VP Parade and Fair St. Louis

Happy Independence Day Weekend! Thanks to Casey's work, we decided to celebrate at "America's Biggest Birthday Party!"

Fair St. Louis kicked off with the Veiled Prophet Parade. Casey got VIP passes for the parade from work. I don't know if I'll ever want to go to a parade any other way... free parking, reserved seating and free food.

Snow! No, it was really hot, but a fire truck float blasted everyone with confetti!

The kids collected lots of candy, beads and tooth brushes.

After the parade we walked over to the Arch and Fair St. Louis. Fair St. Louis offers free concerts, kid activities, air shows and fire works. We thought the kids would love the Air Show.

But they decided it was too hot to just sit there and watch planes, even if the planes were doing lots of tricks. It really was hot though, 97 degrees, but it felt like 106 degrees (and I'm not making up the felt like...it's an official part of our weather here). So they did a craft and played some games.

But what they most wanted to do was play in the water, courtesy of the St. Louis Fire Department.

It's been a great holiday weekend and it's only Saturday. The 4th is still to come. I'll post about our Friday adventure later. As for today, I'm so glad we did our first St. Louis Parade and tried out Fair St. Louis. It was definitely worth the visit.

The Arch: Gateway to the West

There's nothing that says you're in St. Louis like the Arch! It's what we're known for, right? Though I know people who live here that have never been to the top, I'm proud to say I've been up there several times. Twice in 2011! Now this isn't a regular occurrence, it just happened that Hailey chose this as her incentive to improve in Math and then her Girl Scout troop decided to go a few months later. I feel like I can't have a blog about St. Louis without a trip to the Arch, so here are some pictures from our trip in February.

I wish I would have taken a picture of the egg-shaped elevator type thing you take to the top. They aren't very big, but they do have seats for five. Here's a picture of Ethan and I on our way to the top. It's moves just like an elevator, but it moves sideways as well as up and down.

Once you're at the top you can can see out over the city and river through rectangle windows.

You're 630 feet up in the air. If you look through the window just right, you can see underneath you. Kinda crazy!

Here are Hailey and Brenton waiting to board the tram back down.

The Arch also houses The Museum of Westward Expansion showcasing Lewis and Clark's Expedition. I didn't take any pictures this time, but it has some fun things for the kids to look at. When we went with Hailey's girl scout troop we went on a short ranger lead talk (available to everyone at certain times of the day). I actually learned more then than I  have all my other trips in the museum, so I highly recommend it.

I think everyone needs to have at least one trip to the top of the Arch!