My Actual 30th Birthday

Since we both had the day off, Branden and I slept in on my birthday.  As soon as we got up he gave me my present.  I got a new Nightmare Before Christmas messenger bag which was exactly what I wanted!  He actually bought two Nightmare Before Christmas bags for me and one of them turns out to be a lined bag that can be used to keep food cold on the way home from the grocery store.  He had no idea, but I'd been looking for a new lined grocery bag so it turned out to be an extra great surprise.
Tuesday was a little more tame than Monday had been. We decided to go to the Civil War exhibit at the Missouri History Museum.  The history museum itself is free but some special exhibits do cost extra so we planned on paying.  It turned out that those exhibits are free to St. Louis City and County residents after 2PM on a certain Tuesday each month so we were able to spend the afternoon at the museum for free anyway!  It was a great exhibit and I spent a lot of time reading every single thing... Needless to say, Branden could pretty much walk through the entire thing three times before I was 3/4 of the way done.  Even more exciting- for me, but probably not for anyone else- there was an actor there that day only who performed a monologue as a Union Recruitment Officer.  It was really interesting and I learned a few things.
When Branden was finally able to drag me out of the museum we went to Yogurtland and got my free birthday frozen yogurt!

We love their frozen yogurt and the best part (Aside from the fact that you get up to a pound for free on your birthday.  Who can eat a pound of yogurt and mix-ins?) is the fact that they put probiotics in it so even lactose sensitive people like me can eat it without getting sick.  We ended the day with dinner at Dewey's Pizza which turned out to be very good.  All in all, a great birthday weekend.
Turning 30 didn't bother me at all.  Sure, there are things about my life that I thought would be different by now but I'm happy.  I have an awesome husband who willingly sat through a chick flick, risked his life mini golfing and wasted an afternoon at a museum exhibit that was maybe half as interesting to him as it was to me.  I love my job.  We love St. Louis.  I'm looking forward to the future and it doesn't bother me that 30 years have passed.

Happy Mother's Day!

Today is Mother's Day and I am 1300 miles away from mine.  Worse, I'm a terrible daughter and even though Aunt Jen and I made cards for Mother's Day about 6 months ago, I didn't get to the post office this week! 
Mom, I do have something on its way and I'm sorry that it's going to be late.  In a small effort to make up for not getting things mailed, I've written multiple posts and included some pictures of life in St. Louis... Though only one picture has me in it and it's not a very good picture.
I love you a lot and hope that Mother's Day was great for you!

Mini Golf For My Birthday

I had an awesome birthday weekend this year.  My birthday was on a Tuesday and Branden and I arranged to have Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off together.  We spent Sunday just relaxing together and then Branden took me to dinner and to see "The Lucky One."  I liked it and would watch it again.
Monday was an AWESOME day.  I decided that we should go mini golfing so we chose a couple of courses not too far from our apartment.
First we went to Arizona Action Land.  As the name implies, this creepy "fun park" had a Southwestern theme.  Before I get too far into this, I need to let you know that Branden was convinced that this place was straight out of a horror film but I assured him that, since we were there during the day, we would be fine and this would be a great adventure.  Well, we weren't murdered and I laughed a whole lot so I think I can say that I was right!
We had to go into an old bowling alley to purchase our golf game and I wish that I'd taken more pictures because but we were more concerned with the tall, vampirish man behind the counter.  The guy was seriously so pale that I'm convinced he hasn't seen daylight in a few hundred years and he looked at us as if we were the first decent meal he'd seen in a decade.  Thankfully, I was able to use Branden as a distraction while I snapped a picture of this fine bowling team.

 I love that the best thing that can be said about them is that they are not a bad team.  Of course, they're not a GOOD team but... Well, they're not bad.
So off we go to mini golf.  At the very first hole they do a great job of setting the Southwestern theme with... Sea turtles?

 Oh, and this is the first hole.  Try to miss, I dare you!

 Second hole was just confusing.  Here, go ahead a putt across a giant Native American guy holding a slice of watermelon... What?  Also, you can't tell from this picture, but there are two holes and you literally putt uphill.  The first hole is just above his waist and gets you a "hole in two" while the second is just below his mouth and give you a "hole in one."  If you could get the ball up there, you actually couldn't miss.

 Yet another guaranteed hole in one is this guy here.  You don't even putt!  You drop the ball in a hole about four feet off the ground and then it rolls through the pipe you see on his back and lands...

HERE!

 Even though you can't miss, they want you to feel extra good about having come near this giant snake.  Branden actually had to get really close to the rattlesnake and mess with the pipe because it's broken about half-way down and his ball got stuck.

 Here's yet another time that you can't help but get a hole in one... I got it in two. :P

 Hmmm... Even more interesting than the first Native American guy.  This one also has watermelon but this time he has a strange hat, mismatched shoes and... Well... Breasts.  A little racy, huh?

 This was one of my favorite parts!  LOOK!  Actual beaver gnawed trees!  Arizona is known for beavers, right?  It's funny, I've seen beaver gnawed trees in the wild and they looked a little less... Saw cut.  And I cannot tell you how glad I am that there is a piece of fencing in front of those beavers.  I wasn't aware that concrete beavers could contract rabies.

 I'm fairly certain these little guys are beaver victims.  Before they were fenced in, they ran rampant through the mini golf course and some of the other concrete animals lost their lives.

 And this is only the first golf course!
To be fair to the other golf course, it was much more of a standard mini golf course and wasn't nearly as run down.  For the most part it just looked like it wasn't quite ready for the season.  Here are a few pictures of that one:
 This little house was probably haunted but... Isn't that normal in mini golf?

Branden is surveying our next hole.

 And here he is with his new friend.

 Magic mushroom!

 FINE!  I'll post A picture of me!

 This is some nice looking water!

 And the final hole was nearly impossible!  This was just about the only really weird part... Why does the frog have teeth?

We finished off the day by purchasing the plants and soil for our 3-bucket balcony garden, but that's a different post.

My First Cardinal's Game

One thing we learned very quickly: It doesn't matter where you are from, it doesn't matter who you THINK you cheer for, if you live in St. Louis you are a citizen of Cardinal's Nation and you ARE a Cardinal's fan.
Branden and I weren't ever sports fans of any kind... But then we moved here.  There is such a feeling of "This is OUR team, these are OUR boys" here that it's impossible to not get sucked in just a little.  I think that the World Series last fall really sealed our fates.  The entire city dropped everything and showed up in force to show support.  I'm not kidding when I say that all kinds of meetings, from town concils to cub scouts, were canceled.  The whole city wore red for days and fell in love with the Rally Squirrel.  By the end of the series, we were confirmed Cardinal's fans.
It may come as a shock to some but I actually watch baseball now... Only the Cardinals games and not every one, but that's still baseball.  I even know what some of the terms mean!  AND I own a Cardinals baseball hat!
So it comes as no surprise that when our friends told us they had tickets to a game and invited us along we were happy to go.  The tickets are actually Matt's aunt's season tickets and they were good seats!  This is the outfield RIGHT in front of us.

 Oh, yes, we needed to be warned about baseballs that just might be heading in our direction.

 This is looking down the fowl line toward first base.

We had to leave when it went into overtime but we ultimately won the game and a good time was had by all.

A Vending Machine for What?

Near the end of March I got my first ever sinus infection.  It was kinda out of the blue for me because I don't have allergies and I didn't have a cold.  In fact, I really had no nasal congestion and everything started with a sore throat.  I take my temperature daily so I knew as soon as my temperature went up that I was actually sick.
Unfortunately, I got the sore throat Thursday evening, registered a fever Friday morning and still had to work Friday and Saturday.  Not only are they the busiest days of my work week, I was training a new girl.  After two VERY long 9-10 hour days at work I woke up Sunday morning and still had a fever.  Thankfully, there's an urgent care down the street from our apartment that is open on Sundays so we headed over to get my throat checked out.  Everyone and their sick child was there but waiting gave me time to snap a picture of this:

Yep, it's a vending-type machine for your prescription medication!  I spent a lot of time thinking about how this would work.  How foolproof is this?  What kind of variety do they stock in this?  Do you have to input all of your insurance information?  Does it print drug info and warn you about drug interactions?  And then I thought about this ad campaign and started giggling internally thinking about the pharmacist shoved into a little cubicle filling prescriptions.   Unfortunately, we didn't think to try it out with my prescription so I didn't get a chance to put him/her to work. 
Oh, yeah, and I did end up getting better after a couple days of rest and all of my medicine.

We Are Grilling Fools

When we moved into this apartment last year we found out that we are allowed to have a grill on our balcony as long as it is electric.  We found a decent electric grill/smoker combo and used last year's Missouri tax refund to purchase it.  We used it a few times last year but this year we are really getting our money's worth.  We LOVE having an alternate cooking option and we have used it almost every day since the middle of February.
We had a very mild winter here and it started to get warm really early.  As soon as it was warm enough outside to leave our windows open we uncovered the grill.  Grilling is a fun collaboration for us because Branden is our Master of Marinade and I am our Grill Chef.  I love all the fun flavor combinations that he throws together.  I have a cupboard full for spices from Penzeys- many of which I got for free with the coupons they send me- and most of them don't get used on a regular basis, if ever.  Branden gets in there, sniffs all the different bottles and bags and dumps a little of this and a little of that into the marinade according to his current mood.  Every combination he's tried so far has been an awesome success.
This is also an area that my love of Aldi benefits us again.  Every Wednesday they have a meat special.  We've purchased boneless skinless chicken breast, bone-in chicken breasts, roasts, beef tenderloin, bacon wrapped filets, veal roast and whole chickens.  There's no limit and I'll admit that we have gone a little over the top at times.  Like the time that whole chickens were $0.69/lb and we went to two different Aldis and bought ten total... Hey, we have a chest freezer, why not use it?
So we've been grilling chicken, hamburgers, brats, steaks, and I've even convinced Branden to try pork again!  (For those of you who don't know, Branden doesn't like pork and declares that bacon- which he LOVES- isn't from a pig, but from a snake.)  Pork chops didn't go well but there's a peppered pork tenderloin that he loves and I practically have to fight him to get a share.  Last week I even tried out grilling a frozen pizza!  It wasn't the best attempt but I have confidence that I'll do better next time.  The next thing I'm going to try is grilling potatoes... Like baked potatoes but grilled.  I've heard that they're quite tasty.