Opening Day

Baseball is back!  Today is the first day of the Cardinals 2011 season and it's starting with an unpredictable season.  Wainwright is out for the season, he had Tommy John surgery.  Pujols is start the last year of his contract with the Cardinals and the management, in my opinion, blew the contract talks in the off season.  Pujols will not discuss a new contract until the end of the season, since he wants the largest contract he could be striving to have a huge season.  Carpenter is healthy, we have a new short stop and a new pitcher in the rotation.

Lots of expectations for this year.  As long as we do better than the Reds, the division favorites, I'll be happy.

Go Birds!

Winter is back

Spring has been a major tease for us and winter just won't go away.  We had a nice 4.5 inches of snow on Saturday that is melting fast today.  And we are supposed to get more wintery mix on Tuesday and then it's 60s for Opening Day of baseball.

The weather didn't really bother me or disturb my plans for the weekend.  We still went to the Fish Fry at St. Gabe's on Friday night and then went Babe's with Zipf.  On Saturday, Zipf and I went to Soulard and got some great deals, like always.  And then off to the Hill to try to a new deli and I show Zipf how to shop on the Hill.

Once I got home Reily was able to enjoy the snow, again.

First Spring Weekend

It's finally Spring!  It has been a very long winter with a lot of snow and now the days are longer and starting to get warmer.  The last week was another very productive wedding week.  We met with our priest and have officially registered with the Archdiocese.  We have our flowers all set and ready to go.  That was one of the biggest decisions of the week.  I am not big on what flowers I have to have but once I figured out the color I wanted it did make the process easier.

[caption id="attachment_1109" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Junior Bridesmaid Flowers"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1110" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Bridesmaids Flowers"][/caption]

We, also, met with photographers, finally.  This was the one part of our wedding that we were not willing to compromise on and I think we have found the perfect photographer.  We even started our registry!

On a fun note, Friday night Scott and I met Zipf up at St. Gabriel's for the fish fry and we ran into people we knew.  It was a nice flasback to sit in my old grade school cafeteria and eat at the exact same tables that I sat at back then.

Saturday, after Zipf and I made our floral choices, we went to Rizzo's Station Pizza and chatted with my cousin for a quick lunch and then I introduced Zipf to the wonders of Soulard Market.  She was pretty amazed with how cheap the fruits and veggies were down there.  Then she found the Cardinals gear booth!  We both walked away with some new Cards stuff.

[caption id="attachment_1111" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="New Cards jacket"][/caption]

Later that night, I met up with Liz and Theresa to celebrate Liz's birthday at Schlafly's and then we got some desert at Houlihan's.

It was a busy last few days and it doesn't look like that is coming to an end any time soon.  At this rate the wedding will be here before we know it!

Spring has, wait for it...not sprung.

We turned the clocks forward and have had some teaser days of high 60s and then today happened...We woke up to this  

The day didn't get much better.  All day long it was wet and snowy and then it turned to sleet.  The weatherman was completely wrong with the weather prediction today, it was supposed to have just rained and some snow on the grass.  It turned traffic into a nightmare this morning and going over the bridge was slippery this morning but had improved by lunch.



[caption id="attachment_1102" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Hopefully, Reily's last snow day"][/caption]

After today and the extra snow I'm ready for spring and some warmer weather.  Of course the warmer weather means it's closer to the wedding!

Napoleon & BBQ

We had been wanting to check out the Napoleon Bonaparte exhibit at the Missouri History Museum since we first saw the banners hanging on the building about a month or so ago.  And this weekend we finally went to go see "The Treasures of Napoleon."  It was well worth the wait, just like everything we've gone to see there is.  

A few fun facts that I did not know what that Napoleon was that he was actually born on Corsica and spoke Italian, he was obsessed with giving out titles, I was not that familiar with his second wife.  It's always fun to see the medals and clothing from that time period as well.

While we were at the History Museum there was the annual Irish Step dancing.  Once we finished the exhibit we watched some of the dancing and was completely amazed by the speed at which they can move their feet.  Below is the senior level girls dancing. 



We decided we needed lunch after the Museum and that would be Pappy's.  We had seen it on Man vs. Food and have heard great reviews from people that it was awesome BBQ.  I knew that there was a line to order food, but there was a long line even at 2:30 in the afternoon!  However, it was worth the wait.

Lent

It's finally Lent.  It seems like it has taken forever for Lent to get here this year.  Not that I'm minding a late Lent and a late Easter but it does seem weird for it to just be starting now that it feels that Spring should be just around the corner.  I do like Lent happening along with the dreary days of winter, it tends to make the giving up something not as bad and the thought of Easter and Spring brighter.  At least that is the way I like to think of it being in St. Louis when there is a change in seasons.

So for Lent I have decided to give up eating fast food.  I know this one will be fairly tough for me because it is such an easy out for lunches for me.  If we don't have food at home or I'm not wanting to make a sandwich, I quickly run to McDonald's.  Plus Scott and I just had Arby's for lunch while running errands on Sunday.  I think this will help cut down on that.  I did say that there is a medical clause in needing fast food, a horrible migraine needing the grease might break it but I'm hoping to even try to find out ways around that.  Scott has decided to give up soda.  So far, so good for both of us.  I even made us pasta for dinner last night to remind us not to eat meat for dinner. 

I hope we both succeed at our Lenten promises!

Go! St. Louis Marathon

As a person who hates to run but loves to be outside and walk and be apart of walk/runs, I decided to sign up for the 5K part of the Go! St. Louis Marathon.  I haven't decided if I'm really going to be running it or if I'm going to walk the whole thing.  I know my walking pace is really a slow run, thanks to walking class at UTSA (PE credit).  But I do have time to condition myself to get in shape to be able to run 3 miles.  So we'll see how I do.

But I am happy that I have something to look forward to and a reason to get back to the gym.  Plus now that it's starting to get warm again I'll want to be outside a little more and hopefully have the energy to not want to just hide on the couch when I get home.  Also, this helps to kick off getting me in wedding shape!

Marching right along

While everyone was down at Mardi Gras, Scott and I were busy doing wedding stuff.  We met with a potential DJ, florist and bakery.  It was a rather  impressive outing, seeing that we met with everyone within 2 hours!

The highlights were that I finally have an idea about what I want to do for flowers and have a color to go with the bridesmaids dresses.  Since there are so many options to go with the black dresses and since it's a summer wedding we have a lot to pick.  I finally had an idea that yellow will be a great idea and the florist we met with today gave us some great choices.  The price was a little more than what we had planned but it's nice to have a starting point.



The DJ company we met was great.  They answered a lot of questions that we had about the amount of personal attention that we would get from the DJ and our do not play list.  We really didn't know what to expect nor did we have a huge request for our DJ but we do want someone who will entertain our guest while we are not out dancing.  We think we have found that with this company.

We even stopped at a bakery to get some more ideas about a possible cake.  I didn't think that finding a wedding cake would be that difficult, but there are just too many options.  I had done some research and hoped that we could just stop in and see if we could either set up and appointment for a tasting or at least get pricing.  We got the best of both worlds, a price list and a to go sampling.  Now if Scott would just look at the website so we can go in and talk design with them.

After a long day of unplanned wedding shopping we headed over to the Chase to catch and early showing of Black Swan.  The movie was not a movie that I usually like to see and I don't think I would ever see this movie again but I'm happy that I saw it.  Natalie Portman played an outstanding role as an obsessed ballet dancer.  It was a little bloody and weird at parts but the suspense and to see the whole movie play out was fun and kept me on my toes.

When the movie was over we were running into people who were coming to the JunGala, a Mardi Gras Ball.  It was really fun to see everyone dressed up in gowns and tuxes.  We headed over to Bar Louis for some dinner and ran into Zipf!  It was a nice surprise to see her there and we caught up on the days wedding activity and some new gossip.  Overall it was a very busy day with a lot of progress.  It's amazing that we even started bathroom shopping this weekend...it seems like it's only a matter of time before the bathroom will be completed!

Reily's Birthday

Sunday, February 27, was Reily's 8th birthday.  I can't believe she is 8 years old.  Where does the time go?  Reily probably didn't have the best birthday weekend, she did have to go to the vet and get some blood drawn and a shot; however, she did get some new treats out of it.  Plus plenty of snuggle time on Sunday while I watched a movie and we watched the hockey game later that night.  What more could a pup ask for?

Here are some pictures too look back at Reily over the years:

Happy Birthday Reily!