Gateway Grizzles and Baseball's Best Burger

Tuesday night we headed to our first Gateway Grizzles game. The Grizzles are a frontier baseball league team in Illinois. Ethan earned 2 free tickets through preschool. I usually would have just sent him with his dad, but then I saw the Man Vs. Food Baseball Special and decided I wasn't missing out on that food and we were all going.

It was a fun night. It has a very family-friendly atmosphere. They have things for the kids to do. You sit close to the field. And we even won tickets to go back. The boys are super excited.

The kids with the Grizzles Mascot.

Ethan with his craft he made before the game.

The boys watching and loving the game.

A view of the field.

The highlight of the night for Brenton was getting his mitt signed. He shows it to everyone. He doesn't even know who it is, he says it was #33, but the signature says #23.

Now to the most important part...the food!

Baseball's Best Burger is a bacon cheeseburger on a Krispy Kreme. It did taste good. The Krispy Kreme makes it sweet tasting. I don't know that I could eat this on a regular basis, but it was worth the trip.

The Philly Cheesesteak Nachos were yummy too! I could eat these all the time!

Visit a Book, Great Parks, and Some More Adventures

The kids are out of school, and summer has officially started at our house! It started with a bang. We've already been bowling, to the zoo, and camping. I feel tired already and we just started.

We have several adventures planned for the summer, some new and many repeats (so check back often).

I've also decided to check out some new parks. You know, the ones you've heard off, but never go to, or the ones you wish someone would tell you about.  After some research, I've picked out five.
Tilles Park
Shaw Park
Longview Farm Park
City Garden
Deer Creek Park
Actually, we've down the City Garden before, but I would like to try it again prepared (it really kills any park experience when you spend 1/2 hour looking for a bathroom). Plus, I'll spotlight some of our already favorites.  Am I missing any great parks? Please let me know.

I'm also going to try to Visit a Book with my kids. We would spend a week or two reading a classic (or not so classic) out loud and then visit something related to the book.  I love this idea, but I think it could cost me a fortune (gas and attractions wise). These are my ideas so far, but I would love any other ideas, especially since I'm running into many roadblocks.
My Side of the Mountain - Camping
Little House on the Prairie series - Visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead (Unfortunately, this is like 3 hours away)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer - Visit Mark Twain's hometown of Hannibal, MO
Julie of the Wolves - Endangered Wolf Center
Treasure Island - St. Louis Pirate Festival (Unfortunately, this event has been cancelled until 2014)
Magic Tree House: Abe Lincoln at Last and it's companion Fact Tracker - Visit Lincoln Sites in Springfield, IL (I love Springfield, but I think I'll only pull this one off if my my parents visit)
This educational experience for my children is sounding expensive, maybe I'll just stick to all that free, awesome stuff in St. Louis. We are doing the Shakespeare Festival in Forest Park again, but I think I'll wait and let them read that themselves in high school.

Weekend Trip: Kansas City

In April we spent a weekend as a family in Kansas City. This is was our second family trip to Kansas City, and I have to say, I love it! It's just 3 to 4 hours away and has lots of family-friendly, reasonably priced things to do. Here are some of the things we've done the last couple years in the American City of Fountains.

Both times we visited places related to our church. They were free.

This year we visited the Crown Center.

There is so much to do there! We just visited the Kaleidoscope and the Hallmark Visitors Center because they are both free, but so worth the visit.

The Kaleidoscope provides 45 minute art and craft sessions. The kids got to make puzzles, bookmarks, butterflies and whatever else they could imagine. This place was so cool. I loved it, and so did the kids.

Two years ago, we went to the Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead. We had so much fun there, too.
(My kids look so little in these pictures!)

The kids also loved eating at the T-Rex Restaurant.

Kansas City is actually known for it's BBQ (and not dinosaur restaurants, tough to believe, I know)! Last year during a weekend there with friends, I tried out some of their popular places. Sorry, no pictures! I took advice from my favorite food guy, Adam, on Man vs. Food and visited Oklahoma Joe's.  A lot like Pappy's, except in a gas station. We also did the other extreme, and visited Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue which is "Zagat Survey's Highest Ranked BBQ in the country" and more of a elegant dining experience. Both very delicious!

I think Kansas City is definitely worth a trip!

Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House

We had a visitor! It was very exciting!  So exciting that it really shouldn't have taken me a month and a half to blog about it, but better late than never... My sister, Amy, came to see us in March. We had lots of fun just having her around, but, of course, we fit in a couple adventures as well.

Amy, Ethan and I spent a morning at the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House. It's a been awhile since I've been to the Butterfly House, so I'm glad Amy wanted to go.

We watched a short movie and checked out some insects of the non-butterfly variety before heading into the butterfly conservatory.

There are butterflies everywhere, but they are so hard to get pictures of. In March they release extra Blue Morpho butterflies, so we saw lots of beautiful blue butterflies, even if we don't have great pictures to prove it.

Ethan was a good sport. He posed for lots of pictures and stood very still so a butterfly might land on him. We had to settle for taking a picture next to a butterfly instead.

I didn't post most of the pictures, but Ethan started to look the same in all of them, so we changed things up with a little silliness.

The Butterfly House is located in Faust Park, which is also home to the Faust Park Carousel. This is one of the few places we pay to ride the carousel (but maybe that's because it use to be cheaper?).

We're so glad Aunt Amy came to see us. And since we went to the Botanical Gardens while she was here, too, I ended up buying a membership (covers both the Butterfly House and the Botanical Gardens) and we should be visiting the Butterfly House again soon.

Sharing the Love

A couple weekends ago, Casey and I used a Groupon I bought for a St. Louis Fun Trolley Tour.

It was fun. We didn't see much we haven't seen before, but we learned lots of fun information. It makes me kind of proud to be from St. Louis (not that I was unproud before, after all, I blog about the place). Our tour guide was great, just sharing his love of St Louis with people from all over the world.

Speaking of love, St Louisans do love free. One tidbit of information from our tour was that St. Louis is second only to Washington DC in free attractions. Maybe that's why St. Louis was named the top city for cheapskates. I think that's considered a high honor when it means you boast one of the highest number of museums and libraries per capita.

Love My St. Louis!