St. Louis!

Greg and I had a fabulous time in St. Louis for our anniversary and even took lots of pictures! Before I show those, though, I have a few that were on our camera I need to put up:


We celebrated Rassi November/early December birthdays: Mom, Silas, Elisabeth, Grace, and Carmen. Silas got to blow out his candles first...ready, blow!

You can almost hear him blowing them out from this picture: "FFffffffffffffff!" :)

Then Elisabeth and Grace blew out theirs. It was a fun night; it seemed like it had been a long time since I'd been with my siblings.

One Sunday morning for breakfast Greg made a blueberry dutch baby...I liked it even better than the apple one he made a while back. Sooooo good and, according to him, so easy to make! One note if you look at the recipe: Instead of just sprinkling blueberries over the pancake, he thickened them with cornstarch, water, sugar, and lemon juice.

Nora posing in her cute little leopard pjs

This is from Friday morning, before we left for St. Louis. Max looks really sad that he's not going to see us for a day and a half, doesn't he? :) As you can tell from his face, he's getting very good at saying, "Cheeeeeeeese!" when getting his picture taken.

Ok, we're ready for the St. Louis stuff! We left midmorning and drove straight to the Old Spaghetti Factory, which is where I wanted to eat lunch. Once again, the mizithra browned butter pasta was one of the best pasta dishes I've ever had. Also, I forgot this part from last time, but they don't have ranch salad dressing...instead they have this pesto something or other that is really good.

After lunch we decided to go shopping, so we headed out of downtown to the St. Louis Galleria, which is a pretty good sized mall. If you know me, you know that shopping isn't my favorite activity, and shopping on Black Friday certainly isn't my first choice of fun. I was up for it, though, because I like shopping with Greg, and don't mind going if I don't have a list of things that I have to buy. So, now I can say that I've gone shopping on Black Friday! Of course, we didn't get there until 1:00 or after, so the crowds weren't really that bad. I think given the size of the mall and the fact that it was later in the day helped quite a bit. The mall wasn't really any more crowded than Northwoods on any given Christmas shopping day. The parking lot was nearly completely full, but Greg was able to find a good spot.

After shopping (and buying some maternity clothes for me! Yay!) we drove back downtown to our hotel, the Millenium Hotel. We knew that it had a revolving restaurant at the top of the hotel, so as soon as we got to our room we called and made reservations. I will admit, it was fun to get dressed up to go 'out' for dinner. :)

Our room was cool, too...here was the view out our window:

It was so pretty!

Our room with the drapes closed...it was perfect, minus the fact that there was no wireless internet in the rooms and I didn't have a cord to plug in to the internet that was available. It turned out fine, though.

The restaurant was called Top of the Riverfront and is the only revolving restaurant in St. Louis. Our waiter informed us that it makes a full revolution in one hour and twenty-seven minutes. When we sat down, the arch was just behind us, so we knew we wanted to go one full turn so we could see it. I think that's what made it so relaxing, was knowing that even if our food came fast, we were just going to sit and chat and wait to see the Arch. So, while we waited...

We took pictures...

and a few more pictures...


and looked out at the city (this is Busch Stadium)...

and ate our food...(Greg's venison)

after taking picture of it, of course...(my salmon)

Until finally, the Arch!!!

It was so hard to get a really good picture...you can see Greg's reflection in this one as he took it. :)

We had told the waiter that it was our anniversary that day, and he brought us a piece of "Mile-high Chocolate cake"

I confess to being slightly disappointed since I had planned on ordering a piece of red velvet cheesecake, but for chocolate cake, this was pretty good. :)

One more with the Arch!

We asked our waiter to take a picture of us...it's not too blurry as long as you don't try to view it too big. :)

All in all, the food wasn't the most spectacular I've ever eaten, but it was good, and the dinner as a whole was absolutely the most relaxing I've had. I'd definitely recommend it! If you're in St. Louis for dinner or Sunday brunch, look them up! :)

Our room was 'club level' which meant that our breakfast was included and we could get free drinks (soda, bottled water, juice) from the club lounge, which is where this sign was located.

The Arch view from our room again, this time on Saturday morning. I got up to go to the bathroom at 5 something, and it was so pretty in the twilight that I almost took a picture. Wanting to go back to sleep won out, though, so you'll just have to take my word for it. :)

I know it seems like alot of pictures of the Arch in this post, but not when compared to how many we actually took. :)

This is the outdoor pool and hot tub, which I was really missing Friday night. They have a small indoor pool, but we had to walk through the whole lobby/atrium to get to it, and the hotel air was pretty cool. The pool temperature was almost warm enough, but there was no hot tub, and the walk back to our room was plenty cold!

This picture is called "Greg not getting back in front of the camera quick enough after setting the self-timer."

There we go...much better! :)

That's our hotel on the right.

After breakfast and checking out, we went to Union Station, where I had seen something I wanted to try. It's called Galactic Glow Putt mini-golf. From what I understand, it's an indoor mini-golf that is glow in the dark and somehow 3D.

It was really weird, though...we got to Union Station right around 10:00, but only a handful of the shops were open, and one of them was NOT the golf place. As we walked around and tried unsuccessfully to take some pictures in a photo booth, more of the stores opened, but not all of them and not the golf place. Eventually, around 10:30 we gave up and decided to go with plan B: the zoo!

I don't think I've ever been to a zoo when it hasn't been at least 90 degrees out and super crowded. Saturday was a sunny upper-40s day and maybe sixty people in the whole zoo. Perfect!

This was our first stop. I think Greg was starting to find it ridiculous how often I had to use the restroom, but what can I say? I blame it on the baby.

Not only were the animals out and about, we saw different plants that we've never noticed before on our visits to St. Louis Zoo. This was a really neat looking thorny bush in the River's Edge area.

Pretty purple berries

The hippos were hanging out in the sun.

The cheetahs were being fed, but eventually one came out so we could see him. The animals were so gorgeous. Like Greg said, since it wasn't hot, they weren't rolling around in the dirt trying to cool off. Also, given the time of year, they had their thick winter coats in, which looked so soft and glossy I just wanted to pet them!

One elephant...

Two elephants!

This was cool. All of those little white things in the water are tiny fish that are being fed to these bigger ones. We were there at just the right time to watch it, and there was absolutely no one else around. That doesn't happen often! :)


If you watch right at the beginning, one of the fish makes a big burp.

More pretty flowers

The bears were out pacing in the sun...this is the sloth bear.

They had a bunch of different animals and light displays up. I think there is some Winter Lights walk in the zoo at night. I thought the penguin was cute.

I'm always amazed at how huge the grizzly bears are!

A bored orangutan that reminded me of a bored Max; he just sat there, swinging his climbing ropes and looking pitiful.

The chimpanzees were grooming each other except for this guy.

All of the giraffes and antelope-type animals were inside, so we couldn't get very good pictures.

This ostrich's feathers looked kinda like Greg's hair. :)

This camel posed for us while he was sunning himself.

Right when we got to the jaguar's enclosure, he decided to take a walk...right towards us!

The tigers looked so soft and comfortable I wanted to curl up next to them.

This lion was chewing on a bone of some sort. Every once in a while we heard a big 'crack!' sound as he broke it. It was a little bit unnerving to me to hear, to be honest!

These guys were inside for the winter, too.

These otters were so cute, running around and playing in the water.

Last of the pretty flowers

After the zoo, we headed downtown once more because we wanted to eat at Mike Shannon's restaurant, but we got there and discovered they must only be open for supper. We walked a couple of blocks and found a St. Louis Bread Company, which is basically a Panera. I personally was glad for a not so big lunch and to get on the road quicker. I wanted to be able to spend some time with Max and Nora before we left for testimonies that night.

One more picture of the Arch. :) Goodbye, St. Louis! We had such a great 4th anniversary getaway! :D

Now that I've finally finished this marathon blog post, I'm putting on my Christmas music and hoping that the kids cooperate and take good naps so I can put up Christmas decorations!