City Museum and World Aquarium

We left early this morning in route to St Louis, MO for a mini vacation with mine and my sister's families. James and I woke up at around 6:00 a.m. and woke the kids up around 6:15 a.m. After getting dressed and eating some breakfast, we headed out for about a 35 minute trip to my sisters house. From there we took the two hour drive to St. Louis and actually did okay other than some mild road work and my sister and I having two different maps. FYI: Yahoo Maps and MapQuest are totally different :)

Our first stop on our trip was the St.Louis City Museum and World Aquarium. The Museum was really cool making the experience educational as well as fun. There were rolly slides, tunnels, skate park (slide area), Arts and Crafts area, and so much more. There is a whole roof top full of more adventures, but the only way we seen to get up was through three plus storries of tunnels. Needless to say we opted not to push the little ones through the narrow wire tunnels. My kids favorite part was a tie between the Arts and Crafts and the skate park area. The only complaint I had was that the tunnels are kids sized and the kids are not allowed to through by themselves, so...needless to say they didn't do to many tunnels. They did go through some with their older cousins, but not to much (Thanks Amanda and Emilee:)). I also thought that the food was a little expensive, but it's to be expected from places like this!

The World Aquarium was our next stop and what Quentin had waited for all summer long. It was smaller than I expected, but it had a lot of touch stations that was great for education, interactions, and keeping the kids entertained. I even managed to touch most of those slimy critters and wasn't grossed out to much. Touch stations included; a variety of turtles, doctor fish, guinea pigs, rabbit, sharks, starfish, stingrays, farrets, and more. They also had turtle races, which Zach and Kierstyn won the bet, and a station to feed the fish. I think that we all equally enjoyed the doctor fish nibbling our hands and my kids couldn't get enough. We all also enjoyed the stingrays (except Quentin). Kierstyn loved the snake that she was able to pet and Quentin really enjoyed crawling through the tunnel that went through the sharks tank! Although, Quentin liked it all and it was hard for him to choose a favorite, I think he really enjoyed watching the jellyfish and octopus. Zachery basically just looked at everything, but he fell in love with the stingrays and Kariana seemed to light up more when she pet the rabbit.

I don't have many pictures (due to having to hold kids up to see and juggling the camera) but I hope that you enjoy what I managed to snap!