Christmas - St. Louis and Arkansas

We have had a wonderful two-week Christmas trip. We left Champaign two Saturdays ago and drove down to spend a night in St. Louis. It's our tradition to have a very mini get-away at the end of the fall semester. This year, we stayed at the Westin downtown. I HIGHLY recommend the hotel. The room and bathroom were the biggest I've ever seen and very nice. And, if you're not there during baseball season, it's relatively cheap. We ate dinner at Copia, which was delicious, and then walked around City Garden to enjoy the lights.

Sunday morning, we had breakfast at Rooster (also delicious) and then headed down to Wynne, Arkansas, to see Darby's mom's family. We had a wonderful steak dinner and got some great gifts from everyone. Darby has a lot of cousins and they are all about the same age, so it's always fun to get together.

All the cousins and Grandpa and Alma

We stayed in Wynne an extra day and hung out with cousin Todd and his wife Rachel. They took us to the Memphis zoo, which was awesome. My favorite was the panda bears, but I didn't get a picture because they were behind glass. I also enjoyed the little meerkats. I love zoos.

How many meerkats do you see? There are three! The two on the edge are sitting on one in the middle! :)

We usually are only able to stay in Arkansas for one night, so it was great to have a little extra time to spend with family there.