I decided to try an old adage I learned from my parents: "If you don't a-s-k, you don't g-e-t." So, I asked a group of Walmart employees where the shortest line would be. They looked at me like I was crazy and as if to say How would we know where the shortest line is - we're in the back of the store? Then one of them said, "You could try the sporting goods section. I don't know if that register is open, but it's worth a try." Worth a try it was. We were second in line at a register that was just opening. I think we may be one of very few people that spent more time looking for what we wanted on Black Friday than actually standing in line.

From Walmart, we headed over to Shoe Carnival, because they were giving $10 gift cards to the first one hundred people in line and Sarah and Lacy each wanted a new pair of shoes. I figured that even though we would have to wait in line for an hour before the store opened, they were essentially paying us $10/hr to do so. After we'd been in line for a while, Kristie and her girls joined us in line, where we played the game "Life" on Lacy's iPod while waiting for the store to open.

Our next adventure was when we went to a place called the City Museum with Anna and Lacy. I'm not sure what qualifies something to be a "museum," but this is basically a huge playground, made of recycled materials in an old, nine-story shoe warehouse. Sister Tuttle (from Thanksgiving dinner) described it to us as a hamster cage for humans. That sounded pretty accurate to us once we got there. There were tight spaces and more secret passageways than a kid could dream of. I've posted the pictures we took while we were there, but it's one of those places that you actually have to go to in order to soak it all in (as if most places aren't like that).

As we were going to the outdoor section of the "museum," I got stopped by a worker who asked me where my parents were. I stared at him and wondered why he would need to know that my parents are in Utah. Since I couldn't figure out why I should tell him where they were, I didn't. Undeterred by my lack of response, he continued in his interrogation, asking me how old I am. "Twenty-five," I responded, with a questioning tone. "Oh," his face said and we were free to go. Apparently, I look like I am under the age of 16 (and require an adult chaperon by their rules), while Lacy (age 11) and Sarah (who looks the same as she did when she was 15, current age undisclosed) look somewhere between the age of old enough to not need a chaperon and old enough to be my mom.

I'll start with the picture of the nine-story slide (kind of hard to see because it was dark, but it's the spiraling chute) and Sarah coming out at the bottom. The rest of the pictures are just trying to capture the essence of the City Museum, and don't really need explanation.