Sweetie Pie's

I went to The Help last weekend. It was excellent! The cast was great, and it also featured some tasty looking food... Minny's fried chicken, and Celia's table of southern-style cooking. If you haven't seen it, go see it. And if you want some soul food, head to Sweetie Pie's at the Mangrove.

The weekend before school started, we headed to the Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives featured, and soon to have it's own reality show on the Oprah Winfrey Network, Sweetie Pie's with Casey's parents.

Sweetie Pie's is set up cafeteria style. You pick out what you want, pay and then they take your tray to a table for you. If you go with small children, I would suggest just getting adult meals and then sharing with the kids. As you can see from the picture below, Brenton got plenty to eat using that method.

One of Sweetie Pie's specialties is their Macaroni and Cheese. I thought it was great! You can see how they make it here on a Diner, Drive-Ins, and Dives segment.

My kids loved the fried chicken!

The girls decided we needed dessert as well. We had peach cobbler. I don't mind peach cobbler, but it's not usually one of my favorite things. This peach cobbler was so good though, it kinda of made me a fan!

I was glad we went. It was fun, the service was friendly, and the food was good. Casey, however, was disappointed. He had really high expectations for the food (from people at work and all the TV hype) and he did not feel like they were met. Other than that, Sue said the cabbage was really good, Hailey liked the green beans, and I'm serious when I say they are taping for a reality show...here's one of the camera men.

Gus' Pretzels

Gus' Pretzels are a "St. Louis Tradition." They are everywhere. My mother-in-law remembers when they sold them on the corner of the road with newspapers. Hailey's been eating them at Brenton's baseball game where they sell them as a fundraiser.

I kinda feel bad saying this, but I don't really care fom them. They are a little harder and chewier than I prefer. However, I respect tradition while exploring St. Louis, so we visited the St. Louis famous pretzel shop last week.

You can watch them make pretzels at the shop. And they make tons because even if I'm not eating them, a whole lot of St. Louis is.

We decided to sweeten it up with cinnamon and sugar pretzels. Sugar helps most things, right? Ethan and Brenton even ate theirs (Ethan won't eat a regular Gus' pretzel and Brenton doesn't really care for any pretzel). Hailey really liked it! And she is featured prominently in this post because she is my Gus' Pretzel eater and she was the only person not crying on this adventure. Thank you Hailey!

Some other things...there is no place to sit at Gus's Pretzels. You just order your pretzel items.

Also, Gus' is located near some other cool St. Louis places. It's right across the highway from the Anheuser Busch Brewery. They do free tours. Casey and I have been and found it very interesting and educational, even though we don't drink. The horse stables are beautiful! Gus' is also by the Cherokee Antique Row. I only drove by it, but if I hadn't had three kids with me I would have loved to have peeked my head into a few of the stores.

Missouri Botanical Gardens

The kids started school today. It makes me sad. We were having so much fun this summer. It really has been fun to see, do, and experience so many things in St. Louis that I've overlooked for years. And we still have more to do!
Anyway, here's our last day of summer adventure! I have some adventures from the weekend I need to post about too, but I'll get around to that later this week. I should have lots of time now that I only have one at home.
Monday we headed to the Missouri Botanical Gardens with some friends. I've always liked the Botanical Gardens, but we haven't been there for a few years.

I think the Gardens are beautiful and very peaceful (if you ignore the children). They remind me of  my Grandma who had a yard full of beautiful flowers and The Secret Garden. I would have fresh flowers in my house all the time if I had excess money. Brenton, however, asked why there was so many plants. When I explained it was a garden likes it's name, he said he wished it was called "The Botanical Cowboy."

I think this is one of my favorite spots.

I was amazed at all the beautiful color after such a hot summer. Then I remembered  I would color in my yard too if I would have remembered to water anything.

The Japanese Garden has Coy fish to feed. We were there for a very long time.

We also visited the Children's Garden. It's a child's heaven...slides, tree houses, a cave, and so much more.

My kids favorite part of the Children's Garden was the splash pad.

The Children's Garden does have a separate fee, kind of. The Botanical Garden is free for 12 and under. Here's a link to a buy one get one free admission for adults coupon. The Children's Garden is free for adults, but $5 for kids. If you live in St. Louis County or have a membership there are certain times of the week everything is free.

The Botanical Gardens has a special tree house (they had to be made of trees, not in trees) exhibit going on right now. The kids loved it. Hailey wanted her picture taken in this one. She posed. It reminds me of how fast they grow up.

Big Foot

Summer has gone by way to fast! We've had so much fun, there is still so much fun to be had and not enough time to do it - School starts next week! Anyway, I've been trying to get the most out of our days. Today we got pictures taken, had lunch with dad (see the post below), played with our cousins and visited the home of the first Monster Truck! And if you've ever met Ethan you know that Monster Trucks are a big deal!

Hazelwood, Missouri is the home of Big Foot! You can visit Big Foot's home, see Big Foot 5 and find lots of other monster truck stuff at their store. I forgot my camera, so these pictures are from my cell phone. I'm starting to feel a little guilty since this is Ethan's obsession and even though this isn't our first time here, I still don't have any good pictures.

This whole adventure is probably only 20 to 30 minutes, but worth it if you have boys who love trucks. It's not far from the airport or the Saint Louis Mills mall, so you could fit it in around something else.

Dewey's Pizza

We picked up Casey from work today for lunch. We haven't been to his office for a while and the kids like to show themselves off to everyone he works with. The people at work like it because they are mostly women, several of them don't have kids themselves and/or can't believe Casey has THREE kids. Anyway, we headed to Dewey's Pizza for lunch. Casey has taken us there before because he LOVES their pizza.  While doing all my research I also discovered it rates as one of the top places to eat in Saint Louis (though to be fair, it was started in Cincinnati) and figured we should visit again since I'm on my tourist/blogging kick (and it beats the Burger King or mall food court we usually go to when we visit Casey's work). Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I had to use my phone. I'm sure my phone doesn't do Dewey's justice because it is really good and my camera on my phone is not!

As you wait to be seated (or in our case, even after you've been seated) you can watch them make the pizzas! My kids love it!

This picture turned out terrible, but you kind of see the guy tossing the pizza crust. Always a hit with the kids!

Casey says people at work really like their salads. I ordered a side salad that came out on large plate. Not only was it big, but it was delicious.

We ordered Casey's favorite, the Meatball pizza. It was good and the kids loved it. I wish I could have taken pictures of other people's pizza too though because there was some really good looking ones out there, especially ones with fresh veggies.

Definitely good eats at Dewey's!

Meramec Caverns

Missouri is known as the Cave State, so it would be a shame to not explore a cave this summer. When we went to the Cardinals game, the kids received coupons for a free cave tour, boat ride and ice cream at Meramec Caverns. The kids and I had never been. Casey has, he hates it, so we went without him last Thursday.

Meramec Caverns is about an hour from downtown St. Louis. It has a cave, camping, food, zip line and more. It's very commercialized, which is why Casey hates it, but the kids loved it.
It rained the day we went and was a very humid, so a couple of my pictures are a little foggy.

They claim that Jesse and Frank James hid out in this cave after robbing a train. Some items taken in the robbery were found in the cave years later are on display. An episode of Lassie and a Tom Sawyer  (or was it Huckleberry Finn) movie with Jodi Foster were also filmed here.

The cave has some beautiful features.

The next picture is from the very end of the tour. This is the feature in it's more natural state (it's huge). They then play music, do a light show, and display a picture of a flag. Drives Casey crazy, but the kids loved it. It was Hailey's favorite part.

We also went on the boat ride. It only lasts about 20 minutes.

Then we ate ice cream. There was lots of flavors to choose from. Brenton chose Bubble Gum.

We finished up our trip with throwing rocks in the river. Always a popular activity with my kids.

The kids had a lot of fun. I did too, but I think the place is a little pricey. The kids were only disappointed they couldn't do the zip line. I promised we'd go back when they were older and could find other friends who wanted to do it to so we could get the group discount on the zip line.

If you're like Casey and prefer a more natural cave exploration, you can check out Fisher or Onondaga Cave.