A Day in My Life

We just returned from the very sunny city of St. Louis, Missouri. If you have never been there before, I would recommend that you make it a point to visit the city at some point. While it is smaller than the Twin Cities, for what it lacks in size, it makes up in culture. We made this the second trip to the city in less than a year in order to visit Bethany’s sister Erika and her husband Eric and their new little baby, Liv. If you remember, I posted when Liv was born about seven weeks ago. As you could very well imagine, we were making this trip with the primary goal of meeting and spending some time with our newest little niece.

I took last Thursday and Friday off of work so that we could make the most of our trip. We left shortly after Bethany got home from work on Thursday morning and headed out on our nine hour trip. As she had worked all night, Bethany did a lot of sleeping on the trip. Unfortunately for the both of us, I wasn’t paying very much attention to where we were going and I ended up missing an exit. Next thing you know, we’re taking a big detour through Des Moines. Whoops. It didn’t really take that much longer, and we got to see some nice sights in Iowa. We got down to St. Louis around 6:00 that night and proceeded to check into our hotel.

We quickly settled in and headed the 2.3 miles over to Erika and Eric’s house. That night, we just laid low around their house. Eric grilled some bison burgers and Erika whipped up a salad. I hadn’t had bison burgers before and I have to say I rather enjoyed them. After talking for a while and holding the baby, we took off for the night.

On Friday, we stopped by Einstein Bros on the way to their house for some bagels. Eric had to work that day so Bethany and I hung out with Erika and Liv that morning. We took turns passing Liv around between the three of us. She really is a very good baby. She is very content, doesn’t do a lot of crying, and does a lot of sleeping. That afternoon, we did a bit of baby sitting so that Erika could get out of the house and hit up the gym for a bit. When Eric got home from work, we got Liv all situated in her car seat and headed out to the St. Louis Art Museum. I was surprised with the amount and quality of art that is there. I must say I wasn’t expecting to see a wall size Monet there. On the way home from the museum, we stopped off for some dinner at a local resturuant/pub for dinner. Our timing was great since we got a table right away and made it there for the beginning of the Twins game. The food, drink, and game were all very good, I must say. After dinner, we went back to their place to hang out for a while before Bethany and I went back to the hotel.

The next day, we got ready for the day by putting on our Twins shirts. That’s right, the big event of the day for us was going to the Twins game against the Cardinals in Busch Stadium. We knew it was going to get pretty hot that day, so we lathered on the sunscreen since we are both still pretty white. After some breakfast at Eric and Erika’s, the baby sitter came and we took off for the game. I must say, we were not ready for the kind of heat that we would meet that day. Throughout the day, we saw the stadium thermometer top out at 99° as we sat in the direct sun. Eric checked out the heat index and saw that it was 105° shortly into the game so it’s anyone’s guess what it topped out at that day. Throughout the game, we went back for food/water every three innings just to get out of the heat. Also, a pleasant surprise was that my good friend Tim Koch was also in town and at the game. He stopped by for a little while during the game to catch up. What a small world! Unfortunately for us, the Twins weren’t able to pull out a win that day. We blame our loss on Mauer not playing that day, not on Pujols hitting two home runs.

After the game, we went back to their house to relieve the sitter and to cool off and just relax for a while. Eric and I made a quick trip to the storage locker to swap out a chair that afternoon and to pick up a salad for that night. For dinner, Bethany made baked lemon pasta from The Pioneer Woman, some garlic bread, and the salad. It was great. I thought it was even better than the first time she made it. That’s really saying a lot since it was fantastic the first time! After dinner, the ladies went and picked up some cupcakes at the Cupcakery. Those things are amazing! I had the Italian Cream cupcake that had coconut and cream cheese frosting. Boy was that thing great! That brought us to the end of the day and we headed to bed.

Sunday morning brought checkout at our wonderful hotel. After a quick checkout, we stopped for breakfast at a nice breakfast/lunch restaurant before we headed out of town. I had my usual French toast – you really can’t go wrong with French toast. After breakfast, we took a couple pictures with Liv and said goodbye to Eric and Erika. On our long drive, we tried to listen to the Twins game on any AM station that we could pick up. Thankfully, the Twins were able to win the series and improve their inter-league record. We made it home around 8:00 that night, unpacked, went for a quick walk, and went to bed. What a great weekend!

Be sure to check out the rest of the pictures from our trip here.