Visit to MO and weekend in STL

Last week we got to spend some time in Missouri. Chris and his mom were going to help Chris' grandpa by sorting through his grandma's clothes and shoes after her passing away in August. We drove out with Chris' mom on Saturday morning. They dropped me off in St. Louis on their way to Rolla so I could spend a couple of days with my sister, Katie.

Katie and I headed to downtown St. Charles for an arts festival. We bought a few small things, including pottery bread bakers that we ended up using on Sunday. Then we headed to Forest Park for the balloon race. It was a little crazy when we got there. When we found a parking spot we went ahead and parked, but soon realized that we weren't where we meant to be. We had to cross through a golf course so we decided to admire the balloons from far away.

That night we had Chinese at Pei Wei and also went to see "Up" at the dollar movie theater. The movie was very cute!

The next morning we decided to make bread in our new bread bakers. We made pumpkin bread and strawberry bread - both delicious! After lunch, we headed downtown to do a couple more things.

First, we went to City Museum. This man collects lots of random things and puts them all in this old shoe factory. I think these things would otherwise be in a junkyard or landfill. But it's like a huge playground for young or old kids. It was a lot of fun and I want to take Chris back there sometime!

This is the outside of the museum. Lots of things to crawl around on and explore.

Inside, there were caves to explore! This is one of the "cave paintings".

There was a system of spiral stairs and slides several stories tall! One slide went all the way from the top to the bottom! In this picture you can also see the old organ.

Outside...me in a small fire engine.

Katie sitting on one of the passenger cars.

Another view of the outside playground...there were even old planes!

There's a beautiful area inside with lots of mosaics.

Sparkily!

Inside City Museum, there is also a shoelace factory (the size of a small room!), a humongous pencil, a wall of glass bottles, huge hamster wheels made for humans, a vintage clothing shop, tunnels and lots more especially for little ones to explore. We also saw a circus-type performance by kids.

After wearing ourselves out at the City Museum, we headed to City Garden, which is very close to Busch stadium. I think the garden was finished in 2009 and is a mixture of sculptures and beautiful landscaping. We just walked around and looked at all of the sculptures.

I thought this was a cool sculpture - it's like the pedestrian signs at traffic lights! There was another one similar to this.

View of the Arch from City Garden.

Chris, his grandma, his mom, and his aunt Pat met up with me and Katie at City Garden. They came to pick me up before the Cubs/Cardinals night game. We parted ways from Katie and headed to the game. Thanks again Katie for a fun weekend!

Chris and I headed into the stadium to catch some batting practice while the others went to eat. Some of Chris' other family - Craig, Joni, Lauren, and Seth - had also come to the game with us. We all had seats in the top row of the stadium right behind home plate. We could see everything even though we were up high! You can still see the Arch on the field left from the All-Star game earlier this year.

Chris and I at the game with the fence and downtown right behind us!

Overall, it was a fun game. But we didn't get back to Rolla until about 1:30am! They ended up playing 11 innings that night and the Cards didn't even win...they lost 6-3.

I had a great weekend in St. Louis. I haven't done so much there in one weekend in a long long time, even though we lived relatively close in Rolla. I spent Monday in Rolla before heading to my parents' house in Joplin on Tuesday. They just moved to a new house in August, so I was there to help unpack as many boxes as possible and sort through more of my childhood things. We made some progress, but the time went quickly because I left to go to Rolla again on Thursday afternoon.

On Thursday we had dinner with most of Chris' extended family in Rolla and then made a visit to CCF that night. It was nice going back to CCF since that's how Chris and I met! Before we knew it, it was time to leave on Friday morning. The drive home was good, even though we ended up taking the scenic route. By mistake (and me not saying anything about turning off when we should have) we ended up on I-70 instead of I-74! So we had to head north on Highway 41 to get from 70 to 74. It was a nice break from the interstate, we got to see some beautiful countryside, and it took us about as long as the other route would have! Maybe we should do that more often, but on purpose...and with a map in the car. I'm glad Chris knew the way home from memory!

Overall it was a great trip. We both enjoyed seeing family again and Chris and his mom were able to help his grandpa a lot.

(I posted all of the pictures on my facebook page. Go here if you want to see them.)

Labor Day at Shades State Park

Today we traveled to Shades State Park in Waveland, IN (near Crawfordsville) to do some hiking with others from our church. This was the first time Chris and I went hiking together in Indiana, and we had a lot of fun. The weather was also perfect for a day of hiking - not too hot but sunny. We went on two trails today. The first one went down to Sugar Creek and through Shawnee Canyon by way of a creek bed. The other went to Inspiration Point, Prospect Point, and Silver Cascade Falls. Here are some pix from the day.

On the 1st trail at Sugar Creek

On our way through Shawnee Canyon...Chris on a fallen log

View of the creek bed

Where we came from with some of our group behind us

On the 2nd trail at Inspiration Point

At Prospect Point

Part of the group looking over Prospect Point

At Silver Cascade Falls...This is the bottom of the falls. The rocks have a convex shape here. This picture doesn't even capture how cool this was in person. It would be great to see this after having some rain!

Towards the top of the falls. Chris was being adventurous by venturing to the other side of the water. The cliff behind him was awesome!

Cool rock formations

Here are some more rock formations on the cliff right next to the falls.

Just upstream of the falls

I convinced him to take a picture with me - our backs to the falls.

Who knew there was something this beautiful an hour from Lafayette? We hope to back soon as there were some more trails that we wanted to do but didn't get the chance to today.

More Painting

Chris had this week off so we decided to do some more painting in our house. This time we painted the office, the little "landing" area outside the guest bedrooms, and our bathroom. Chris did most of the painting, but I was able to help a little. He's just so much faster than me! Thanks for your hard work honey!

You can tell what Maggie thinks of painting days - she hates them because she gets in trouble for getting close and she doesn't get as much attention. You can kind of see the "landing" area behind her.

Chris working on the first coat in the office. This color looks quite blue in this picture and the fact that it's in natural light.

It's darker now that it's dried and when it's not covered in natural light.

Here's our bathroom after painting - it's a subtle difference but much better than white. This is the same color as the "landing" area, the living room, and the front entry hallway. (Chris had painted the living room, front entry hallway, kitchen, and master bedroom back in April.) But it definitely looks darker in the bathroom because there's not as much light.

We also plan to paint the guest bedroom and bathroom, which will essentially complete the painting in the whole house. The only exceptions will be the laundry room, closets, and the garage. We're glad that we don't have as many white walls anymore!