Saint Louis Temple/Zoo Trip

I have officially become a blogger who only posts about fun-family-goings-on (goings-on sounded right in my mind but it's not lookin' too hot printed out).

This is somewhat of a bummer to me. Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful to finally have a medium which properly records these cherished family memories... but I kind of miss posting about my thoughts and such.

I'm hoping once I get caught up time-wise on the blog and am no longer bogged down with back-post responsibilities that I can start a little bit of that up again.

It's theraputic.

ANYHOW...

We went to Saint Louis last month as a family. The purpose of the visit was attending the temple. We have decided to make the trek once a month and Corey and I will switch off who gets to go inside and who gets to spend some quality one-on-one time with the boys.
The summer was incredibly hectic at my work, and it was necessary that I put in more than my scheduled hours. By the time this little trip rolled around I was seriously missing my children and I was so grateful to have a whole day with them making memories.

While Corey attended the temple the boys and I headed to the Zoo. Can I just tell you...the Saint Louis Zoo is so cool! Oh my word it was amazing! As a point of reference to my counterparts in Utah I would estimate that it is at least 3 times the size of Hogle. And... get this... it's free. We had to pay for parking this time, but I think we know how to even avoid that in the future. We only had a few hours so we barely scratched the surface of what the Zoo has to offer, but I'm sure we'll have plenty of other trips to go exploring. We at least hit all of the animals that the boys really wanted to see, and frankly the humidity was such that if we had put in much more time I we would have completely melted... puddles I tell you.

Jack loved playing in the waterfall, and the hippos swimming right by was a huge crowd pleaser. The prairie dogs put on a good show... as did the seals who were feeling very playful despite the heat. I was the most impressed with the big cat section of the zoo. You look down on them, so they are really easy to find, and they have a huge area to play in. Isn't that tiger playing with his ball cute? He was Alaster's favorite.

After Corey was done we picked him up and headed across the street from the temple to a really secluded little park. This park is a tender mercy from Heavenly Father to the temple patrons. It is in the most random spot for the city, and I can't imagine anyone else but little LDS families going there. It's tiny but perfect. We were the only ones there that day. (we always hit the very LAST session possible-- which is early afternoon-- so that Corey can get SOME sleep before we drive) Corey changed and we refreshed before heading home:

Alaster requested that his 'babe,' (which he sometimes refers to now as his 'beautiful babe,') get strapped in with him on the way home.

All that sun totally wiped the boys out:

We absolutely loved taking the boys with us on this temple trip. It was a great blessing to be able to talk with them on the way up about why we were going, and to be able to show them the temple and let them watch their daddy walk in. We had something specific that we were praying about that day, and had told the boys a little bit about it. After we dropped Corey off Jack had all kinds of good questions and it was all we talked about on the way to the Zoo. His questions were insightful for a 5 year old, and I was so happy that he was interested, and that we could talk about it. Making the whole day about the temple and family togetherness is wonderful! The whole family is looking forward to our next trip!