The St. Louis Song by Jewel

Three day weekends are the best! It was going to be a four day weekend for hubby, but he had to work on Friday. The army often turns three day weekends into four day weekends, but since there are no civilian doctors working in his clinic, they need one person to volunteer. He will be given a day off later though which will be nice to have an unexpected three day weekend! We had originally thought we'd go away for the weekend, but since we had company during the week and one less day over the weekend, we decided to push that to another time. Instead we decided to explore St. Louis with a friend of ours. It was an awesome day and cool to see the city that we live closest to.

Summer here is hot to the end, so I recently purchased this new tank from Old Navy. I just couldn't pass on the pretty floral pattern! Easily paired with jeans and my Target sneakers to be comfortable walking around the city.

Top: Old Navy / Jeans: Old Navy / Shoes: Target

First stop in St. Louis was to the zoo! We'd heard it was a great zoo with lots of cool animals and it was free! You can pay for the train that makes its way through the zoo and to see special shows and such, but since it was our first time we just walked around to see the animals. We probably did about 2/3 of the zoo before we decided it was lunch time. We decided it would be better to go find a sit down place in the city, so we'll definitely have to go back to the zoo and see the rest of what we missed!

We started at the monkey house

Emma liked these little guys

Right when I took this picture, the slow moving Sloth moved his arm right in front of his face! I waited for a minute or two to see if he'd uncover his face but he was tired. He was so sweet though and moved a little faster than the sloths in Zootopia ;)

Hubs, Emma, and our friend, Calvin

Just a couple of camels

The zebra in front was rolling around on the ground... not playing dead lol

The king of the jungle! His lioness was hiding in the shade in another spot, so it was hard to get a picture of her too.

Two giraffes, some sort of antelope, and two ostrich were all together in this pen. I thought it was a funny combination, but they must all get along well.

The sea lions were showing off. There were more birds and cold weather animals that we missed, but will definitely go back for!

We headed to lunch after the zoo. It was a pretty hot day so we wanted to find a place to sit inside in the air conditioning. I was given the recommendation to go to Pappy's BBQ and was told they are pretty popular and typically have a long wait. So we got in line outside and I played with Emma to keep her happily occupied. I decided to change her diaper so went inside and realized just how much longer the line was. So I called the guys and said that the restaurant next door had a much shorter line and smelled just as good, so we got fried chicken and BLTs, then got in the car to eat so Emma could take a nap in her car seat. Calvin had already been to the Gateway Arch, but we wanted to see it, so while Emma napped, we drove downtown to see it.

We may go back and try the ride to the top since its in a beautiful location on a river. Afterwards we weren't sure where we were going, so we crossed a bridge and realized we were in Illinois! So we pulled over at a gas station, decided what our next plan was and set it in the GPS. Off to the St. Louis art museum!

Pablo Picasso's fruit bowl

They had arts and crafts set up for kids, so Emma and I took a break from seeing the artwork and made some of our own!

She's not quite ready to cut with scissors.... and also didn't care to do hand over hand to try to use them either lol

She wanted to give her artwork to Uncle Calvin :)

Pink roses

Water Lilies by Claude Monet, one of my favorites

I wish I'd gotten a better picture, but there was a beautiful lawn and pond in front of the art museum. Emma and I walked all the way down and back while the guys finished up looking around the museum. She needed to get out some energy before our car ride home, and hubs loves art so we gave them a few more minutes to enjoy. It was definitely one of his favorite parts!

It was a fun day with these three! I look forward to more Missouri adventures!!!!