St. Louis Trip: Day 1!

WARNING: PICTURE OVERLOAD BELOW! ;0)
I have been working like mad during Holden's naps to get these collages done. It was a fun project as I got to look back at all of the fun memories from our trip last week. Here is a recap of our first day, from cooling off at a fun water park in Collinsville, a cute little town right outside the city, to checking out our pad at the Hilton, and finally winding down with a stop at Union Station.

The water park in Collinsville was a blast! It was in the 90's that day and we couldn't check into our hotel until 4:00, so what better way to kill some time and enjoy our little guy? He LOVED the big inflatable "stepping stones," roaming the kiddie areas, and helping Daddy with the sprayers. I just think he is soooo adorable in his little Elmo swim trunks!! =o)

We checked into our hotel in the late afternoon and got a kick out of watching Holden's excitement over ''the little things." He loved the phone with a cord, (all ours are cordless) and we ended up unplugging it so that he could lug it around the room and pretend to talk on it. He bounced on the beds, was fascinated with the elevator and our panoramic view of the downtown area from our big window, thought the shower cap was hilarious, and really enjoyed drinking some of Mommy's Starbucks frappacino in the lobby! (We had a Starbucks right in the hotel; I was in heaven!) In the bottom left picture, he is running down the wheelchair ramp near the gift shop. This was the highlight of each day at the hotel; he thought it was the coolest thing ever and would scramble up the stairs so he could do it again. Some of these pictures are from other days at the hotel; I just did one big "hotel time" collage. Who knew we could have just kept him at a hotel and he would have been perfectly happy?!

*Side note: Kids who sip too much of Mommy's frappacino's can on occasion wake up at 2:00 a.m. WIRED and think it is time to play! They can then proceed to giggle and bounce in their pack n' play, yelling, "MA! DA!" at the top of their lungs until they are let out. Then they might run around the room laughing like the kid from "Problem Child" for two hours before they crash again. Not that we would know this from personal experience or anything. But Holden will never have a frappacino again. Until he is at least 35. Over my dead body.

On our first night in St. Louis we decided to take Holden over to Union Station, a favorite hangout of ours that he had never been to. He got a big kick out of the people at the Fudgery. For those of you who haven't experienced them, several times an hour they will put on a little show for the passersby. They sing, tell jokes, and get the crowd involved as they make the fudge. It is really funny because they like to embarrass the people that don't follow along by pointing them out and putting them on the spot. At the end there are free fudge samples. In the second picture, Holden is trying his first bite of fudge. The flavor was cookie dough. Although his face looks funny he ended up loving it and pointing for more! We browsed the shops and then headed out to feed the fish. There are tons of them in the pavilion out back, which has restaurants, paddle boats, and neat outdoor events. You can get food out of little machines to feed them. He thought this was great and took his job very seriously! (I noticed I have two of the same pictures in this collage but I am too tired to go back and change it now, oh well!)