Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Last of the St. Louis Trip Recap

On Monday after all the family excitement, my mom had to take my grandpa to the hospital as he was not in good health and needed to be evaluated. Since everyone else was working, I opted to take the kids up to Faust Park, the same place where we had the pictures taken the day before. Joseph had seen the huge playground on our way into the park on Sunday and got excited about playing there, so I knew he'd have fun.
 

It was a beautiful fall morning, and luckily for Joseph, Madeline slept in her car seat the whole time we were there (a little over an hour). I was able to run around the playground with him for a while, until he started making friends and chased them around.



He wasn't afraid to go down any of the slides, some of which were really quite tall! The only part that tripped him up was a tube that had a small incline/decline in it.  There were holes along each edge, and I kept trying to show him how to hang on to them to pull himself up, but he'd get halfway there, then fuss and give me this sad look:


Maybe next time, buddy! I'm sure he'll be able to climb all over the whole thing the next time we're in town.


Tuesday I went for a run in the morning, and then we opted to take advantage of another beautiful day. Romach's Pumpkin farm is in Chesterfield Valley, and we've been going there since I was a little girl. They have lots of play areas, including a great fort, multiple playgrounds, animals, and an old fire engine for the kids to play around. As soon as Joseph saw the fire engine, he dragged Papa over to it and sat there for a while.


Taking a fun picture with Mimi and Papa - it's the first time I've ever been able to get him to look up, even a bit, for the camera when posing in one of these!


Once again, Madeline did us all a favor and napped for most of the trip...


Before we had to go, Mimi and Papa took Joseph on a hayride, which he seemed to really enjoy.



Almost as soon as the hayride took off, Madeline started to stir. She was due to eat around that time, so I walked over to a beer garden tent that was empty (since it was noon on a weekday!), sat down and nursed her. As usual, our super pooper did her business once she was finished eating, and must have felt great afterward - she was all smiles!


And of course, as she does almost daily, gave me a full blow-out to change, resulting in a full wardrobe change at the pumpkin patch.

In case we don't make it to a patch here in KC, I opted to pose Joseph in front of Rombach's "how tall this fall?" sign. He wasn't a big fan of posing as it was getting close to naptime and he hadn't had lunch yet.

 
We spent most of our free time on Wednesday visiting Joseph's great-Papa in the hospital, as I hadn't seen him since arriving in St. Louis and he still hadn't met Madeline, his first great-granddaughter. He had hoped to go home the following day, but developed pneumonia and ended up staying in the hospital until yesterday.
 
Thursday morning I woke up and got another run in, before having to pack up the car. We said our goodbyes and left around lunchtime. Joseph definitely enjoys having the entertainment system in the van during long car rides; Madeline still couldn't care less but at least she's become a champ at sleeping in the car!

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