May 2012:
I know it's been a while. Here's the
situation: I have been thinking for months of something that I could blog about
that didn't center around the boyfriend, because I refused to be
that girl who could only talk about her significant
other. In an effort to be creative and only blog about things that happened
without him, I had to take a little hiatus. Mostly because everything
interesting in my life these days does include him, and LITERALLY nothing blog
worthy seems to go on when we are apart.
So from this point forward, I'll just be known
as the used to be funny/interesting/entertaining girl who now can only seem to
talk about how amazing her boyfriend and his family and friends are. I've
accepted it, and now you have to, too.
Last weekend, said amazing boyfriend took me to
St. Louis/Southern Illinois for the weekend to see his family and to meet some
of his college friends who I had been hearing about for the last several
months. Our first order of business was an afternoon Cardinals game. Always
one who likes to be cute, I enlisted the help of my sister and had this fun
shirt made for the occasion:
Looking adorable in
my supportive girlfriend attire, we made our way to the stadium and found our
super awesome seats:
No adventure of
mine is complete without a photo-op, and my aforementioned amazing boyfriend has
learned to be incredibly tolerant of my paparazzi-esque snapshot taking. As a
symbol of my appreciation for his participation, I try to keep it to a maximum
of 5 shots per activity and with mugs this cute, we usually only need 1:
So with that out
of the way, and sunblock thoroughly applied, it was time to settle in and watch
some baseball! I lucked out and the seat in front of me was empty so I got to
sit like this all afternoon:
And now my feet
look like this:
Apparently I wasn't
as thorough with that sun screen as I had previously thought!
Sufficiently burnt
to a crisp, tired, sad from a Cardinals loss, and starving, we headed to see his
family at his mom and dad's house. Like any good mama, his mom had a beautiful
spread of delicious food waiting for us as soon as we walked in the door. I
didn't take any photos of dinner, mostly because I knew I would be embarassed to
admit how much I ate - while we miss them dearly, our waistlines are very
thankful that both of our moms and their yummy cooking are kept at a safe
distance for most of the year! I did snap a few shots of us with the folks and
one with Ryan's Nan, too:
Family time in, we
headed back to St. Louis for my first introduction to the infamous Pod 6 crew
(at least the first time in mass numbers) from Ryan's college days. We had some
BBQ (well, I had some spinach/artichoke dip and luckily had a fellow vegetarian
girlfriend of a Pod 6 member there with me so I didn't get judged too harshly
for passing on what I heard were amazing meats.) and then spent the rest of the
night listening to old stories, getting to know everyone, and laughing a whole
lot. While I have been informed that nobody ever really passes the test, I at
least think that I have lived to see another Pod 6 outing, which I am counting
as a win.
As always, the
visit was much too short, but we left feeling very loved. We even managed to
come home with some loot. Ryan scored some new shirts and I got a cardigan,
jewelry, and my very own bike! Ryan's dad had bought a bike and fixed it up and
gave it to me so that I could ride around the trail at my house with Ryan.
(Sidenote: aren't his parents AMAZING?! They are so, so, so wonderful to us!)
Once home, we could hardly wait to try it out, but since it had been well over
10 years since I had been on one, didn't have a helmet yet, and let's be honest
I'm wobbly on my own 2 feet, I needed a few practice laps around the parking
lot:
Sturdied, (well, sturdied enough to not kill myself) we headed out to take our first few laps around the pretty trail that is my backyard. During our ride, we noticed that the Canadian Geese that live here had recently had babies and were out and about with their cute little yellow balls of fur. We admired them from a respectful distance and went on about our ride. Three-quarters of the way into the first 2 mile lap, we noticed that one group was not really moving across the trail quickly so we slowed down thinking that they would keep moving and we could be on our way. As you can see, it was feeding time, and Mama or Papa Goose was not real interested in herding the little ones to a new spot, opting instead to stop in the middle of the road and stare us down like a ninja duck:
Ryan tried to
reason with me and insist that we are much larger than they are, and we're on
bikes so we could continue on our way and probably wouldn't be chased by them.
'Probably' wasn't quite enough insurance for me, as I was slow and wobbly on the
bike, had no helmet, was dangerously close to fish-infested water, and was
having flashbacks to the cat/pepper
spray incident of 2010. So being the good man that he is, Ryan gave into my
fear and turned around to ride home the long way in order to be certain that I
not get eaten by any animals who are 1/10 of my size.
And that concluded
our weekend adventure. To family and new friends: thanks again for all of your
hospitality and kindness, we really appreciate you! To the geese: I have a
helmet now and only look half drunk while riding the bike, so BRING IT! Stay
tuned for what is almost a certain 'How I Was Almost Killed By A Goose' post...
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