Grant's Farm

We went to Grant's Farm this weekend, the former home of Ulysses S. Grant in St. Louis.  It is now a touristy petting zoo type farm.  We had lots of fun.  Here are Matthew and Anna by a sign.  The home was bought in 1907 by the Busch family (as in Anheuser Busch) and is now sponsored by Anheuser Busch.  We passed on all the beer you could buy in the park and got sno-cones instead.

 Grant kept telling us it was his farm (actually he said "mein farm") so it was nice that he let us visit

 On the tram going into the park

We drove past some old buildings and structures from the US Grant days.  Here's an old cabin.  And there were lots of animals roaming the property (elk, bison, various kinds of deer, birds) that you could see, but it was hard to get pictures of them.

 And here we are at the farm getting ready to bottle feed some baby goats

You could either go in the goat pen or feed the goats from behind the safety of the fence.  Matthew and Grant opted to go inside and were immediately swarmed and butted by the aggressive baby goats who wanted those bottles.  Grant, who was at eye level with the goats, cried and I had to pick him up and pass him out of the pen to Scott.  Matthew stuck it out and fed the goats inside.  He had a few feet on those goats though. The goats really liked my cut off shorts and kept chewing on the hanging strings.

Matthew kept at it.  Good job.  It turned out that once you had no bottles of milk, the goats didn't care about you that much anymore, so they weren't as aggressive.  So that was good.

 Here's Anna feeding the goats from outside the pen

 After feeding, Matthew stayed inside to pet and brush the goats

 More bottle feeding

After feeding the goats from behind the safety of the fence, Anna and Grant came in to brush the goats.  The goats were calm and happy to be brushed.

 I had to hand it to Grant for coming back in after being rushed by two dozen milk crazy goats.  Here he is brushing some goats

 On the carousel

 Seeing a bald eagle at the bird show

 A dromedary. He reminded us of our favorite Geico commercial (see it HERE)

(mike mike mike mike mike...what day is it mike? HUMP DAAAAAYYY!!)

 The very German looking courtyard where we got some sno cones

Then we had to spill one of the sno cones at the elephant show

Those elephants were HUGE!

 Sno cone faces after the show

We tried to get Grant to pose with a Grant's Farm shirt at the gift shop.

He didn't think it was a good idea.

And also at Grant's Farm are the Anheuser Busch Clydesdales so we got to go over and see them.  Those are some big horses!  We got so see some of them up close in the stable and some were out running around.

Here are some from a distance.  The kids liked seeing the horses.

It was super hot, so we came early, we saw and then we went home to get out of the heat.

The farm was cool and I'm sure we'll be back another day.

The Arch

 We went to see the arch in St. Louis this weekend.  It's about 20 minutes from our house and the kids have been wanting to go see it up close.  And here we are pretty close to it!  It was a warm day.

 

Here we are walking up to the arch.  Glad for shade!

 And going down under the arch to see the museum.

The museum is free but we had to wait in an airport security type line.

We rode some little pods up to the top of the arch.

Grant wasn't too sure about it.  It was a little claustrophobia inducing.

It was a Saturday and kind of crowded up there at the top, so we didn't really want to stay too long.

 Here is the Illinois side (looking east) - Mississippi River then Illinois

And here is the Missouri side (looking west).  You can see Busch Stadium where the Cardinals play there on the left.  Matthew kept asking me why it was so red.  :)  These pictures make the Illinois side look a little boring, don't they.  We do have a lot of corn fields over there.

 And back down again we had fun looking at the museum displays

A big wheel from a steamboat (I think?)

 Buffalo/bison

 Covered wagon

 Grant found a horse

 And here are the kids sitting in one of the pods like the ones that go up the arch

And in a teepee they had on display (they were allowed to go in this one).  We also got to watch the Lewis and Clark movie (the National Geographic one) which they had playing there.  It's a good movie and the kids were excited to see some that they had been to some of the places Lewis and Clark went (Fort Clatsop).  So it was lots of fun.  They are already asking when we can go back.

And here is the arch again as we were leaving.

It was hard to get a picture of the whole thing.

I Yuv Yeaves!!

Grant is a more adventurous eater than some of his siblings.  He even likes some vegetables.  The other night we were having spinach salad and he jumped right in and ate some spinach leaves.  Then he asked for more by asking for "More Leaves" or "Yeaves" since he can't say L very well yet.  Then he asked if he could have some "Leaf Sauce" on it too aka salad dressing.  I gave him some salad dressing (a vinaigrette) and Grant exclaimed, "I YUV YEAVES!!"

Here are some pictures of him eating lettuce...just straight lettuce...a few weeks ago.  Keep eating those veggies buddy.  They're good for you

First Day of School

Monday was the first day of school in our school district.  Wow, summer is over already!  Matthew and Anna were very excited to start school.  I was nervous about them riding the bus, especially on the first day, but they seemed to be very confident about it.  Anna told me, "Mom, I got this."  So here we are ready to head to the bus stop which is a few houses down from ours and across the street.

And here they are at the bus stop ready to get on the bus.  Among other things I was nervous about, I was nervous because the bus they ride is the same number as our school district.  So ALL the buses have that number on them.  They were able to figure out which number meant the bus and which meant the school district.

 Waiting for the bus to come

 Getting on the bus!

So they made it to school and only had a little trouble finding their classrooms from the bus, but they eventually got there...and both had a good first day.  I was also nervous that they would have trouble getting back on the right bus or getting off at the right bus stop, but they were able to manage that too.

Here's Anna getting off the bus after her first day!  So my little guys are all grown up and riding the bus on their own.

It poured buckets during school, but luckily was not raining when the bus came.  We made it through the first day.  Now to get used to this new routine.

Happy Birthday John

 John turned one year old on Friday and we had a little celebration for him.

We saw the movie Planes and made him a little airplane cake.

 The cake was pretty bad looking.  :)

But John thought it was interesting

 He tasted the cake right away

 And he got his own piece, which he mushed and then ate some

 John got to open a few presents, with a lot of help from the other kids

 John liked his presents, but so did everyone else

 It was all very exciting

 The set of blocks was the most popular and everyone wanted to have a turn

Matthew and Anna built some cool towers.

So it was a fun day.  Happy Birthday John!