We headed south for our annual pumpkin shoot out, and it was super fun! We took some tannerite, so the pumpkins really exploded, and the boys had so much fun blowing them up. Brinley shot hundreds of rounds with her 22, and was nailing some shells she hung out on a bush. She's also a crack shot with her 243, and the boys loved shooting the break action guns.
This year we went up above Crouch to find our Christmas tree, and made a day out of it by soaking and playing at Silver Creek Plunge after. It was a lot of fun, and a Hunter picked out a great tree!
Today was the huge Treasure Valley Championship wrestling tournament, for the middle schoolers. We haven't been to this tourney for a few years, but this year was really nice that they had a separate division for the girls. There were only 4 girls total in Brinley's weight class, so she got 3 matches. She lost each one, although the last one shouldn't have been called as soon as it was.
Tonight's wrestling match was against Sawtooth Middle School. Brinley tried hard, but got pinned about halfway through the 1st round. I think she is getting a bit discouraged, but I hope she continues to learn, and ends the season with her head high.
Tonight Brinley had a meet against Meridian Middle School. This was a tough one for her- she got dumped a couple of times, but she made it to the very end of the 1st round before she got pinned. She is getting better each week, and hopefully she'll continue to learn and improve.
For our last day in St Louis, we decided to go to the zoo. The zoo is huge, and even though we were there for almost 4 hours, we still didn't see it all! There were a lot of animals put away due to the cold weather, but we loved seeing the ones that we could- we especially loved the hippos and sea lions.
We loved spending time in St Louis, and especially LOVED spending time with Tristan this week. I'm so happy that we were able to go, and would definitely love to go again!
Friday we decided to just do some exploring, so we drove across the Mississippi River into Illinois (just for fun), then we drove through old downtown looking at all the super cool old buildings. The Cathedral Basilica is stunning, and I wish we could have gone inside.
We ended up at Forest Park, and went to the Missouri History Museum, which was built in 1913. They had some awesome exhibits, and we really enjoyed learning about the history of St Louis, the World's Fair in 1904, the music of St Louis, and Women's Suffrage. After the museum, we drove around the park, looking at all the sights, then headed back to our hotel for lunch. In the afternoon, we headed down to the Gateway Arch. The Arch is so much bigger and impressive than we had anticipated! We had so much fun going through the museum and learning about the design and building of the arch, before we rode the tram up to the top. The little tram pods are tiny, and I'm glad there was only the 2 of us in ours! The observatory at the top is so cool, and the view is really incredible! Once we had ridden back down, we spent some time walking around the grounds and checking out the original Cathedral, before we walked down to the river for our dinner date.
We headed back up to St Louis late Thursday morning and made our way to our hotel downtown, at the St Louis Union Station. The hotel was built in 1894, and is part of the original train station- it is beyond amazing! We absolutely loved checking out the building, inside and out. That evening we went to the aquarium and the Ferris wheel, which are both right behind the hotel. The aquarium is awesome- we colored our own "fish" that swam into the aquarium, had our hands nibbled by red garra fish, met Coconut the sloth, fed the sting rays, and loved seeing all the fish and sharks they had.
