Our Farewell To St. Louis Tour: The Arch

We have got a little behind on our farewell tour. I guess part of it is the lazy days of summer combined with all of the things you have to do to move a long distance away. And since moving day is fast approaching, we realized that we needed to hit the Arch pronto! I had secretly been waiting, hoping for a cooler weather day, but it just didn't seem like that was going to happen. So yesterday was the day. In the scorching, humid St. Louis heat. 

I will share a little secret on Arch visiting. The earlier in the day the better. If you wait until the afternoon, the lines get really long. Yesterday we arrived a little later than I wanted, but the wait wasn't too bad. About an hour or so. 

Here is where we wait to get into our little pods to take us to the top. It takes 4 minutes to get to the top and 3 minutes to come down. And once you are up there, you can stay as long as you like. 

The boys inside the pod on the way up. When the pod first starts to go up, it kind of clicks back and forth a little. I took this picture right as we started to go up, and Spencer grabbed onto his chair holding on for dear life! He was a little nervous. The ride smoothes out after the first 30 seconds or so. And then it just feels like an elevator.  

At the top! I know you can't tell from this picture, but it was really crowded. I didn't know that we picked a day that the Cardinals were playing a day game. We saw lots of people in their Cardinals gear hanging at the Arch before game time. 

Speaking of the Cardinals, here is a picture I took from the top of the Arch of downtown and Busch stadium.

One last picture of the boys under the Arch. I'm not sure when we will be back here. So I decided to go ahead and pay for the picture they take of you before you go up. 

It is kind of pricey and I normally don't buy these things, but since this is our last time for a very long time, I decided why not.

Plus it actually shows that I was there! 

Since moving day is coming pretty fast now, I am not sure if we will get to much more in our St. Louis Farewell tour. I am hoping to squeeze in the City Museum next week if possible. 

Thanks for visiting me! 

Our trip to Fort Worth

Last weekend, the boys and me made our first trip down to the Dallas/Forth Worth area. This was our official house-hunting trip. Chris has been looking at houses for us since he went there in April and we set appointments to look at the top 8 that he liked. 

Here are the boys on the plane shopping the Skymall catalog. They found lots of cool stuff! 

We arrived in the afternoon and Chris first took us to his office, which is really nice. Right now he is in an apartment in downtown Fort Worth, so we decided to walk downtown and find a restaurant for dinner. 

Here are the guys downtown. I thought this was a neat building. I only had my little point & shoot camera with me this trip, but I'm really looking forward to taking my Dslr there to take some pics. 

Another shot of that same building. This was a very neat little area of the downtown. I think it is called Sundance Square. 

I thought this building was so cool! It is a performance hall, but I can't remember it's name now. 

We went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant downtown and unfortunately it wasn't very good. The margarita was good, but the food was just so-so. 

On Friday, Chris and I saw 8 houses. It was a very full day! One of the great things about moving to Fort Worth is that I have an aunt who lives here.  She took the boys for us for the day, so we could house hunt! We narrowed our choices down to the top two and made plans to revisit them on Saturday for a 2nd time. 

Sunday was July 4th and Chris made plans for us and my Aunt and cousin from TX, and my other Aunt who was visiting from Colorado to walk to a July 4th festival being held in downtown Fort Worth. Remember his apartment is downtown. 

He said we just had to walk over this bridge and then it was at some ball field there. Here we are in the middle of the bridge. If you can see the building way in the back that kind of looks like an "M", that is Chris office.

So back to our walk to this festival. It was a lot further than we thought it was going to be and when we finally got there, it really wasn't a place we wanted to stay. So we got something to drink and thought let's just head back over the bridge back into downtown and we can watch the fireworks from there. 

We had major problem with that though. When we got back to the bridge, they had shut it down until after the fireworks. Which meant we were stuck. Without any good place to get a drink or use a restroom. 

This is Connor sitting at the end of the bridge. We pretty much all felt this way. lol! It would not have been bad if the fireworks had started on time. We would have only had to sit there 15-20 minutes, but they were late. An hour late. We sat at the end of that bridge for an hour. 

And then finally we saw fireworks. 

There was a large cheer when that first firework went off, because now we had a little crowd of us stuck at the end of the bridge. 

We all decided that this was a learning lesson for us. Next year we will just stay home for the 4th and have a BBQ and lounge in the pool. Did I say pool?

Oh yeah! The house we put a contract on has this! 


Next year we are staying home and watching fireworks on television. Who is with me???!! 


Thanks for visiting me!