We’ve found another “don’t miss” destination in St. Louis.  This one ranks as one of my top 10 so far.  It’s the Missouri Botanical Gardens.  I know, it sounds tame, but this stop had it all.  We went on a Wednesday night after 5pm and got in free.  Free is good.  Second, on Wednesday nights during the summer you can enjoy the Whitaker Music Festival.  We got to hear the fabulous Tony Simmons Band play some great jazz, the “make you want to get up and dance” kind.  This is the only night that you are allowed to picnic on the grounds.  Everyone brings their coolers and blankets and chairs and lounges with a nice beverage and a snack while listening to the music and chatting with friends and family.  On this night your children will also get to enjoy the Children’s Garden at no extra charge from 5-7pm.  (you’ll need to get there at 5 if you want to lay claim to a good piece of real estate in front of the stage) 

How’d you like to crawl through a wire mesh tunnel 50 feet in the air that runs from one suspended airplane to another?  This is my boys’ warped idea of fun, and they got their fill of it at the City Museum in St. Louis.  The City Museum is unlike any museum we’ve ever been in.  It is the brainchild of artist Bob Cassilly, a classically trained sculptor.  He and 20 other artisans have constructed this house of fun from reclaimed building materials made into art from around the city.  Thus the name.  Inside you’ll climb over salvaged bridges, walk on construction cranes, and even crawl through 2 abandoned airplanes.  Everything is “hands-on”.  What’s even more impressive is the way it’s put together.  Every piece looks intentional – like it was custom made for its location, but in reality the whole place is an exercise in recycling.  It is a site to behold and a playground for children of all ages.  Check out this photo tour to see some of it for yourself.   (Tip: Designate a meeting spot on each floor in case you lose each other.  There are many tunnels that lead to various places that are too small for adults to climb into with their children.  It’s hard to trace where your child will come out and very easy to lose track of them.  Also, if your child is too small to remember your phone number, write your cell number on their arm band.)

We’ve been having so much fun looking for license plates.  I know this is nothing new.  People who like travel games do it all the time, and it’s a great distraction for kids, but I am suddenly addicted.  There are 2 different games you can play: either see who can find the plate that’s the farthest away in a given period of time (which is good for short trips, like an hour or two) or try to find as many states as you can on your trip (which is good for long trips).  You will be amazed at how far we Americans travel in our cars!  For the second variation it really helps to have a blank map of the US.  That way the kids can keep track of which plates they’ve spotted by coloring in the states (of course the adults don’t really need a map because we already know how to color and we can probably just remember what we saw and besides, we don’t compete with our children because that would be, well, childish, right?).   It’s also a fun way to sneak in a little geography lesson.  So guess which plate I, I mean we, spotted today in Missouri?  ALASKA!  And just a few days ago we saw MEXICO!  No kidding.  My point is not, as you may be thinking, that we are easily amused.  It is that living on the road has eliminated enough stress from our everyday lives that we are able to enjoy even simple things.  It wasn't that long ago that I was so distracted and so busy that I would have overlooked something like this.  So go ahead, try it.  I know you're busy, but try it anyway.  See how many different plates you can find.  I think it might actually be the cure to road rage. 

We’ve had serious trouble with meals on the road.  With a smaller refrigerator and less storage space our options are: be much more organized and plan ahead or run to the grocery store every 2 or 3 days for food (which is not necessarily bad, think of all the fresh foods we could be eating).  Lazy as we are, and not really wanting to do either of those, we found a third option.  We’ve been eating out right and left!  Unfortunately, it’s killing our budget and our waistlines.  So I determined to find a way to solve this problem – to overcome my laziness and help save some money in the food department.  The answer…let someone else do the planning, for FREE!  I found menus4moms.com, a fabulous site run by a homeschooling mother (I love it when I can support other homeschoolers).  On this site you can register to have FREE weekly menus e-mailed to you, along with the recipes and the shopping list!  At first I was skeptical.  I don’t want to spend an hour every day cooking (there’s that lazy thing again) and I wasn’t sure we’d be able to store everything necessary for the week.  Plus, with 2 kids that can be a little snooty about unidentified “green stuff” in their food, I wasn’t sure if I’d be buying things that would go to waste or if dinner time would turn into a power struggle between me and my kids’ taste buds.  In the end, all of those worries were for nothing.  The boys have loved everything on the menu…everything.  Even the meals with unidentified green stuff.  They’ve sampled dishes that they haven’t eaten before and loved each of them.  I’m thrilled.  They’re quick and easy to make and don’t require a lot of fancy ingredients.  (I guess it’s obvious that I’m no gourmet cook.  Oh well.)  If you have the same problem, and often find yourself wondering what’s for dinner, check out this site.  It might be just what you need.