Celebrations

We took a trip back in June if you remember for our vacation/first year celebration because in August, Sam can't take vacation time, so we decided to celebrate slightly early. Well, we couldn't let our anniversary pass without doing something and we both needed a little getaway, so we packed up after work on a Friday and took off to St. Louis! I must say that I absolutely love that place! If I were willing to move out of state, I would definitely be alright living there! There is so much to do that Sam and I will have to go back...there just wasn't enough time in the weekend to get to all the places. We spent Saturday at Six Flags St. Louis which was so much fun! It was extremely hot, but we had a blast (aside from all the awful smell of BO!) We were able to enjoy ourselves even more once we bought the free refill with purchase of Souvenir cup! Being there brought me back to when I was little and rode on the rides I was tall enough to go on with my dad. He was the only one who would ride them aside from me! Good news though, I finally grew enough that I didn't get my height checked this go around! Sam didn't either for those of you wondering about him! :) We both got tossed around in several of the rides though, which again brought me back to when my head was barely out of the little bar things and my head would bounce side to side due to the jerkiness and it still did it! Not quite tall enough I guess! :( I got to get a picture with Elmer Fud..he was the only one out and about on this hot hot day! We were exhausted, smelly, sweaty, and down right nasty so we headed back to the hotel. We decided we had to get something to eat, so we asked Sarah, Sam's sister who has been to St. Louis many, many, times for suggestions on places we really needed to try out. She directed us to "The Hill' where we at some authentic Italian wonderfulness! To say we were stuffed to the max is an understatement! I felt like I was carrying a small child of food in my stomach on the walk back to the car! Anyways, before we headed back home from our weekend getaway, we had to go to the arch. I mean who can take a trip to the "Gateway to the West" without going to see the gateway?! We waited for awhile, but got to learn a lot about the city and how it all started. Let me just say that if you a person who is claustrophobic you should NOT go up the arch! You are packed into a 5 seater little mini-mobile and taken up the side of the arch. It is BEAUTIFUL when you get up there, but man oh man, the ride up and down is really no fun! You are better off asking to take the stairs for a little bit of exercise...okay that would be a tremendous amount of exercise that no one should really do, but you get my point. It is a tight squeeze! We took the ride anyways and at the top looked to the east and west of the city and it was amazing!This is us in the top of the very crowded arch, but we managed to snap a quick photo to remember the moment! :) We left from there and found Ted Drewes, a wonderful place to eat some frozen custard (ice cream)!We had to have some authentic, only found in St. Louis lunch, so we ate at St. Louis Bread Co. and what do you know it turned out to be Panera Bread! So much for being authentic! We still need to visit the City Museum, the Zoo (free), the Science Museum (free), Busch Stadium, and probably some other things that I don't know about yet, but will do them once I learn about them! On a side note, we kept driving through the city limits of "Shrewsbury", so we had to get a picture to document "our little town", but it would come and go very quickly! Bound and determined we were and sure enough were able to snap a quick pic before we left, in motion and everything, but please disregard the foot in the picture! :)
It was definitely somewhere that both of us want to return to! We had a great time on our one year anniversary weekend getaway!
The other celebration that we have had is the passing of my 4 praxis tests, but we all know about that, so I won't go back there! We did go eat at Shogun's though for a little Congrats! It was wonderful too!