Sunday, September 18, 2011

Reindls Visit St. Louis

Q: How far behind am I on this blog?
A: 1.5 months

Sad, I know. In my defense, it has been an absolutely crazy few months including no less than two wedding cakes, multiple 12-hr work shifts (and working straight threw a few weekends), car issues, visitors, a Birthday (which I did manage to blog about), medical tests (nothing serious, thankfully), and a few other things that we'll get to later on in the blog.

Now, to get caught up. Wish me luck.

Back in the beginning of August Tom and Ginny drove out for a week-long sort-of visit. I say sort of only because they actually stayed an hour and a half outside of the city so we didn't spent the whole week with them but got some great shorter visits while not feeling guilty that we still had to go to work every day.

Our first visit with them was a overnight trip down to visit them and the wine region that they were conveniently located near.

Of course, I took no pictures.

We did have a great time though, as we always do, visiting wineries, breweries and driving around the picturesque town of Ste. Genevieve.

A few days later, I had a day off  so they headed up to the city for a visit. That first evening we all headed into the city for the first trip up the Gateway Arch for all four of us.


We did get some great views, especially on the East facing side (less weather), but the way up was a bit too rickety for me. and what they say is true, the viewing windows are incredibly tiny.


 We posed outside in the beautiful (if horrendously hot) weather then I'm sure headed off to eat something.


 The next day was my day off so we hit up the Missouri Botanical gardens for the second time with the Reindls. They liked it so much they first time, we had to go back. Not to mention the fact that it was very early spring during our last visit and we were all anxious to see how everything had filled out. Not to mention the fact that Mo Bot is free to residents on Wednesday mornings.


That visit made me realize just how much I would love to live in their greenhouse. Who wouldn't love the beautiful brick and beautiful view?

After the gardens, we went to one of my favorite restaurants Farmhaus for their blue plate lunch special then killed a few more hours at the St. Louis History Museum.

Our last visit with the Reindl parents was a very chill Friday night. They came back up to stay with us before making their way home on Saturday and we spent a nice evening eating Cicero's pizza and playing with Pepin.

All-in-all, a great week of visits. We can't wait for the next!


Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Happy Birthday to Me!

We begin our story of the Birthday celebration on the day before my 25th.


 After working during the day, I picked up Michael (the subaru was in the shop) and we headed to the fancy-schmancy mall for some quality Williams-Sonoma time. This used to be a common occurance back in our Pittsburgh days when W-S was just up the road on Walnut, but we don't seem to get around to it as much here, which is probably a good thing for our bank balance. The first things you should notice are the cheese slicer and veggie peeler on top of the pretty box. We bought those purely because we needed them. Our former veggie peeler, for example, would peel off about 1/4" of whatever you were peeling. It wasn't very efficient.


 The really special splurge was in the box. This pretty rosemary colored Le Creuset not only will be very functional to us, but by purchasing the limited edition color, we helped in the fight against childhood hunger (Le Creuset donated 25% of the purchase price to Share Our Strength, on of my all-time favorite charities).


 The plan was to break her in by making some slow cooked carnitas (yum!) but as most of you know, Michael is not the quickest in the decision making department so by the time we got home at 7:30 (we go to sleep at 9) we used it to throw together some quick beef tacos. They were good but I am anxious to use her for a better purpose when we are back to normal next week.



I spent the early morning hours of my 25th Birthday on the 10th floor of Barnes Jewish Hospital dropping off a piece of equipment.

 At least I got this wonderful view of the sunrise over the city. If you enlarge the photo you can clearly see the arch on the right side. Don't worry, my day got better.


 After another long day at work, we were both beat so we did something we never, ever do: we ordered way too much delivery food from Dominos. I must say, their spicy hawiaan pizza was pretty amazing.


Michael was also kind enough to make me (the cake-baker) a Birthday cupcake (that we shared because I was too full to eat a whole cupcake). As you can see, he and Pep did a wonderful job of singing to me and making my Birthday special. 

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the great cards, texts, emails and facebook messages. You made a quarter-of-a-century no so scary :-)