Sexton's do St Louis

Kim, Steve, and Claire came to St Louis to see us! They got here about 745 on Friday night. We had Guido's pizza (delicious St Louis style pizza), gave Miss Claire a bath, and talked the night away.

This morning we got up- played with Claire, had pancakes, and then headed to the City Museum. The museum was AWESOME... not what we expected at all. It was like a HUGE playground-adults entered at their own risk.

The City Museum

The 5 of us before we entered "The Caves"


CUTE family

Kyle in "The Caves"

So in "The Caves" there is a 10 story slide... this is at the bottom looking up.

Half way up!

Kim, Steve, and Claire waited for Kyle and I at the bottom.

We made it to the top...looking down before going down the slide.

Kyle coming down.

The City Museum has an aquarium on the second floor. It was the main reason we went. We thought Claire would love looking at all the fish. She did!!

ClaireBear watching the fish! She was so fun!

We looked at the stingrays...

and sharks...

and the sea turtles...

and then she was POOPED!

Rough Life..

:)

While we were in the museum, it got cold and started raining. We wanted to take Kim and Steve to our favorite ice cream place, Ted Drewes, but we decided something hot sounded much better!

SO we headed to Kayak Coffee down by Wash U to warm up!

Kyle LOVES Claire.

and Claire LOVES Kyle.

Kayak has this fun dessert called Smores for Four.

You roast marshmellows and make your own smore.

SO FUN!

After smores and coffee we headed back to the apartment to let Claire stretch and play awhile before they got back into the car to head home. :(

ClaireBear with T and Kyle! :)

We had a fabulous time and can't wait to see Kim, Steve, and Claire again SOON!

St Louis Symphony

Kyle surprised me with symphony tickets Friday night. I called him when I got off of work at 5:30 and he said, "Do you think we can make the symphony tonight? It starts at 7:00." Since I have about a 30 minute commute, I hurried home-luckily there were no accidents so traffic wasn't awful! We quickly changed, made bagels for the road, and jumped in the car.

We weren't sure where exactly we were going...but we were excited about seeing more of Saint Louis. We were headed to the Grand Center area of the city. The concert was at Powell Hall.
This was the ceiling.. the hall was stunning!

The architecture was incredible...kyle and I were afraid that the hall was going to be more impressive than the performance.

No photos past this point.... I didn't want to risk getting kicked out! :)

The symphony played four pieces. The first two were by Meredith Monk. Her pieces were rather odd... People sang making various sounds with their voices- accompanied by a small orchestra. Kyle and I did not particularly like this style of music. The last two pieces were traditional pieces...Bartok and Beethoven. Both of these piece gave us chills... and were amazing. It is incredible to watch people perform such powerful music.

NO BUENO!

We went to St .Louis Mills Mall tonight to watch one of Kyle's friends play hockey. The game was at 7:00 so we decided we would go a little early and eat at a restaurant there before the game. We hadn't had Mexican since we were in Oklahoma...so we decided to try Chevy's Fresh Mex. We had heard good reviews from lot of folks up here-so we thought we'd give it a go.

Now...we both LOVE Mexican food...and growing up in Oklahoma there is a fair share of AUTHENTIC Mexican food places. After living in Oklahoma City for the past two and a half years, we had DELICIOUS Mexican at our finger tips... Ted's, Pablano's, Casa Pierco, Alfredo's...

Our last Mexican experience was at Alfredo's in Moore, Oklahoma. It is absolutely INCREDIBLE! I love Jennifer's Avocado Enchiladas and Kyle is a fan on Lupe's Tacos. The chips, salsa, and queso are always hot and the tortillas are endless.. when you think you are unable to eat another bite, you get a wiff of the piping hot sopilla. MMMmmm...

Now let's go back to Chevy's Fresh Mex.

We enter the restaurant in a pleasant mood for several reasons.. 1. We are hungry. 2. We are going out to eat. and 3. We are going out to eat Mexican. We are greeted by an unmotivated hostess. She looks at us like we are inconveniencing her. We get seated and are pleased about our location. I am a fan of people watching so it was nice that she seated us where we could watch the mall shoppers. After we were sitting down our waiter come over. He was less inspired that the hostess was. He took our drink orders and left. When he returned, he brought our waters and "the goods." On our table he placed a basket of luke warm chips and ashtray looking like salsa. NO QUESO, NO TORTILLAS? We tried the chips and salsa and decide that the salsa taste about as good as it looked. We looked at the menu. Some of the items sound different and tasty...so we went ahead and ordered... hoping that our food was better. We decided to split Chevy's Super Cinco. It included 1 taco, 2 enchilada, 1 tamale, and 1 chimi-all with "special" sauces. Everything was just ehhh. The special sauces were not that special. Needless to say we were not pleased.

Oh, how we long for some authentic Oklahoma Mexican food.

St Louis Zoo!

St Louis had a FABULOUS zoo. So we decided to spend our Saturday there...

Look at his LOOOONG tongue...

This guys is an orangutan...He weighs over 400 pounds and is 20 years old.

Bird pictures for Grandma Bobbie!!

The peacock was just hanging out (not in a cage) in the bird garden.

We thought this toucan looked like a stuffed animal...such vibrant colors in the beak.

i LOVE giraffes.

The male camel was all about strutting his stuff.

kyle wants a spider monkey.

for a pet.

Sea lion and seal feeding

Mama and baby iguanas..

Penguins for John!!

"John will be so disappointed if we don't see the penguins." -Kyle

This is a Puffin.

We think it looks like a duck penguin.

The hippos were huge!

The weather was gorgeous! So many of the animals were out.. it was quite enjoyable!

Home and Garden Show!

There was a home and garden show in St Louis last weekend and Kyle and I decided that we would go... It was a fun Saturday morning! There was a wine club booth... it was very fun! We got to try 3 white wines and 3 red. The most exciting part of the morning was parking in a vacant lot (for free) and hoping that we were still going to be there when we got out! Lucky for us, we were! :)

Indy!

We are only about three hours from Indy so we decided to head up one weekend and see the city and visit family. Kate and Mike were kind enough to let us stay at their BEAUTIFUL home. We got in late Friday night and left Sunday morning. Saturday morning we hung out and then made our way to Aunt Lori's. Then the five of us headed to see Brandi and Jayme's new place!

After the "Tour of Homes-Part I" Kate, Lori, and I squeezed in some shopping while Kyle and Mike stayed home to watch basketball.

Then we headed to Steve and Kim's house to meet baby Claire!

(This is were you pretend there is a picture of sweet Claire... I forgot my camera!)

Uncle Brett swung by Kate and Mike's for a drink before all the cousins met for dinner at Palomino's. We were really excited we got to see almost everyone. (We missed you Erin!)

Dinner was a blast.. as expected when you get the Sexton kids together. We went back to Kate and Mike's and talked until the wee hours of the night! Sunday morning Kate made breakfast and Aunt Lori came over to hear about the evening...

We had so much fun and hope to go back again before we move back to Oklahoma. :)