St. Louis

We've been to Alton, Godfrey, and St. Louis and back this week. It has been a terrific experiance for me. We started out by using this interesting device of my fathers, a GPS navigator for the car. The thing took us directly to Lynn's house in Alton without a hitch. Amazing since I had no other way to get there, no map, no prior knowledge of the area, and her street did not have a street sign. Falcom loved the voice on the device, "In 2000 feet, turn right."

It was wonderful to spend time with Lynn again. Her house was the same as I remembered it (from high school!). It is such a comfort to go into these midwest memories; a friendly smiling aunt with a pot of coffee on and a cake made for my arrival. We chatted and laughed while the kids played with Lynn's granddaughters many barbies and bratz and high school musical dolls.

After a while Lynn took us to my gradfathers farm. Quite a famous location for me and for my kids who have heard all the stories of it. We were let in the gate by Paul who grew up with my mom and aunt. It was healing to hear all of the wonderful memories he has of my mother during her childhood. Then we went to the site of the old house and we walked down to the creek.
The creek was really swollen and unpassible in our current state of preparidness, but we had fun mucking about anyway. Then Marina and Falcom and I went to the farm equipment graveyard and did some climbing around on the rotting machinery, just like we did when Mike and I were small. It was beautiful.

We went to the Mississippi River where we saw our first riverboat of the trip. Made real by the Proud Mary song. I also learned that Falcom has a lot of knowledge of Abraham Lincoln that I was not aware of and so it was great to visit the memorials around Alton to the abolisionist movement.


The next day Lynn took us to the St. Louis Arch. What a fantastic bit of history and art. Seeing it on the landscape of the city is beautiful. More cities should have such art. I made the executive decision not to ride up into the arch when I found out that it would be a three hour wait for the tram. My family is not that patient, and the kids don't really care about vistas. So, we hiked along the flooding Mississippi river and Lynn told us stories of playing in the river and of river boats, we had lunch and went to the zoo.

What amazed me about the zoo is that it is a wonderful, award winning zoo and it is absolutely free. Fantastic. It was in the low 60's that afternoon and the place was packed. Super crowded. I am not used to that kind of crowd, but, it was not pushy or shoving kind of crowded, just crowded. The animals were all out in force for the first day of spring. Even the hippos were swimming and galloping around the place. Really fun.

That evening Lynn's granddaughters came for an over night and the four friends had a super fun time together.


The next morning we loaded up, and with the navigator in hand proceeded to meet Kathy and her daughter Laurie and her son Shae for an afternoon at the Magic House, which is an enormous Discovery Center in an old mansion.

Afterwords I put on the nagivagtor and headed toward Lauries for an egg coloring overnight before heading back to Lewistown. We all decided to stop and get drinks at the gas station before driving the 35 minutes to Lauries, but there was not a station in sight. So, we take an exit and for the first time I was really getting annoyed by the navigator and her backseat driverness. It was 2 miles out of the way to the 7-11. Marina was freaking out in the back, shouting, "why are you trying to kill me? If I don't drink I'll die!" and the navigator was saying, "you are off route. Make a U-turn in 200 feet!" Beween the two of them someone was going to have to get flung out the window and it was not Marina. Finally we got there, and now, I find it pretty funny.

A fun overnight with Laurie. She is a super fun gal and gave me some ideas and angst about my current special education situations. (She's an educator). We decided that if we lived closer we would definitly be meeting for coffee regularly.

Back in Lewistown we prepared as best we could for Easter Sunday. My dad bought Marina a beautiful Easter dress and Kathy got her a white bonnet. She looked like a doll.

Easter came too early for me. You see, Falcom woke up at 1 and then 3 and then 4 and so on for the entire night. I had as much sleep as I ever got on Christmas. I tried to tell him that this was not Christmas and he could relax, but that is not his method. The next morning, I had to give the kids their warnings, that sleep deprived, bizerk mom was on the prowl and that they had better be especially good!



They were! We went to church breakfast and they were open and friendly. We went to all different sunday School classes and they practiced for the kids bell chior. Marina knew all the answers to all the questions, and it was funny for me because my dad got the report which said, "Marina knows Everything!" and I had to say, "do you know that because she proved it or because she told everyone that as a fact?" We both really laughed. The kids did great in the bell chior. The service was lively and inspired about staying positive. A really fun morning.

Kathy and Dad made a great dinner and Kathy's son and family came to join us. They are a very nice family and we had fun visiting. They have kids Falcom and Marina's ages and all of those kids have been playing around like mad. They decided to have a sleep over last night and so I fell asleep to the sounds of little girls lying in bed giggling. Such a sweet sound.

Happy Easter Everyone!