Fun with the Merrills

We all returned to St. Louis Monday evening from our eclipse adventure and Elise stayed the night with us before heading back to Columbia Tuesday morning.  Kirsti and Ryan and kids also traveled back that evening as they were not extremely impressed with their Indianapolis AirBnB so I got to have a morning walk with both girls Monday morning. We found a huge piece of wood on the side of the road and it was a good thing they came along to help carry it to a nearby dumpster!

You can see that we had nice weather on Tuesday so we visited the playground at nearby Carondelet Park in the afternoon.

The playground equipment was entertaining for a while but they had more fun running down the hills and exploring a fallen log.  

Steve and Ryan looking on....

All while Alice and Ivan were here, their favorite pastime was "making soup" in the driveway puddle and bird bath with leaves and grass and seed pods - stirring with long sticks from the woodpile. We had pleasant weather so they were outside every day.

Wednesday, however, was rainy all day so, to get the wiggles out, I joined Kirsti, Ryan, Alice and Ivan at the History Museum's History Clubhouse that offered a large array of interactive, historical activities for kids including pulling a genuine steamboat whistle, building a mini arch, and "fishing" and preparing food like early indigenous people would have done.

Those "rocks" are actually pillows! How cool is that?

Thursday, Aunt Sarah and Beckie joined us for a trip to the Science Center!

The dinosaur diorama was added to the Science Center in 1991 and Kirsti was fascinated with and  terrified of it as a toddler. Ivan was the same....

We checked out an area of the Science Center that I had never seen before that focused on agriculture. Steve and Sarah found a giant ant to sit upon. Behind them is a wall of different soils from around the country. Who would have thought dirt would be interesting but it was - and quite colorful. 

 

And we also walked across the sky bridge to the planetarium side. And Ivan and Alice got to run the "hamster wheel" that moved the balls in the huge rube goldberg display at the entrance.

Friday morning I joined them on a trip to the zoo. Sarah stayed home to work and Steve took Fred shopping.

The zoo has a night time "glow" event so there were huge blow-up, fabric-covered animals and displays that were lit at night and that one could see for a fee.

Of course, there had to be a carousel ride.  Can you spy with your little eye Alice and Ivan???

And, then it was Saturday morning and we had to say farewell to the Merrills.  Here they are driving away.

I close with some cute photos of Ivan and Alice...it was so great to have them here!!!