Friday, February 27, 2015

MY MOMMY CAME!!

My mom had been planning to come out and visit me in the summertime since she wasn't able to come and help us move in, so that is what I  was been counting down to until then. Well a couple of weeks ago she said what if I come in a week?? Hey I was TOTALLY okay with that. I have not been working for the past month and a half so I was all for the company. She came on a Thursday evening and stayed until Sunday afternoon. It was the best weekend ever!! I love when my mom comes to visit, even when I was living an hour away in Cedar City, I loved when my mom and dad would come and pick me up to go up north or just to visit. Now living 3 states away, that is a little harder for her just to come make day trips. :) So I had to soak all this time up.
Friday morning, we woke up early and went to the temple. The St.Louis temple is GORGEOUS!!! Michael and I are so fortunate to have a temple so close wherever we both have lived. With that, I think we take it for granted, so I am making a commitment here and now on this blog, to attend more!!! 
We got done with our session, then my mom had the idea for us to do sealings. It was the first time since Michael and I had done sealings since we had been married so it was a cool experience. We were the only couple that did them so we had special treatment from the workers. I am so grateful for the temple and for the knowledge that Michael and I and our future family will be together forever because we got sealed in the House of the Lord. 
Anyways, so we got done with those, had lunch then went and had a tour of Michaels school. Michael was in class so it was just my mom and I.  I swear, my mom is a magnet for nice people. There were so many people coming up to us and asking if we needed help getting around, needed help taking pictures, asking if we felt safe etc. It finally got weird when a school campus police on a segway came up to us and asked us if we were okay? Then my mom and I got a little worried thinking should we not be here, is it unsafe to be here? (It was the middle of the day on a university campus with campus police everywhere, I am pretty sure we were safe) The campus police then talked to us for about 5 minutes about how we should always be on the look out and to be safe anywhere we are. So we headed home kind of confused on how come so many people were talking to us that day. We told Michael about it and he suggested that people probably thought that a young girl and her mom were doing a tore of the campus for a possible university for me!!! We had quite a good laugh. :)
Michaels office area. 

We are the top level.
Thanks to my sister Lindsay for the awesome wreath (the red part got broken in the traveling process :( )
We live on the long outstretch part of the building, so we have 6 of those massive windows :)




Cinderella was playing at the Fox Theater when she was here and so she had the grand idea of looking to see if there were any cheap tickets available. She found a  discount where students with an i.d. card could go 2 hours before the show started and buy discounted tickets! So we sent Michael over there and had us buy some! Unfortunately there was a limit of 2 so it was a girls night. The show was AMAZING!! When the show was over, my mom was very adamant to have Michael come and meet us at the Theater so to walk us home. (Yes Fox Theater is about a 2 minute walk/ 1 block away from our house). There were kids everywhere where we were walking!!! Lets just say that my mom is used to little towns in Utah where nothing happens!! :)

Then Saturday came went shopping, showed my mom more of the random things such as our grocery store that we go to, where our friends live etc. Michael had always wanted to go to the Catholic Basillica that is on our street and so we decided this would be a perfect time to go. That is amazing inside! For anyone that is going to come visit St. Louis or live here, go see that. It is free and it is all mosaic so there was not one painting in there. There are millions of little gold pieces to create a masterpiece! We went to the train station downtown and shopped around there, there was a big black man (they always seem to be the funniest) who saw my old flip phone and was having a hay day over it. He thought it was the coolest thing ever. He probably went on for about 5 minutes just raving about it.
We became buddies after this



That night we were going to go to the Old Spaghetti Factory downtown, but we called and there was a 2 1/2 hour wait, so my mom being the superwomen that she is, made us a Sunday dinner right then and there. I swear, things taste so much better if you aren't the one to make it. :)  Then we played a 3 hour game of Risk!!

We don't look alike or anything ;)

For Sunday, our church is at 10 so we were able to go to 2 1/2 hours of it and she loved it!! Our ward is so amazing because the ward is half young college families, or old foggies that have lived there for ever. So, it has a lot of strength and faith that come from it. My mom was in tears by the end of the prayer in Sacrament meeting. :) 
It was time to say goodbye and I wanted to just go right with her back to Utah, but unfortunately that is not an option. :( But I cannot wait until my mom comes again to visit!! 

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Nashville!

About a week after we got home from Utah, we decided to take a trip to Nashville Tennessee. We have a goal to go to as many places as we can when we live here in St. Louis because there are so many places 4-5 hours away from us. So on Monday we just said hey lets go to nashville! But not Tuesday we had to feed the missionaries so we decided to head out Wednesday morning. It may have been our best decision so far. :) It was so fun and I love going on trips and not having any plans and no obligations, you just go and do what you want and come home when you want. Nasvhille was about 5 hours away but for some reason it seemed FOREVER! On our way there, I saw a little sign on the side of the road for a gigantic statue of superman. This was a trip of spontaneity, so we got off in this little podunk town and figured out we were in Metropolis Illinois! It was seriously probably my favorite part of the whole trip.






The hotel that we got, was seriously the coolest. We had an option between a Lava Lamp or a Goldfish for our room. Michael wanted a goldfish but I know our history with goldfish and I didn't want to risk it, so we went with a Lava Lamp. The first one didn't work, so we got a second one and that one only lit up and the goo stuff would only go up once in a while.
We got there and that night we wanted something that Tennessee was known for, so barbecue it was. It was by far the best barbecue sandwich that I had ever had. We just happened to get there on discount night for those so maybe that factored into why it tasted so good. :) I saw on the GPS that there was a krispy kreme close, so I convinced Michael to go there and get doughnuts for the morning. Well.... that trip lasted an hour and a half. I am kidding you not. Long story short, the first place we went was a factory for them, then the second one we went to (got very lost in between these two) was a house (so unless they sell doughnuts out of their house, this wasn't it) then we drove for another 40 minutes to one and FINALLY we found one.We went back to the hotel and watched t.v.! This is a rare thing since we don't have a t.v. at home and so this was a real treat (I know how bad does that sound)
We got up the next day and decided to hit the town! We decided that Nashville would be a lot more fun if I was over 21 and if we drank. A lot of the bars where live music plays you have to be 21 and obviously I am a good year and half away from that. :) But it was fun to see where famous people had played and to go into the cowboy boot stores, there are definitely a lot of those there.
Don't mind Michaels hat... he insists on wearing my beanies. :)
















We went to a pasta place right by our parking garage and it was beyond good. We got there 15 minutes before lunch time ended so it was perfect! We decided we were done, because all of the museums and tour places all costed about $20 a person. We went took a nap, went and got pizza (that was another hour trip thanks to the gps) but the funny story about that is that we were lost so we decided to just go into a parking long and figure out where we were supposed to go. So we pull into some place and we see that it is an LDS church!!! What are the odds!! We then went and worked out in the hotel gym and we watched American Idol. Whats funny about that is that it was the time when they were in Nashville!

The morning we were going home, we decided to hit up the Grand Ol Opry. We didn't want to pay 40 bucks to go in so we went to the mall across the street and took pictures. That filled our needs.



Next up will be pictures from my moms trip here!! Thanks for reading!
Love the Saucedas in St. Louis!