Out of town guests allow us to play tourist

On Tuesday, my sister Juli and her grandson (my great-nephew) Kason flew into town for visit.  Juli arrived from Arizona at around noon and Kason came from Maryland just after dinner time.  On Wednesday, we took them to the Gateway Arch and met up with Emily and her four kids.  Juli, Kason, and I rode up to the top of the Arch.  Aside from some Covid restrictions - like only being able to look out of one set of windows at the top and wearing a mask - it was pretty much the same as when I rode it years ago.  

Before our scheduled ride, we toured the new museum that opened up about three years ago and Steve and I decided we need to come back a couple of times just to go through all the exhibits

this is Larkin pretending to be a kitty in one of the exhibits

 the view is just spectacular!  And, the day was somewhat breezy and I could feel a bit of swaying at the top.  Eeeeee!  

On Thursday, we met Emily, Lucy, and Noah at the zoo (Larkin and Quinn were at summer day-camp).  Temperatures were mild as the sun was behind clouds (we carted around umbrellas to ward off any rain 😁) so it was a perfect day to be outside.  

Steve matched the penguins...

That afternoon, we drove to Ballwin and brought pork steaks for Joe to grill for dinner.  Beckie came and Elise drove over from Columbia so we had a really nice little family gathering.  Later that evening, while Beckie stayed to "babysit" the youngest three, Juli, Kason, Emily, Joe, Noah, Elise, Steve, and I did proxy baptisms at the temple.  It was our first time inside since the pandemic.  It was pretty neat.

Friday morning, Juli and Kason had tickets to a new aquarium located downtown at Union Station.  They were kind of pricey so Steve and I opted to not go.  Instead, I took Linus down to the Open Door Animal Rescue facility (a thirty-minute drive one way) to have blood drawn to check on his heartworm condition.  Only, when I got there, they were short staffed couldn't do it so we will have to go down next week to get it done.  And, on the way home, Juli called to say they were finished at the aquarium.  In spite of Covid concerns, the place was packed with people (St. Louis is hosting the Olympic gymnastic trials this week and downtown was full of young girls and their mothers - most likely competitors) and Juli and Kason could hardly get to see much of anything.  Even the soda fountain that touted super-duper fancy milk shakes had an hour wait-list so Kason was disappointed about that.  

Friday evening, though, we had tickets to a Cardinals game!  

We decided to ride in on the Metro to avoid the downtown parking hassle and that went pretty smoothly.  It was only after we got at the stadium that we experienced some hiccups:  the small one was that our purses were too large so we had to pay $5.00 to store them in a portable locker trailer.  A bigger hiccup was that our digital tickets were for the wrong day!!!?!?!?!?  We bought them in early June and requested the June 25th date but somehow, they changed to Saturday June 26th!  Happily, we were able to buy new tickets - at half the price - and we got in to see the game.  I called our credit card company to dispute the purchase so I believe we will get our money back on the more expensive ones.  Fingers crossed.   Early on in the game, temperatures were warmish and muggy but as the sun went down, a nice breeze kicked up because it was bringing in a major storm front.  Happily, the rain held off until after the 9th inning.  And, darn it  - the Cardinals didn't win - they lost by one point.  The final hiccup of the night was that we got on the wrong Metro to go home!  Thankfully, Kason was not the typical teenager with his nose in his phone and he caught the error.  We should have transferred at a certain point but didn't and if Kason hadn't been watching, we would have ended up at the airport!!!  But, because trains don't run as often at night, we had to wait longer to catch the correct trains and we didn't get home until 1:00 am!   Which made getting up at 6:00 am Saturday to get Juli and Kason to the airport all the more difficult.  I dropped them off at 7:30 and went home and took a nap.  I took a second nap after lunch.  In between naps, I taught a virtual cello lesson and I did some glazing at the pottery studio.  We had Gary and Thomasina Filmore, an older couple from church, over for dinner.  What a day!  What a week!

Some nice little side notes about Juli and Kason's visit:  The downstairs shower does not leak, happily!  Kason is a movie fan and he was just in awe of our DVD collection.  We haven't added much to it in the last several years but we have quite a few from the 90's and early 2000's and those were the movies he was excited to see.  We ended up watching "The Truman Show", "What About Bob?", "The Man Who Knew Too Little", "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (the Ben Stiller one), and "Apollo 13".  

Today is Emily's birthday and her family is coming for dinner.  I have cold BBQ chicken wings in the refrigerator (I cooked them yesterday) and a potato supreme casserole to pop into the oven.  Emily is bringing a cake.

Ever since Thursday, we have had rain on and off and everything is just soaked.  I am grateful, though, as we went almost three weeks without rain until then and that is kind of unheard of here in Missouri.  I found a lilac, a forsythia, and a false cypress golden mop on clearance at Walmart on Monday and got them in the ground Wednesday morning so they are very happy for this rain. 

 (from bottom left clockwise:  blue hydrangea, forsythia, white hydrangea, lilac, rhododendron.  The golden mop is in the middle and there are three stella del oro plants in front of it and to the right of the hydrangea)  I also harvested my first cherry tomato yesterday - it was delicious!  Looking forward to many many more.....