The St. Louis Trip

We are back from a very successful and fun trip to St. Louis. My apologies for upsetting the 5 people that read this blog and not posting pictures during the week, but someone (Justin) forgot to bring the memory card reader and I figured 2 or 3 of those 5 readers are in St. Louis anyway. But we hardly had time to upload photos during the week, as we were busy having fun with the STL Roches, showing off Lorena to the family and other activities. Here are some of the things that we did and learned during the trip:

• "So they can land the plane" is a great phrase to add to the end of a sentence if you want Brody to do what you say. Examples include: "Give me your juice so they can land the plane," "We have to turn off the DVD player so they can land the plane," and "You need to get potty trained so they can land the plane."


• Brody got to go to his first Cardinals baseball game, a 5-2 win over the Florida Marlins. It was a night game, but that didn't stop Brody from staying up to watch the whole game. He got to see Albert Pujols hit a home run, met Fredbird, the beloved St. Louis Cardinals mascot, and was a very good boy the whole time.


• The kids apparently love Sponge Bob Square Pants. We've never really let them watch it before, but they were given the DVD for the plane ride and watched it EVERY DAY we were in St. Louis, often twice. The real tragic part? We accidentally left it there and have been tip toeing around the subject since. This could be very bad...


• We made it to Chuck E. Cheese's again, where they had, of all things, a Sponge Bob game, which Brody enjoyed. Abilene, however was upset that we only ordered one pizza, as you can see.


• April and I snuck away one night to see The Simpsons Movie. We really only get to see one movie a year in the theater and decided on the Simpsons out of moral obligation to see it on the big screen. At the theater we killed some time playing Highway 66 Mini-Bowling, as seen here. We each won one game of bowling, but during the third, tie-breaker game, the machine froze. Guess we'll never know who is the better mini-bowler. We also saw the world's largest toy crane game and were fortunate Brody wasn't with us, because he would have simply climbed in the door and lived there for the rest of his life.


• The Roche family men got together on Saturday for the first ever live Fantasy Football Draft for the NOTBBY League (No One To Blame But Yourself). It was a good time and everyone drafted well, but I fully expect my team (More Cowbells) to win it all this year. Kudos to my cousin Jason for making his picks via cell phone relayed through his mom, even when he had to take a shower and get ready for a wedding in KC. There were also a few questionable Oprah references from my cousin Chris, but I don't want to embarrass him by mentioning them here...


• Our home security system apparently works really well, even when there's nothing going on. We armed the motion detector before we left and got three calls from Brinks, letting us know the alarm was going off. The first time we were obviously worried, but the police checked out the house and everything is fine. The last two times were more of a nuisance, but let that be a warning to any of you thinking of breaking into our house. Our alarm goes off when there's nothing going wrong, just think what it will do if you try to get in. (Side note: I realize no one is going to steal anything from our house. If anyone is that desperate to take some baby clothes, sippy cups and bibs, just show up at the front door and we'll gladly give them to you.)


• My cousin Kari tipped us off to a inflatable play area that Brody and Abilene couldn't get enough of. They even let the adults jump around and I apparently couldn't get enough of burns on my elbows from the giant slide.


• We got all the kids together for a photo with Great Grandma Roche. While it's not the greatest shot, the fact that we had five kids all looking in the general direction of the camera and not crying is a minor miracle.
  
  We also went to the park, the mall caught a few naps and more things that I've probably left out. But you can see all the photos by clicking here. We had a great time, but how could you not with these three kids in your traveling party?!