Busch Stadium, Ted Drewes

Today is Father's Day. What better way to spend a hot, humid afternoon than on the last deck of sparkling new Busch Stadium? Shekar's family and ours were joined by Arun's friend Cyrus and his mom to watch the Cardinals battle the A's! Our own home team from the Bay Area - what a coincidence!! Murali and I were one of only 4-5 fans in the whole stadium who were supporting the A's.

Busch Stadium is awesome - the newly built facility seated over 40000 fans with plenty of room to spare. Many different seating levels, activities for kids (Build a bear factory), ice cold beer (served at your seat) took care of children, fathers and moms. The family behind us mentioned their parents lived in Sunnyvale - small world indeed. The afternoon ended very well with the A's beating the Cardinals 3-2, and Arjun losing his bet to Bear Uncle for an icecream treat.

Talking about a cold treat, we went looking for Ted Drewes, http://www.teddrewes.com/Drewes.asp, a Saint Louis "must visit" place. Their frozen custard treats are "out of this world", "awesomest" as described by Priya. Funny enough, Shekar's family & Priya ended up at a different location, not knowing there were two locations within the city. The cold, sweet custardy milkshake helped us cool down fast...I can see it becoming a stop next time as well.

Sky Zone, Stir Crazy

We relaxed at home today. Murali and Arun were tired after their hectic visit to the East Coast, and needed a day to recharge. Kids played various sessions of Wii, PS2 games. Shekar put up a fence around the vegetable garden with Arun's help. By 4:30pm, the younger three kids were restless and needed to get out of the house.

We visited Sky Zone,(http://www.skyzonesports.com/default.aspx) one of the newer indoor recreational centers, with heavy duty trampolines for jumping around! Arya, Arjun and Priya even played dodgeball, against a group of 6th graders. An hour of jumping was enough to get the three of them ravenously hungry, and singing songs about Pau Gasol (Lakers) to the tune of "Mary had a little lamb" with well timed roars in between. We could tell they were actually delirious with hunger by then.

Off we went to Stir Crazy - Priya polished off two orders of custom made noodles - a first so far. The service at this place was excellent; as Arya mentioned, there were no chinese staff in this mostly chinese food establishment!

Saint Louis, Missouri

Woke up Thursday morning to a typical mid-western rain storm - with lightning. It pours constantly, in a steady stream, for a couple of hours. The herbs in the yard love it, and the grass is much more greener than California. Just as it started quietly, it ended around 10am and the day turned out quite nice after that.

I took Priya, Arjun and Arya to The Lodge, at Des Peres a great water recreation facility. The indoor wave pool had children and adults bobbing around in inflated rings. The outdoor fun included a lazy river, slides and water fountains that the kids enjoyed immensely.

Shekar mentioned that this is a more recent phenomenon - cities building recreational facilities and turning it over to professional management. The facility was very clean, and prices at the concession stand were extremely reasonable ($2 or less)