St. Louis Road Trip 2013

A couple of weeks ago Mr. and I packed up the kiddos and headed 750 miles north for miss Amelia's 2nd birthday!  Call us me crazy for taking a 3.5 week old and a 3.5 year old road tripping, but it was probably the easiest trip yet.  Both kids were awesome and no tears were shed the entire 11.5 hours going or coming home.

However, the night before we planned to leave was a different story.  At one point I was pretty certain that we'd have to stay home.  No sooner then we had the car completely loaded and were headed to bed, Jackson woke up screaming.  He was writhing in pain, complaining of his ear hurting.  I was sure that his other ear drum was bursting and assumed another infection.  Nothing that a call into the pediatrician wouldn't fix from the road...and then he completely forgot about his ear and all hell broke loose.

For the next five hours Jackson had terrible stomach cramps every 30 minutes.  We were sure that he was getting the stomach flu and poor baby tried to throw up with all his might, but just couldn't make himself.  We're still not sure what happened or caused the cramping, but it was terrible.

So instead of getting on the road first thing in the morning, Mr. took Jackson to the pediatrician's office.  Like we suspected, he had another ear infection and his stomach was fine by the time they saw the doctor.  We waited for a couple prescriptions to be filled and got on the road around 2pm, which put us arriving at my sister's around 2am...it was a long day!

As with all of our trips to St. Louis, they go by way too fast.

Four kids under the age of four makes for a lot of laundry and a crazy, loud house.  Lots of diapers were changed, alcohol consumed and precious memories were made.

We ventured out a couple of nights for dinner with the whole crew - my mom and Fred were in town as well as my dad and Nancy.  Hello, table for 8 adults and 4 highchairs.  Restaurants loved us, let me tell ya!

Over the holidays, we all promised Jackson that he could make a snowman and snow angels while we were in St. Louis.  Unfortunately, mother nature didn't keep her promise so we had to find some snow for Jackson.  My sister had the great idea to take him snow tubing at Hidden Valley, a little ski resort about a block away from her house.

Hidden Valley is where I learned to ski and spent many weekends and holiday breaks back in high school.  They recently opened the Polar Plunge, so the tubing experience was new to us all.  Yes, all of us.  Tubes for 8 adults and 2 toddlers...we took turns sitting with Ellie and Mattie...we'll wait until next year to send them down the plunge:)

 

Amelia was a little unsure of the whole thing, but by the end of the day she was loving it as much as Action Jackson.  Each person had to be in their own tube, but you could connect as many as four tubes together.  So we held on tight to the kid's tube and had a blast! Jackson was a trip as he covered his eyes and stuck his rain boots straight up in the air as we plunged.  He laughed and my sister and I screamed the whole way down:)

After an afternoon of plunging, the kids took long naps and we got ready to celebrate Amelia's 2nd birthday! Her party was at the St. Louis Carousel at Faust Park.  Our grandparents used to take us to this carousel on Sunday afternoons, so it was just perfect.  They have quite the set up for birthday parties and the kids loved going round and round on the carousel.

I was so glad that we were able to make the trip and be with Amelia for her birthday.  Jackson absolutely adores his 'melia and had to get her a special princess balloon.  It was so sweet to hear him tell her all about her birthday party.  I cannot wait for Ellie and Mattie to be just as close!

Speaking of Ellie and Mattie, what a difference one year can make.  If you remember, it was on Amelia's first birthday that Megan took us all by surprise when she found out she was pregnant.  God works in mysterious ways and here we are, one year later, with our baby girls born just 4 months apart.