St. Louis for the 4th

We decided to head up to St. Louis for the 4th of July. P had two days off and St. Louis is only 5 hours from us so it seemed like a great idea.  We really enjoyed our time there and really loved the city.  Although it's a lot smaller city, compared to Chicago which we had been to the week earlier, there was something about it we really liked.  

The only bad part of our short little trip was the rain that lasted all night on our first day there.  Because of the rain the free Maroon 5 concert and firework show was canceled, such a disappointment :(  We were both really looking forward to hearing them! 

I'm not really in a blogging mood so I'm just going to list some of the things we did while there, in no particular order...

-went to the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, famous for having the most mosaics, in one place, in the world.  The mosaics took nearly 80 years to complete using 41 million pieces of clay.  It was amazing!!

-Forest Park (America's 2nd largest urban park, it was huge! Also the site of the 1904 World's Fair-whatever that was!). We spent almost a whole day there visiting the zoo (which was free...awesome!), the art museum, and walking around the beautiful grounds

-ate some great Indian food, yummy pastries, famous custard, and Pho

-enjoyed fireworks under the famous Gateway Arch 

It was a fun and quick getaway and I'm so glad we went.

 This orangutan was so hilarious, he sat like this looking at us forever.

This is a music book from forever ago, it was huge! Apparently is was this big so that a large group of people (40) could read it while singing. Can you imagine carrying that thing around?

The biggest pastry we've ever seen!

I love the colors in the mosaics on this ceiling.

Happy 4th of July! We are so grateful for our county, how lucky we are to belong to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave!  Thanks to all those who serve our country, we pray for you every night!