Our Trip

Bright and early Thursday morning, my sister Elizabeth and I drove to St. Louis to meet my mom and sister Becky for 3 days. We laughed, cried, took pictures, made fun of mom - all before our first meal together was over.

We started off with lunch at Rue Lafayette and enjoyed quiche, chocolate croissants and ginger peach tea.

The park across the street looked so pretty that we decided to take a little walk. Seriously, how pretty is this!

Then it was time for Penzeys. Becky is an excellent cook and has been a fan of Penzeys for a while now. She turned my mom into a fan (who is also a great cook). And now, after visiting the store, I'm officially a convert. Now if I could only cook with all the great spices I picked up. Even Brian was impressed after smelling everything when I brought it home.
We shopped at St. Louis Galleria and found some great deals at Gap: $3 p.j.'s for Rory and $5 jeans for Camden. Mostly we just browsed stores that we clearly cannot afford.

Next up was The Hill, an Italian district in St. Louis. It's a historical neighborhood with lots of family Italian restaurants, bakeries, and little grocery stores. We had a blast walking around and then ate supper with my aunt, uncle, and cousin at Mama Campisi's.
Isn't this sign pretty? We really wanted to come back for gelato, but ran out of time.
Friday morning we had some down time and spent more time laughing/crying/making fun of mom. :) We made a second trip to Penzey's Friday afternoon and then at Elizabeth's request, we visited the Arch. Since she put up with all our shopping, we thought we'd better include her request into the itinerary! We bought our tickets and then settled in for the wait. While waiting, we ran through the museum and took this picture of Elizabeth, Becky, and mom. I have no idea how many times I've been to this museum growing up, and I'm sure I enjoyed it at one point, but mostly I remember hating the museum as a kid.After over 2 hours of waiting, we made it to the little capsule that would take us to the top of the Arch. If you can believe it, two more people had to fit into the capsule before departure!
The Arch was SO crowded that there was little room to move so we pretty much just got back into line to head back down. I did take this picture of Busch Stadium for Camden (he's a Cardinal's fan).
Supper was at The Fountain on Locust. It was really beautiful inside, but our waiter had clearly gotten up on the wrong side of the bed.
We decided it was completely appropriate to have ice cream for supper.
The rest of the weekend involved the Living Proof Live conference with Beth Moore and was really phenomenal. She is such a gifted speaker and I loved being challenged through her lessons. The music was also amazing and almost my favorite part. It's pretty awesome to sing and praise with 7,500 women.

A few random things: I had high hopes of taking lots of pictures, but it was blazing hot and the camera felt like an added weight around my neck so I ended up not taking many at all. Using Becky's GPS made navigating through St. Louis so fun and easy! I will not be visiting the Arch anytime in the next 10 years. :) I have to admit that I was not a fan of my drive home alone Saturday afternoon, but shouldn't complain since Becky's drive was much further.