Focht Family Blog

On New Year’s Eve we decided we would go to the arch and maybe one other place. We went out and ran some errands. We got mom some propane and went to the post office. Then Nathan went to meet with a customer that is in St Louis, D’Italia. While Nathan was in his meeting I called around and found out that the zoo closed at 3:00 but the arch was open until 6:00, so when his meeting was over we headed to the zoo. It is listed under my reciprocity list but it is free all year to anyone. A lot of the animals were in and towards the end of our visit more were taken in so that their areas could be cleaned for closing.

Here is the Sun Bear. I was surprised that when I got home and looked at the picture that the bear looks like it has blue eyes…

They had a lot of large cats but most of them are in cages and I hate having to look at pictures with bars in front of them. The lions were in a pit so that I could zoom in on them without having to have bars in the picture. Here is the lioness and the lion…

The lion was watching a man that was walking by us. It was the handler and it was dinner time. On our way to some of the indoor animals, the kids found a statue of some kind of bull. I took a picture of them but Josh refused to believe that he was in the picture so I had to take another picture of him by himself…

Indoors we found birds, monkeys, and snakes. Here is a picture of the kids by the lemurs. The lemurs were all curled up together by the window…

One of the last animals we saw on our way out of the zoo was the camel. He was being called in but he waited for a couple of pictures before listening…

Well… we feel stupid. Since we are in St Louis, we decided to get together for dinner with one of my mom’s friends, Jane Barnard. She teaches math at Armstrong. I always love getting to see Jane. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met. We went to Zia’s in The Hill section of St Louis. Our reservations were at 5:30 and we got there at 5:30 and the hostess told us we were an hour early!! Considering Samantha and I just did a lesson on time zones you would think one of us would realize that we crossed the line from Eastern to Central! :) Here is a picture of Jane with mom and the kids…

The kids woke up to six presents each from Santa…

They also had 3 gifts each from mom and dad and a gift from Aunt Chris under the tree…

They had a lot of fun opening presents…

After presents the kids played with their new toys while I cooked dinner…

Dinner was difficult to make with a small oven but I managed to make a turkey breast, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sauteed green beans, corn pudding, and biscuits. We were supposed to have rolls but I didn’t take them out of the freezer in time for them to rise so Nathan found some biscuits at a gas station. Of course the corn pudding wasn’t in the oven long enough either so the rolls and the corn pudding were saved for dinner with leftovers.

After lunch we went to see Bedtime Stories at the movies. It was a very cute movie. When we came home the kids wanted to play Guess Who I Am…

Christmas Eve was spent at Urgent Care getting my allergy shots. Once that long ordeal was over my mom and I drove back to the RV to pick everyone else up for a late lunch at Buca di Beppo. We reserved the table in the kitchen. After lunch we went to the mall so that the kids could see Santa…

After Santa was a quick stop at a dollar store so the kids could buy gifts for the adults. Then we went to Christmas Eve Mass at one of the cathedrals downtown. When we came back home it was time to get in our new pajamas that Mrs. Claus had left while we were gone and set out snacks for Santa.

Nathan has pajamas as well but he won’t let me post the picture with him. :(

Next came a couple of ornaments. We made jingle bell snowmen and beaded candy canes. However Samantha decided that the candy canes were boring so now they are beaded “S”s.

We also made animal puppets, foam snowmen, and pom pom cat and dogs….