super date 2008

As you may have guessed from the recent poll, we recently celebrated our 10th anniversary. It is unreal to us that we've been married that long, but after careful calculations we've come to the conclusion that in fact we have been.

To celebrate Nate got me some of the fanciest roses I have ever seen. The stems were so long they were taller than Jimmy. The were a beautiful red and in a gorgeous vase. He also decided since I'm more of a traditional girl than a modern one, that he would give me a gift that went along with the traditional wedding gifts (10th year being the tin/aluminum year): a 12 pack of Diet Coke (sadly the 10th year on the modern list is diamonds).

We managed to convince someone to stay with the kids starting around noon on Saturday. Her husband was on-call that day and night and said that we were more than welcome to stay out as late as we wanted. And so begins our Super Date (oh, what is a Super Date? It is a term borrowed from Nate's sister who planned many of these kinds of excursions for groups of her friends in high school, basically it is a date that goes on and on and on...)

We began at one of our favorite places to have lunch (which happens to be no where near our house and not the best place for kids (not a bad place for kids, just not the best for them) in a town called Creve Coeur): Pastries of Denmark. Mmmmm. So good and quiet. No one tried to interrupt our conversation to tell us things about Big Trucks, princesses, soccer balls or to ask us about video games. It was fabulous (and the food wasn't bad either!).

We then took the scenic route back towards the city and drove through swanky towns like Ladue. We found ourselves at the Art Museum. There were so many cool things to see and some great people watching too. The museum is located in Forest Park which was beautiful and green; however, it was about 96 degrees that afternoon with matching humidity and there was no way Nate could convince me we should hang out there and try and fly a kite. But we did find a nice spot in the shade to hang out in for a bit. After a lovely tour of the park (inside the cool a/c air of the car), we drove through an area of STL newly renamed The Grove towards some funky shops.

After that we headed north to the CWE. The streets were shaded so walking a bit through there wasn't too bad and we found a place to grab a bite to eat. Our waitress was extremely concerned for our comfort that she would come and check on us about every 4 minutes (really not exaggerating that one). Our seat by the window proved well for more people watching.

With our hunger satisfied we went to the "New" Cathedral and walked around. The grounds were pretty and by this time a nice breeze was blowing so we didn't notice the awful thick humidity as much as we did earlier.

From there we headed east towards the riverfront to the Arch. Sadly we weren't able to go up to the top (for just a moment I was a disappointed, but then realized I didn't have to ride in one of those teensy-weensy cars to the top). The Arch grounds were pretty as well.

Then it was back West to The Loop. If you are looking for a young and hip crowd (which we weren't sure our old hips were looking for) then The Loop is the place to be after dark. The tattoo parlor was in full swing and so were the vintage stores, bars, and record stores. We each got a tattoo on our cheeks (rear cheeks that is): Ten Years of Bliss. Ha haa, did I fool you? You'll never know.

We found dessert at the Melting Pot. Very tasty way to end our Super Date. Now you know how we spent our Saturday. And for the record, when we were first married we had great plans to celebrate our 10th anniversary in Hawaii or some place lovely like that - never in a million years did we think we'd celebrate an occasion such as this in STL. So the new plan is to celebrate our 13th in a very big and tropical way. Wonder what kind of tattoos we'll get then...