St. Louis Trip, Part One

If I had to sum up our St. Louis trip in one word, it would be this: HOT. It was roasting hot, sweltering, scorching, baking, all of the above. It was so, so hot, and the worst kind of hot too - incredibly humid, so that it feels like you are inside an oven. Unfortunately the oppressive heat really affected our enjoyment of the trip, because Kevin and I were both so concerned about Ikey getting overheated. John and Lucy both got really hot but were able to drink a lot of water. We kept pouring water on our hands and rubbing it all over Isaac. We did our best to find the shadiest spots we could and wear the lightest clothes we had. He was completely fine of course, but we didn't want him to be uncomfortable.
We had another super hot day here in Urbana again today, but apparently we are going to get rain for 3 days straight and then temps in the 70's. I think today might actually have been our last hot day of the year, so we made sure to get in the pool after school today. It might be taken down by this time next week.
But I digress! Our first stop was O'Fallon, MO for a John McCain rally. Yes we actually did that. It was fun and exciting. The kids thought it was neat and we enjoyed seeing McCain and Palin up close. No candidates ever come to Illinois because what's the point? Illinois goes democratic 99.9% of the time. So it was kind of fun to be there. My dad reminded me that my brother and I were about the same ages when he took us to see Ronald Reagan in Chicago in 1984. So I have a tradition of conservative base-firing to uphold. We pretty much had to go. Ha ha.



Here we are, hiding behind a little wall to keep Isaac in the shade. We arrived at 2:30 PM, actually sat down at 3:15 PM (I lost my umbrella to the secret service) and the candidates showed up just after 5 PM. John McCain and Sarah Palin spoke for about 20 minutes total. They spoke mostly about hurricane Gustav and about ethics reform. You can see how hot Lucy is, and John isn't wearing his shirt anymore!




Here is the bus arriving with all the speakers on it. There were 20,000+ people at the rally. If you click on the photo, you can see John McCain in the window waving.



Here's a photo that Kevin took of John McCain, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney during the rally.

Afterwards, we had dinner and went back to the hotel. Kevin, John and Lucy went swimming while I got Ikey to bed. We forgot his co-sleeper, so I folded up a bedspread and laid it on the floor, and he just slept on top of it! He still sleeps in his swaddle blanket so he woke up in exactly the same place he was when he fell asleep, little sweet sleeping baby.

On Monday we spent the day at Six Flags, which requires a separate post!