What I Have Learned This Summer...and Other Rants

Wow! Summer 2011 went wayyyy too fast!  I have lots of fun things to tell and mostly just ramble about.

Things I learned this summer:

• Traveling by Amtrak is a lot of fun, especially when I am the sole driver of the family and so unbelievably tired of doing all the driving just wanted a nice break to enjoy the ride.  We left out of Union Station in KC early on a Monday morning. Having flown before, I am totally freaked out surprised at the lack of security.  We were toward the front of the line, and seriously, we were on the train maybe 3 minutes when we started to move.  On the way to St. Louis, we were in a car with only maybe another 10 people.
• Planning a trip to St. Louis by Amtrak, with the intent to get around the city via the metro and other public transportation, as well as our own 2 feet, sounds good in theory. But in upper 90's weather, I didn't want to listen to the 14 year old gripe ruin the vacation, so I rented a car.  Very good decision since it had a GPS, and getting around was super easy.
• Is it a pedal boat or a paddle boat? The jury is still out, although secretly, I believe I have won this argument with my daughters, considering we used pedals to move the boat around the lake at Forest Park. Pedal, paddle, tomato, tamato.
• Rootbeer floats are super delicious when made with chocolate ice cream! Whoda thunk? I mean here I am a chocoholic, and I've never thought to try it.  We went to Fitz's Rootbeer Bottling Company (brisket was amazing!). Got $20 worth of free rootbeer floats with a coupon I printed off before we left. Delicious!
• We went to play in the fountains at City Garden. So beautiful, with all the colored lights. Tye was going back and forth, having such a good time, drenched from head to toe. I had just told him 2 more minutes, and next thing I knew, he was coming at me with blood gushing from his nose. I had nothing with me to take care of this, but since he had his shoes and socks off to play in the water, I instinctively grabbed his white socks and started sopping up the bloodbath. He got up on a bench and laid on his back with his head on my lap, and after several minutes, I finally got it to slow down. By then, his socks were soaked with blood. He couldn't stop crying, and I was asking him, are you crying because it still hurts? or it scared you? What? Through the tears he said...my socks are ruined and I can't smell anything. Oh jeez.  The socks became an issue for the whole vacation, as he freaked out when he found out I was just going to throw them away. It seems those are his favorite socks in the whole wide world. What was I thinking?
• While we were gone, a very old building on the corner of 3rd and Main was destroyed by fire. For those of you who have been to the Ville, it is the old Time and Gift store, as well as Dave Weigel Insurance, plus apartments above and Burch Guttering below.  Reports say careless smoking, although I would say careless was an understatement, considering it is also reported that said smoker woke up, found the fire and put a fan on it to get it out while he went to knock on the doors of the other tenants. Can you say idiot intoxicated?
• Stopped at Target in St. Louis. Remind me to never turn my girls loose with a grocery cart.
• At Target as we were checking out, there were escalators maybe 25 feet from me. Tye was loving all the escalators we saw in St. Louis, and was begging me to go down and back up. As Rachel said...we don't get out much. I looked at the cashier and said, where do those go to? She said a parking garage, and I thought...wow, Target has hit the big time!  So I told him go down and come right back up. Mother Hen Amberlea went over to watch him, and down he went. As I grabbed my bags and Rachel and I walked closer, we could see Amberlea standing at the top of the DOWN escalator, and Tye was climbing UP the DOWN escalator. He would take 3-4 steps, then pause, and down he would go. I quickly realize he was crying, and the vision of him basically walking up the steps and going no where made me bust out laughing in complete hysterics giggle.  When it was all said and done, apparently he got to the bottom and there was no way back up. To get to back up, you had to walk out into the garage and back in through a certain door.  So Amberlea had gone down too, then hightailed it back up the DOWN escalator when she couldn't find a way out, but Tye fell trying to get up. Sheesh. You would think maybe the checker would have mentioned that when I said to go down and come right back. Whatever.  The girls and I decided it was the highlight of our trip!
• So this week, while the above mentioned building was being torn down by cranes, we were driving one street over. We had a good view of the demolition. I said to Tye, wow, check that out. He responded...awwww, that was my favorite building. (Huh?) Me...what, why? His response...oh, it is my favorite color. What? Brown? That child is so strange hilarious!
• Regardless if there is an open parking spot in front of the arch, while 20 others are parked, it is still a no parking zone. We were trying to find a frozen custard place, and decided to stop for only a few blasted minutes briefly to ask for directions. I parked and we went into the riverboat shop, returned about 5 minutes and a $25 parking ticket later.  Yes, there were definitely sign up, but I seriously don't know if I have ever parked somewhere that so many people were already parked illegally. They were bad influences on me!
• It truly is a small world. We ran into Marsha Meyers and kiddos at the City Museum!
• A GPS system gives me a power trip. More than once during our vacation, I imagined myself easily driving around New York City, considering how easily we found where we were going, or got ourselves out of being lost.

More later, I want to get this posted.