St. Louis Vacation Day 3

 Today we had a lazy morning eating our fill of the continental breakfast and swimming in the heated pool. We then went to New City Fellowship Church. We have missed going to a PCA church and singing our familiar songs, and this church is multi-cultural,so we decided to check it out. We sang in Swahili, Spanish, and some of the scripture was translated into French! Some interesting things were that kids stayed in service for the first half of the 1 hr 45 min service (challenge! But nice that all the kids were loud, not just ours) and then went to the nursery for the latter half.  We broke into small groups during the middle of service to pray together, and stood in a large circle to take communion.

After service was over at 12:45 we drove aimlessly to find a place to eat. We ate at the delicious City Diner and headed back to the hotel for a late nap. We all fell asleep and finally I woke up at 5:45 PM. I knew we were going to be pushing it to do anything on our agenda, eat, and be back at a decent hour for Grady's bedtime.

First we stopped by City Garden,  a free sculpture garden.

I don't think Grady noticed the scary head behind him.

This neat old firetruck sold ice cream. Of course Grady demanded to,"Sit on it!"

I forgot about the sprinklers, so we improvised.

Grady would call this waterfall a "water bottle" 

We only explored a little if the gardens, then went for a leisurely stroll to LeClede's Landing for dinner. Unfortunately, there was a Blues Festival going on, and all of the restaurants were packed. I started getting stressed because it was getting late.We finally found a restaurant that was "only" a 35min wait. We ate, then hurried back to the hotel. Well, I was in a hurry. The boys decided they needed to get in this fountain.

 This is part of the City Garden, which we will probably finish exploring- with bathing suit in hand- tomorrow. You can see Alex and Grady right in the middle, taking their time, getting all wet, when Mom is trying to get the little one in bed! But Grady had so much fun, and will let us sleep in a bit tomorrow!