WE LOVE MO!!!

So I had a four day weekend to take in January. It feels like I live at work in the month of December, so I get an extended weekend off in January. Codi and I decided to go do something fun, just the four of us. St Louis, MO. it was.

It is only about 6 hours away. We had to stop in Branson to go to our favorite store. Dicks 5 and Dime.

Then we had to go to Lamberts, the home of the thrown rolls. We saw it on the food network and had to go.

Then, we made it to St Louis. Words cannot explain how much fun we had there. The Arch was fun, but the "elevator" made Xander and prego Codi a little nervous.
We then found this amazing place, called the City Museum. Xander and I both screamed like little girls when we saw this place. The outside looked like this: The outside was full of planes, buses and tubes that led from each plane and bus. Blayne and I were the only ones who were not afraid of heights, and weren't freezing. .
The inside was full of caves, tunnels, and secret hiding places. You would find one hole in the middle of the ground and you would be crawling underground and then you would pop up on the other side of the building. There was a floor that had an aquarium, a floor with a circus, and a 10 story slide. It was too cool.



We then went to a Museum.

And another museum.

St. Louis was really cool.

But the night before we were going to drive home... it began snowing. By morning it had snowed about 8 inches. We stayed in our cabins about 30 min south of St Louis and had to drive on some back roads to get to the major highways. We said a prayer before we began our drive and we were on our way. We had only been driving 45 minutes, and only traveled about 15 miles, because the roads were very windy and VERY slippery. There was a little hill and I, not thinking, applied the gas a little and we began spinning. The car became quiet and we all held on tight while we spinned, thankfully we ended in our lane, facing the right way. I am not good at driving in the snow, so I asked Codi if she wanted to drive. Since she is from Utah, and is more familiar with snow driving so she took over. Too bad this was not snow, IT WAS ICE, and two minutes later we were in the ditch, with no way out. The roads were horrible, and no matter who was driving, they would have ended up in the ditch.

But since we said a prayer that we would be safe, we were okay and Heavenly Father placed us about 40 feet from a towing shop. I walked to the place and asked if they could pull us out. The man backed his vehicle up and attached the chains to our car. He then proceeded to pull our car out, when all of a sudden his big truck started sliding backwards...towards us!!

The man began screaming, saying: "Unhook your car! Unhook your car!" So I slid under the car and unhooked the chains. The truck kept sliding and the man jumped inside the truck and slammed on the brakes and emergency brakes. It stopped about one foot from hitting our car. Thankfully he got the truck stopped or he would have knocked our car on its side and possibly dragged us down the hill.

I asked the guy to hook the car up from behind, and pull us down the mountain. He did (and only charged me $20), and we decided to find another way home. We went about a mile, while searching the GPS for an alternate route, and realized it would take us two hours out of the way. Going up that hill was our only quick way out. While stopped on the side of the road and starting to get really frustrated... along came a sand truck/snow plow out of no where and it was heading the same way we needed to go. We got right behind him and started up the hill.

Earlier, while we were being pulled out of the ditch, there were about six cars waiting to make their way up the hill and by the time we had followed the sand truck/snow plow and made it over the hill, four of those six cars were stuck in the ditch awaiting their turn with the tow truck.

We highly recommend visiting St. Louis, but not when it is snowing.

Thanks for the planning Codi, but most of all... thanks for not freaking out when we experienced the snow hill of death.