It's nice to be home.

No, wait. Scratch that. I WANT TO GO BAAAAACK!!!! We had so much fun! The only thing I can say about driving for 8 days is I am sure glad we bought that DVD player. I can NOT see us surviving without it. Thought Rachael wasn't entertained by it much (except for the time when we let them watch 'S.tar W.ars' Nothing like a beeping trash can to make a girl happy) it kept the boys occupied and even quiet at times. Two days into the trip I discovered that Rachael's car seat she inherited from brothers was so old and the padding was so far gone it hurt her to sit in it. She was basically sitting on plastic and she let us know quite loudly how unpleasant it was. Point taken. I will be putting some padding there today. I don't want to get her a new one because this one is semi-reclined and she can sleep comfortably in it. It's impossible to find something like that new unless we are willing to pay a lot of money. Which we aren't.
Back to the trip. We stopped in St. Louis for a couple of days since we prefer to observe the Lord's Day. We worshipped in a PCA church, went to Covenant seminary to look around and then headed to the Zoo. The kids loved it! Their zoo is very impressive and in theory free. Until you add up the parking fees, the fees to visit some of the areas of the zoo, fees to ride a train and a 8$ nuggets for the kids' meal (they tasted awful, too, but it was better then nothing) Still, it was worth visiting. Unfortunately we forgot the camera so there's no pictures.
We arrived at M's sisters' house late Monday night. They had a tough evening as their 2yo fell off a chair and split her head open. They took her to the emergency room and she ended up with four staples. Poor little girl. The next day we decided to keep it low key and went to this fancy shopping center that had great fountains for the kids to play in.

We went to the air museum

and the beach:



More to come, stay tuned :)