11/24- 11/30 Thanksgiving, the City Museum and St. Louis Zoo

It’s really getting cold now. In this RV park we have to walk the dogs from our RV to outside the gates every time they need to go outside. We used to be able to just let them out into the back yard on their own – I miss that! Randy and I are both getting colds.  

Last week Randy took the RV back to Lovell’s RV so they could do some work on it. They needed to replace the ice-maker in the refrigerator and had to order one, check the bay-heater, washer and a leak in the bedroom. The RV service department works on a first-come, first-serve basis and Randy wanted to have our RV there when the doors opened at 7:30 am. So he drove it to Columbia on Wednesday evening and I stayed with Aaron and Dezina. Dezina fixed lasagna and cannelloni for dinner and we had a really nice visit. 

The only thing that doesn’t seem to work right in the RV now is the washer/dryer. They tested it and said it worked, but it only works with hot water.  

We have been storing our shoes in a plastic shoe rack that hangs over the bathroom door, but the bathroom in this RV is so small that the rack has to hang on the outside of the door, which puts it in the path between the kitchen and the bedroom. So Randy built a frame on both sides of the bed to hold our shoes.  

Thanksgiving weekend: Wednesday night we drove to Theresa and Tom’s. Randy got up at 5:30 the next morning and pretty much stayed in the kitchen all day! We had turkey and dressing, potatoes and gravy, green beans almandine, pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting. Tom’s family brought some additional side dishes, and it was a great meal. I drove over to visit Mom and brought her back to Theresa's for dinner. 

Theresa and Tom wanted to spend the weekend with us, so Friday we all drove back to St. Louis. We had lunch at Rigazzio’s on “The Hill” then drove around to a few places that seem unique to St. Louis, such as local Italian grocery stores, and finally ended up at the zoo, where they put up Christmas lights every year. The animals weren’t out because it was cold and dark, but it wasn’t too cold to walk around and enjoy the lights. We went into the penguin exhibit, and of course the penguins love the cold weather just fine, so they were playing and swimming around. We also went on a 3-D movie-ride, where you go into a small theater, strap into a chair and put on 3-D glasses. When the movie started, it was about a ride down a glacier, and the chair moved around, simulating the bumps and turns on the screen.  Between the chair moving and the 3-d glasses, it was so much fun that we went on it twice!

Saturday Randy fixed omelets for breakfast, then we started driving around to some of our favorite St. Louis places.  We went to the bakery for cookies, to a meat market, a sausage market, a Mexican bakery, and to Soulard’s produce market.  Theresa and Randy bought something at every place! 

In the afternoon we went to the City Museum - not sure how to describe that place. It’s not really a museum, it’s a big 7 story building that was bought by a guy who owns a demolition company. Whenever he finds something interesting in the building he’s demolishing, he buys it, brings it to his building and figures out a way to integrate it into what is already there. It’s simply amazing. There are tunnels and mazes that go everywhere – behind walls, under the floor and between the different stories. The walls and ceilings are covered with interesting stuff, and the most of the floors are detailed mosaics. There is a tiny working shoelace factory, a huge pipe organ, and a big fish tank with fish and turtles. We crawled through a mesh tunnel outside the building into the shell of an old aircraft, then slide down a slide to get to the ground. Inside the building there is a slide that is 7-stories tall – we went down that, too. We spent hours and hours there and I’m sure we didn’t get to see and do everything.    

Earlier we had bought stuff to fix for dinner, but after the City Museum we were too tired to bother so we went to Fitz’s for dinner.  

Sunday I surprised everyone by fixing breakfast - eggs and some pastries.  During the night it had rained a bit and we found out our bedroom ceiling still leaked around the air condoner vent, so Randy and Tom worked on that. Then we took Theresa and Tom to the Tile Shop, where Randy and Aaron get most of the tile they use in their jobs - the tile there is so beautiful. Afterwards we went to Cabelos, a huge hunting-and-camping store, with about 50 mounted antelope, deer, moose, etc. all over the store.