April Madness

Um, hi. It’s been a while. Over a month, to be exact. I am sorry I’m already slacking on my blog! I had every intention of blogging once a week, but then April hit, and my life has literally been crazy ever since. So here are a few of the highlights from the entire month of April, and a few from March, basically filling in the gaps from my last blog post on March 24!

1. I hosted/threw my first baby shower for a friend. I have been in a wedding every year since 2010. That’s right, one a year, which means this year will mark my sixth wedding I’ve been a bridesmaid in. To say I’m pretty experienced at throwing bridal showers might be an understatement, but baby showers are a whole new territory for me. And I’ll even let you in on a little secret: They’re actually more fun! That’s right, I said it!

Don’t get me wrong, I have loved throwing my friends’ bridal showers, but it’s not the same watching them open presents for themselves as it is watching them open presents for their soon-to-be little one! Because let’s be serious: Seeing all the cute baby clothes is a little more fun than all your friends’ new kitchenware and household items. Plus you get to decorate based on their nursery theme or whether it’s a boy or girl (or gender neutral if they aren’t finding out), which gives you so many more options than what you get with bridal showers!

Here are a few pics from the shower:

2. Lupulin Carnival. I mentioned I was going to this in an earlier blog post, and it was just as fun again as I had expected. We went with our friends Zach and Anna (probably our favorite drinking buddies, because they like craft beer as much as we do!) It was great weather, the beer was good and they had some food trucks with delicious options! One of my favorite parts was the free photo booth!

3. Bark For Life. One of my Relays, Pike County, hosted their first ever Bark For Life event, which, as you may have guessed, is a fundraising event just for dogs and their humans! My volunteer Lynn Reuther worked her butt off to put this thing together, and it paid off! It was so much fun and it brought in $600! Not bad for its first event! There were so many doggies, I was in heaven! My favorite was an 11-week-old St. Bernard puppy named Lacey (top right corner below). We became best friends! I even used my dogs to help advertise for it, even though I didn’t bring them (an hour drive would’ve been a little much for them). 

4. Our cousins’ wedding. Tyler’s cousin Lucas married his girlfriend, Melody, of 10 years (!) on April 11, which was the date of their 10-year anniversary! How cute is that? And their wedding at The Luminary was just as cute! We love them so much! I went to Melody’s bachelorette two nights before the wedding, which was at Pinot’s Palette in Chesterfield. It was my first time doing one of those wine/paint nights, which although a bit stressful for a perfectionist like me, was super fun! Disregard my hideous painting below (still haven’t figured out what to do with it, other than throw it in the trash… any ideas?)

5. Cardinals Home Opener. Need I say more? This is one of my favorite/best days of the year! I have treated it as a holiday ever since my first home opener with my dad and sister back in 2005. I was away at college from 2006-2009, but you can ask my friends, I still celebrated (in)appropriately. Let’s just say lots of summer brew was involved.

Then Tyler and I started dating in 2009 and we went to our first home opener together in 2010.

We hadn’t missed one since, until this year. 😦 Unfortunately, with paying two mortgages right now, we just couldn’t justify spending $100 a pop to go to the game. But we still played hooky and went downtown and had a blast, even if the day didn’t start off the way we planned. We got a late start, because I had to do a few things for work. Once we got downtown, we realized parking was going to be even more of a nightmare than we imagined. We had planned to park at 4 Hands, have a beer, then head to Ballpark Village for lunch.

We ended up driving all the way down to Soulard before we could find a spot, so we decided to go to Hammerstone’s so we could take advantage of their shuttle to the stadium. It ended up being a great idea! We had lunch there and a few beers before we headed to Ballpark Village. We got to BPV just in time to stand with a bunch of Cardinals fans as we watched the ceremonies, including my favorite part, where they let the bald eagle fly around the stadium (see picture below with a guy toasting his beer, it’s so America). Gives me chills every time. Even though we were sad we weren’t inside the stadium, standing in the middle of BPV felt pretty close to the real thing. Then we went to our favorite place to go to before/after Cards games, Flying Saucer. We watched most of the game there before heading back to Soulard, where we had dinner at Johnny’s. No comment on that place. But all in all, it was a great day off, celebrating the return of Cardinals baseball in St. Louis with my best friend.

And no, I do not want to talk about Wainwright being out for the season. To say I’m bummed is an understatement. It breaks my heart and I’m still in shock.

6. The What’s Up St. Chuck website went live! You can check it out for yourselves: www.wustc.com. I’ve got quite a few stories up there already, including Exit 6, Shamrocks, Tom+Chee, as well as some new ones, like Rendezvous Cafe and Wine Bar, Crooked Tree Coffee House, 6 North Cafe and Rack House West Winery. My story on Legacy Park in Cottleville, featuring an adorable picture of my cousin’s little family, is up there, too.

So far I think my favorite story/experience has been at Crooked Tree Coffee House, just because it was so natural. I took my grandma to her doctor’s appointment at St. Joe’s Hospital in St. Charles off First Capitol, and I had an hour or so to kill, so I decided to try it out. I did not regret it! This is the only article I’ve written actually inside the restaurant that I’m covering. I felt a little like Carrie from Sex in the City, writing about her experience as she goes. It was so fun! Plus the food and coffee were delicious (read the article for more!)

And I’ve got a couple stories in the works, including one on my friend Cherri’s shop, Good Buy Girls, and another on my mom and stepdad’s restaurant, Kitaro. Check out the website for those stories, soon! Excited to see what my May assignments will be!

7. Softball started! This is my sixth season managing my co-ed Wednesday night softball team, the Tigers. While the first couple weeks were a little difficult, with some team members not being able to play, having my own work conflicts and playing on a new field for the first time in six years, overall I am happy to be playing ball again. Tyler and I are also playing in a league on Sunday nights in Lake St. Louis that started this past week. Looks like we are going to dominate in both leagues, which is great for batting practice, but not so great for fielding. I could catch fly balls all day, but I’ve only had one so far this season after six games. 😦

But, some exciting news, Tyler and I got a new bat (in the world of softball this is exciting, trust me) and after five seasons, we finally went out and purchased an official softball bag that has holders for our bats and everything! Since 2010, we’ve been using a little duffle bag to carry everything in, so it’s nice to finally upgrade!

8. My sister’s bridal shower/bachelorette party. Although stressful at times, it was so much fun! I hosted the bridal shower for about 20 or so people at my house (hence the stressful part), and then we also had the bachelorette party that night. I couldn’t have done it without the help of my mom and mother-in-law. They got there a few hours before the shower to help me clean, set up and they provided almost all the food. It was wonderful. My mother-in-law either made or helped me make all the decorations, she’s amazing. Speaking of which, she recently started her own Etsy shop, Rookie Creates, where she is now selling some of her handmade decorations! Check it out if you’re in need of decorations for showers, parties, weddings, etc.

After the shower, a party bus (Gus Gus the Fun Bus) came to pick up about 14 girls to take us downtown to Rosalita’s for dinner. Then we headed to Lucas Park Grille across the street for a drink before heading to Ballpark Village, where we stayed most of the night. Things got a little crazy after that, but I think everyone had a good time! Our last stop was Talayna’s, which is always a treat and a good way to end the night.

Then we sang all the way home on the bus. I actually got a message from the bus driver the next day that said, “Hope you all enjoyed your night Saturday! The fact that you all are always the singingest groups I’ve ever had is fun.” What’s funny is, the last time I rented his bus, it was for my friend Mattie’s bachelorette party last year and it was with a completely different group of people! Apparently my sister and I both have friends who like to sing. 🙂

9. Blues playoff game. I almost hate to bring this up, since it’s kind of a sore subject now that we’re out of the playoffs, but my cousin Kelsey’s fiance Nate got free tickets through work for the game last Friday night and he invited Tyler and I to go with them! Even though we lost, it was so much fun! There’s nothing like Blues playoff hockey. Before last year, I had never been to a Blues playoff game, and now I’ve been to two! They keep losing though, so maybe I should stop. But both times we were offered tickets for free! How can I turn those down? And our seats for this game were fantastic, we were about 20 rows up from the ice! This was only my second time sitting in the lower bowl!

10. My mother-in-law’s birthday. You guys, this woman isn’t “like” a second mom to me, she IS my second mom. I love her with all my heart and she loves me back that much and then some. She’s the most giving, selfless person I’ve ever met and I’m so blessed to be her daughter-in-law! We celebrated her 60th birthday by going over to my in-laws’ house, BBQing and playing lawn games. It was a beautiful day for a beautiful person. Then, on her actual birthday, my Relay For Life team hosted our annual fundraising night at Texas Roadhouse, and I made a poster for everyone to sign for her, so that was fun, too. (Side note: We raised $125 from that, not bad! Thank you to everyone who came out for that!)

Tyler took a series of action shots while we were playing bags, and I have to admit, the poses we’re all making is pretty hilarious. Check ’em out:

Whew! Now do you understand why I haven’t blogged in over a month? I’ve also stopped running/working out, which I happened to pick back up this week, too, thanks to St. Charles Community College‘s That ’80’s Run for getting me motivated again (it’s a 5K my sister Sarang and I ran last Saturday)!

Funny story: I actually signed up for the 10K a month ago (you know, back when I was running regularly), but after not running for a month, I contacted my former boss and asked if I could be switched over to the 5K. Kind of pathetic, but I seriously would’ve died if had tried to run a 10K. The 5K was hard enough! But my sister is a trooper. She does cross country, so running three miles for her is nothing, and her best time is like 22 minutes or something crazy like that, but she managed to trudge through the 5K with me at an achingly slow place of 12-minute-miles. But, I was proud of myself for completing it in just under 37 minutes.

This was my sister and I’s third race together. She did the Head For the Cure 5K with me last year and the Cottleville St. Patty’s Day Run for the Helmet 7K this year, and she’s a great running buddy. Like I said, she probably hates running that slow with me, but she is such a good sport and good at motivating me!

I also lifted weights for the first time in… you guessed it, a month! Do you see a pattern yet? 🙂 And I decided to be an idiot and pick up where I left off rather than lowering the weights a little, and boy do I regret it. Still feeling it two days later.

And I started doing yoga. I originally started it after some friends of mine said they were doing it at home by watching YouTube videos, and one of them said it was really helping with his back/posture. Well, Tyler has been having some real back issues lately, so we did it to help him stretch and strengthen it. I found this series of YouTube videos called “30 Days of Yoga With Adrienne,” and I love it.

I’m on Day 17 and I honestly look forward to doing it and I miss it if I haven’t done it in a while. I never thought I would like yoga, but turns out the breathing and meditation part of it really does relax me, and some of the moves/poses are actually pretty difficult and strenuous.

I will admit I think I enjoy doing it in the comforts of my own home where no one can see me. A friend of mine invited me to a free yoga class one Saturday at lululemon in the Central West End, and talk about gym-timidation! I think I’ll be sticking to my YouTube videos for now where no one can judge me on if I’m doing my poses right or not!

Speaking of which, yoga is calling my name! Sorry for the long post, and I promise to write again soon! Thanks for reading! Time to get back on the grind! Namaste! 🙂

Spring Is Coming

Unlike the Starks of Winterfell (nerd alert: Game of Thrones reference), I believe the motto of Cardinals Nation (and really St. Louis as a whole) should be “Spring is coming.”

We survived February. Spring training has begun and exhibition games start in two days. Before you know it, the snow will melt away, the sun will start setting later, the grass will turn green and baseball will be back, along with all the other things I love about spring (hey, I told you I love lists, get used to it):

1. March Madness. Yes I take off every year for this “holiday,” which begins March 19. It typically involves me and a bunch of my friends sitting around, watching college basketball, hanging out, eating pizza and day drinking. It sounds kind of lame, but it’s always a ton of fun for some reason.

2. Girl Scout Cookies. Enough said. OK thin mints and samoas. Now I’ve truly said enough about that subject.

3. Birthdays. This one is kind of weird, but there’s a lot of awesome people who were born in March, and they were all born on March 21 (my sister) or March 22 (my best friend Deanna and my cousin’s twin babies, Madison and Mason). My sister lives in Springfield with her fiance, but they are coming home for her birthday and we’re going to have a big birthday bash for her at Shamrock’s (great place to eat and drink in St. Charles if you’ve never been)! Even better, my dad’s favorite local band, Black Dog & The Rainmakers, will be playing that night!

4. My favorite TV shows come back. If you couldn’t tell from earlier, I’m a big Game of Thrones fan. It’s actually my favorite show and I cannot WAIT for it to come back. I’ve even started listening to the audio books on my long drives for work and it’s been fantastic so far. I love reliving the first season and hearing so much more detail!

I’m also looking forward to the final season of Mad Men. The Walking Dead is also doing its last season currently, and to be honest, I’m not super impressed with it so far. We literally fast forwarded through the first episode… so boring! And House of Cards… I get into that later on though.

5. Tigers softball. I am itching to get back on the ball field. This will be our sixth year of running our co-ed softball team on Wednesday nights at Wapelhorst Park in St. Charles, and we have so much fun with it! We’re playing with a team on Sunday nights in Lake St. Louis this year, too. My husband and I can’t wait to play catch in our new back yard! I think we’ll have to do that the next time it’s nice out!

Here’s a pic of last spring’s undefeated team:

6. Lupulin Carnival. This is an awesome beer festival/carnival put on by 4 Hands Brewery in St. Louis. We went for the first time last year and had an absolute blast and I’m really excited to go again this year!

This is me at last year’s Lupulin Carnival next to a tiger bike, one of the many random and awesome things they have there:

7. St. Patty’s Day. I absolutely love celebrating St. Patty’s Day in Cottleville. This year is their 7th annual event, and it’s gotten bigger every year. Last year they had 65,000 people in attendance! I didn’t even know that many people lived in or around Cottleville!

(Picture on the left is from last year at Exit 6 after the run, picture on the right is from 2011, also after the run)

8. Running outside. As I said in a previous post, my husband and I are doing the Cottleville St. Patty’s Day Run for the Helmet 7K in two weeks. In case you were wondering, I have surpassed the two-mile mark in my training, which is great, considering a 7K is 4.4 miles. And I have to admit, I did pretty awesome in February, I even worked out seven days in a row at one point, then I hit a lull.

That lull started last Friday and I haven’t ran since. I did lift weights today, but even that was hard. I think I overdid myself, because ever since last Friday, I haven’t wanted to do ANYTHING. Maybe it’s the snow/weather, maybe it was the fact that I had something going on every single night last week, either work wise or socially, but I’ve been a zombie the past few days and I can’t seem to kick myself out of it. I had no motivation to work out, read or even blog over the entire weekend. I did do a load of laundry, but even that is still sitting unfolded in my hamper right now.

On Saturday, since we decided not to work on our other house (more on that in a later post), all I really wanted to do was sit around and watch House of Cards all day. But in a complete role reversal, after only watching the first episode, my husband hit “pause” on Netflix (something we rarely do), and said to me, “You know what we should do today? Clean the house.” I think my jaw hit the ground. I love my husband, but cleaning has never been one of his strong points. And for once, I had ZERO motivation to do any cleaning, even though our house sorely needed it. So, he started shampooing our carpets (which was AWESOME) and I finally got around to cleaning our bathroom, kitchen and bedroom.

One more husband gushing moment: On Monday he texted me, “Dinner date at tattooed dog tonight?” We’ve been wanting to try that place for months, and it was just so sweet and perfect. Never mind the fact that once we got there it was closed, and instead we got Raising Cane’s to go (which is DELICIOUS by the way!) and ate it at Exit 6… it was the thought that counts. 🙂

Sorry, just realized I digressed from my list a little. But there’s really only one more thing about spring that I’m excited about…

9. Cardinals baseball. Cannot say enough about this one, although I will say I’m a little upset right now because I somehow missed my opportunity to register and purchase Opening Day Flex Packs, which is how I’ve gotten tickets to Opening Day the past few years. I joined Cardinal Nation yesterday, so I get to participate in an exclusive ticket presale tomorrow, however I will be at a work event (American Cancer Society Day at the State Capitol in Jefferson City), so I’m not sure if I will be able to get my tickets. You guys, I haven’t missed a home opener at Busch since 2009. It’s a major holiday to me. However I am not willing to pay $100+ per ticket to go. So if any of you can help a girl out, let me know!

10. OK I lied. There’s one more thing I’m excited for this spring, but it’s going to be a surprise! I should be able to announce it for my next blog post, so stay tuned!

I would also like to note that apparently history repeats itself, because I did a post similar to this exactly four years ago.

Here’s to hoping I get my motivation back in March! With God on my side, I know I can accomplish anything I put my mind to!