Fun times

This past week Bill was on spring break, so we took advantage of having him home a little bit more and did a lot of fun things. At the beginning of the week we went to a local church that has a really neat indoor playground. It was really hard to get good pictures here, but I did my best.


Here's Will riding a whale. He never stayed at one thing for very long, so I had to be quick with picture-taking.


This was a fire truck (I think). Will liked this most out of everything else there.



Aside from the playground, they had some really interesting murals on the walls representing different stores and things you'd see in a regular city, with a Christian twist. This was called "The Mary and Martha Tea Room" and the other one is the "Good Samaritan Hospital."

The highlight of our week was taking a day trip down to St. Louis. We got off to a rocky start, but it ended up being a great day.


First of all we drove by the St. Louis arch. Not the most spectacular picture, but that's what you get when you're taking it from the car. (Bill's note: I thought it was a pretty good picture, but I'm biased.)


We started out at the St. Louis Science Center, which had a lot of fun little exhibits and hands-on things that kids of all ages could do.



One of the first sections we stopped at talked about different structures. Will really liked their building block collection. In the second picture, Bill is showing Will a fan setup which shows how wind flows around a building. Bill had as much fun here as Will did.


Will also had a lot of fun in the mathematics section of this museum. (Yes, this museum even has math exhibits!) This is a big Tower of Hanoi puzzle. Will just enjoyed playing with the big foam disks. Bill kept trying to teach him (and me) how it was really supposed to go. (It didn't work.)


Some exhibits were a bigger hit than others.


Both Will and Bill really liked the sound visualizer. This microphone was hooked up to a computer and showed you what your voice "looked like." (Bill's note: It displayed the frequency spectrum of the sound from the microphone.)


The lobby of the science center had a big two-story ball maze type thing. Will really enjoyed watching the balls go around and around and up and down different elevators and funnels. It was really neat to watch.


By the end of the day, Will was pretty tired. (The whole lack of nap that day also didn't help much.)



After a quick wake-up play on the playground and a brief doze in the car, we went and had dinner with Paul and Sarah, some of our friends from Provo.



Will was really excited about seeing his friend Benjamin again.



They had a really great time together and kept the rest of us entertained.


We finished our trip going past the St. Louis Temple. It was a really neat experience being able to go up to the temple grounds after a fairly long and hectic day. There is real peace there at the temple. We are really grateful to have it as close as we do.

All in all, we had a really great week. It was nice having Bill around more and being able to get out and do things together was a lot of fun.