Give to the Max!!!

Tomorrow (November 12th) is GiveMN's annual 'Give to the Max' day. GiveMN is a website that features Minnesota nonprofit organizations & schools and helps to facilitate donations and fundraisers. Each year, cool people like you are able to celebrate Give to the Max Day by making online donations and supporting local nonprofits who do amazing work within their communities. And the generosity of donors makes a difference far beyond the 24-hour giving event!

 

My preschool (Community Child Care Center- St. Paul) is one such business that would love your support! Join the donation party and help us continue to change lives by encouraging the development of the whole child through affordable, high-quality early childhood education. 

 

Last year, we were gifted with over $1000 in donations which made such a difference in purchasing needed supplies, classroom furniture, books and toys for the kiddos of the CCCC!

What's also super rad: Every donation to our school enters us into an hourly drawing to win additional money from the GiveMN Organization itself...anywhere from $1000 up to a grand prize of $10,000! WHAT?? Yep... Just think of all the learning and teaching that could happen with such things. If you are thinking of joining in on this awesome day of celebrating and supporting nonprofits, CCCC is the most stellar of choices for your generous funds. And the donating can start right now- until midnight on November 12th...Click on the link below and give, give, give!

CCCC- Give to the Max!!

Our Tropical Vacation...The Final Post!

Ok, I know this little vacation of ours happened many weeks ago. But I have to document...for nostalgia and for my future self to look back and reminisce with a happy smile.

So we continue. It's day 3. We have another amazing breakfast prepared by our pal Rick and head out for our final adventure to explore the most famous monument of all (in the city of Saint Louis..not the world). The ARCH. I had little previous knowledge of what was inside this monster of a structure. I drove past it once in college on the freeway with some pals on the way to a Music Festival in Tennessee, but that's about it. We, at that time, lovingly referred to it as 'The Freakin' Arch'....we were tired and cranky I think.

Let me tell you that the arch is a pretty amazing structure to behold...unless you are one who feels claustrophobic in small spaces. In that case, you should NEVER do this.

We got our tickets and were first in line for the 11:10am ride. We got our tram capsule cards (we called them time capsule cards instead, because you kind of feel like you are taking a trip back to the 1960's):

Then we were escorted down a concrete staircase (are we heading to a bomb shelter???) to a row of 8 little metal doors. Our pod was lucky number 7:

The metal door raised up and inside was the capsule...so tiny! For real? Yep, climb on in...I'm sure it will be fine:

It takes 4 minutes to reach the top and kind of sways as the arch bends. At the top is a little room (arch shaped because it's the top of the arch) with windows to look out at the world:

It's quite high:

Not too scary, but I did have a moment of internal panic as we waited for the 'Time Capsule' to return to bring us down:

We are, like, stuck up here until the little capsule returns to take us safely down (which takes 3 minutes if you wanted another fun factoid). What if it forgets to come get us? It came. It was all ok. We made it safely down. Super cool experience:

We only had a handful of hours left before it was time to head home so decided to spend it in 'The Loop'...it's where the cool college kids hang out. But first we stopped for some ice cream at Ted Drewes. Multiple people told us we HAD to go there, so we did. It was tasty:

Now the Loop. Lots of cute shops. I bought this:

And we made another perfect decision for lunch:

Black bean burgers, shoestring fries, ginger beer and SKEEBALL:

We totally did not do awesome but it was fun:

Ok, at this point it was probably 2pm and we had seen every store, walked up and down 'The Loop' and were getting a little weary in the legs. But our flight didn't leave for another 5.5 hours....so we went to a mall:)

More walking...some window shopping...and then we couldn't deny the obvious any longer. We had done ALL THE THINGS there are to do in a weekend getaway. And it was wonderful.

And we were exhausted. Was it lame to head to the airport and sit for 3.5 hours until our flight took off? Maybe. But that's just what we did. Also, we had snacks and played cards (Arch cards with fun facts on them that we bought at the airport for our friend D who was kind enough to pick us up from the airport later that evening...but we were bored so tried them out for her):

Time to head home:

What a trip! Short and sweet and perfect in every way. We plan to take more trips in the future...to where, we do not know. But the plan is to pick a city we have never been to and see where the wind takes us. Until next time ❤️!

Our Tropical Vacation...Part 2

As I was saying...

We woke Sunday morning and had an amazing breakfast prepared by our B&B host (Rick). We chatted with him about the city and all it has to offer. He shared about the history of the neighborhoods, the museums and local attractions and helped us map out the day.

Our first stop was the St. Louis Zoo. We both had not been to a zoo in quite awhile (without a small child of some kind as a travel buddy) and it was super fun! We saw animals:

Got a close up with a hippo (he's in the water in the background...for real):

And searched for those wax animal mold thingys that we fondly remember on visits to the Milwaukee Zoo as young children....no such luck:(

Goodbye Zoo. Onto the next adventure! 

Amanda has a dear friend who used to live in Minnesota and now resides in St. Louis....and she owns the most adorable little botique in a fancy shmancy part of town. We stopped by the shop and had a lovely visit:

We also learned that it is all the rage in St. Louis to monogram things...like all the things. Jackets, purses, scarves, necklaces and even car windows. Who knew? We were learning so much about Missouri culture!

We wanted to check out another cool neighborhood for lunch and Tamara directed us to the 'Central West End' on Euclid Avenue. Some cute shops and restaurants. We settled on Dressels Pub and it was yummy:

It also had lots of 'busts' of folks from the olden days...another charming feature that runs true throughout the whole darn city. Busts and statutes.... EVERYWHERE:

After powering up with some burgers and fries, we were off to the CITY MUSEUM. If you have never heard of this place, it is the coolest and craziest thing you will ever see. An artist bought a building downtown many years ago and made it into a magical, amazing playland of exploration for people young and old. Little holes to crawl into, giant hamster wheels, robots (for the Finchster), ladders to climb, hallways of mirrors, slides that lead to who knows where...CRAZY:

CRAZY! I also went down a super scary slide after many moments of hesitation and fear...but I don't know how to post video with my app so you just have to take my word for it. It was scary!

Next adventure. We had been walking all day and our foot wear choice was probably not the best....boots are cute but not for long distances. We were tired.

We headed 'home' and put on our sweatpants for a few hours and contemplated where we were to eat our next meal. 'A' really likes sandwiches so we googled where we could find them. Our choices for food and activities had (to this point) been 100% perfect so we found a place downtown that looked tasty. We got to the downtown area and realized that our perfect decision making streak was over. Downtown is not open...should have looked a little closer to the website and also remembered that it was Sunday night.

It's ok, we must press forward. We honestly were not even that hungry so drove around for a little while before deciding to just stop at a grocery store for a few little snacks. A third staple of the St. Louis area....

Awwww, Schnucks. That's what I said every time we drove by one. Every time. Anyway, we got a pasta salad, chips and some yogurt and headed back to the B&B...and crashed. A long, amazing day that ended with watching Netflix cooking shows on 'A's iPad until we fell asleep. Perfection once again attained.

Until the next post....

Our Tropical Vacation...Part 1

Many years ago, my dear gal pal 'A' and I spent many a 6:30pm hour watching The Wheel (of Fortune) together. Of course, we always knew every puzzle and were envious of the contestants who won trips to far away lands like Bora Bora or Turks & Caicos while we sat on the couch...prizeless.

We joked around how delightful it would be to adventure to such places with all the 'extra money' we had lying around....but then our jokes started to formulate into a real life plan. Why can't we take a vacation like the ones Pat and Vanna give away? What if we just saved a little money each year for 5 years? We could totally do that. Yes...when we are 37, we will travel to a Tropical Oasis.

Fast forward to the recent present....the 5 year mark had arrived. As most of you are probably aware, in real life it's hard to set aside money for vacations. Especially when one of you has 5 kids and the other works 2 jobs just to pay the bills...so, ok, we didn't save the money. But we were not going to let that small detail get us down. We were GOING ON A VACATION. 

Turks & Caicos...out. Puerto Rico...forget it. The Sandy Beaches of the Florida Keys...nope. St. Louis, Missouri...ok! What? Yes.

Hey, we had limited funds and Southwest was having a random crazy awesome sale. We picked a city that was super cheap to fly to and that neither of us had explored and deemed it our 'Tropical Vacation Destination'....Gateway to the West, here we come!!!!

Our lovely weekend away in a nutshell:

Arriving to the airport-

Travel snacks and entertainment-

Matching boots-

Airplane- 

Instead of staying at a boring old hotel downtown, we opted for a charming Bed & Breakfast in a nearby neighborhood. If you have never stayed in a B&B before, I highly recommend it! The owner was very kind, liked to share his knowledge of the city with us, and made monster, amazing breakfast for us each morning. Rick was da bomb! (The Brewers House)-

The room was great! Complete with old antiques, large plants, TV for lounging and relaxing, a huge comfy bed, millions of pillows, free WiFi, a cool ceiling heater thingy to stay warm out of the shower and fluffy robes to top it off:

Night 1...we arrived (thanks to our rental car and 'A's superior driving skills) to the B&B in the early evening, got settled and then headed out to the Soulard Neighborhood for some dinner...its a cool neighborhood (we did some Googling to find where the cool kids hang out...Soulard was mentioned multiple times). Because we ARE cool, we naturally headed that way to find some dinner. We came upon a yummy Mexican establishment and did not regret one moment of the rest of the night. SO GOOD!!!! I had the Cheese Enchiladas and 'A' went for an equally wonderful Chimmichanga.

What could be more fun than what has already transpired, you ask? Tune in next week to see how our 'Tropical Vacation Destination' evolved and blossomed into the most PERFECT gal pal weekend getaway in the history of the world.