All's Well

After about 48 hours of at least someone in the house puking, we made it through the stomach bug. Thank God. I never got it badly, but did feel a bit *ugh* sometimes. Dan and Wally avoided it too. But Mary ended up getting it, along with the girls. Jackson stayed at Grandma's for a second day, which we had already planned before the stomach bug hit.

So we hit the streets of St. Louis to do some sightseeing on Tuesday. Lunch first on The Hill, at Rigazzi's. Then we went to the City Museum. OH MY GOSH. This is officially my favorite place in St. Louis (including the outlying suburbs). I think I'm going to have to give the City Museum its very own post on my blog. Check back later for more. [Edit: here's the link to what I finally got around to writing. LOVE the City Museum!]

After the City Museum, we went to the Arch. We watched the Mississippi River overflowing its banks, then rode up to the top of the Arch. Katie had never been there, and neither had Wally. I think they both enjoyed their first trip. Katie was pretty good at waiting patiently in all the lines, and she liked looking down from inside the top of the Arch.

The evening was spent at the Cardinals game, in the nosebleed section of the new Busch Stadium. It was Katie's first game at the new stadium, plus her first taste of cotton candy (she loved both). We hadn't eaten much through the day, so dinner was ballpark food and beer. That hit my stomach like a rock, along with the lack of sleep and a tiring day. Around the 5th inning, I started feeling icky. Hannah started feeling bad again too, so we left in the 8th inning. On the way home, Hannah got sick again. I felt so awful for her! We got home and straight to bed for some much-needed rest.

We were supposed to pick Jackson up Wednesday morning, but I was a little nervous since Hannah had been sick again just 10 hours earlier. Grandma offered to keep Jackson for another day, but I missed him and felt guilty leavning him there. I agreed to pick him up the afternoon. Dan was working, so the rest of us decided to tour the Anheuser-Busch brewery. Did you know it's a FREE tour, with FREE beer at the end? Jackpot!!! Of course, Katie didn't get much out of it, besides enjoying the Clydesdales and the sleeping dalmatian. But she did enjoy using her new camera!

Wednesday was also Wally's birthday. After picking up Jackson at Grandma and Poppy's, we went out to dinner at Kitaro. It's a Japanese restaurant with sushi (Wally's fave). It was a good dinner, but I was a little distracted trying to keep Jackson and Katie occupied with food (for the former) and markers (for the latter).

After cake and presents when we got home, the girls worked on their Cousins Shirts. They did a pretty good job! I wrote COUSINS on each shirt, and they decorated them with permanent markers. They all drew the Arch, and other reminders of their visit to St. Louis. (Minus the barf, of course - who wants a souvenir of that?!)

This morning, they all hit the road and headed home to North Carolina. As we hugged goodbye, I cried - of course. I have this thing about goodbyes. Guess I'll have to blog about that later too.

Now I miss them. We really had a great visit, even with all the puking. Not that I enjoyed that by any stretch of the imagination... but we did have lots of down time with each other. And we crammed in lots of fun the rest of the time. Plus we wore Red Box out with all the movies we rented (The Bucket List, Definitely Maybe, National Treasure, Charlie Wilson's War). And... there's always the magazines. Now I have months' worth of reading material to keep me busy so I don't think about missing them. I might need some subscriptions...