Hello Spring!

Hello,
Haven't made any entry since last fall.

Flowering Autumn Tree?

Flowers on a tree in autumn

Autumn Leaves

Fall leaves are slowly showing up this year.

Oktoberfest Sky

Sacred Heart church Florissant mass on the grass on a beautiful Sunday. It was their Oktoberfest.

Historic Route 66 Festival at the Old Chain Rocks Bridge

This morning, my husband and I went to the first annual St Louis Route 66 Festival on the Old Chain of Rocks bridge - the Mother Road's crossing over the Mississippi River. *Owned by the City of Madison, Illinois and managed by Trailnet, the Bridge is the centerpiece of one of the most well-traveled sections of the great American Highway. The Bridge opened in 1929, became part of Route 66 in 1936 and closed to vehicular traffic in 1968. Saved from demolition, the Bridge is now managed by Trailnet as one of the world's longest bicycle and pedestrian spans. (* excerpt taken from the festival brochure) The St Louis Route 66 Festival displayed classic cars stretching across the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge from 11am - 4p.m. We went there primarily to see this display. I am not into cars but it was still interesting to see them - long-lasting classic cars.... We parked at the free parking lot at Missouri Welcome Center at Riverview Blvd and I-270 and took the free shuttle to the event. We got to the welcome center around 10.50am but waited for almost half and hour for the bus to take us to there. We could not stay long since my husband had set up an appointment for the cable guy to the apartment to check our tv signal at 1p.m so we left the festival after 12.30p.m. Of course the cable guy didn't show up at 1p, he showed up 1.5 hours later. Fashionably late...

Busy Weekend

This weekend was a busy one. We decided to go to my in-laws house on Saturday and start cleaning out my husband's former room. He stores a lot of stuff in there still. We started by shredding banking statements from years and years ago. As we were hauling three trash bags out of the room we looked around the room, and it still looks the same as before:(( It was warm up there and we couldn't stand it anymore, and we were getting really hungry. So we decided to come back when it's cold outside that we will be more comfortable in there. I decided to go to Subway for our late lunch and we shared a foot long Philly Cheesesteak sub. After lunch, we were going to go to a Skecher's store in Creve Couer to buy new shoes but we discovered that the store has been closed for a while! It's now a Mattress Firm Outlet:( (We can't get shoes from a mattress store!) Then, I had a 'personal emergency' and since we were about 2 miles away from my workplace, I had my husband drive to my office building so I can use the bathroom.

We just went home after that and I went to do my grocery shopping. I had my aunt-in-law asking me to bring egg/spring rolls to her deck party Sunday. So, I went looking for egg roll wrappers. I was a bit annoyed when the grocery store I regularly go to didn't carry them. I had to drive to a different store to get it. I cooked a quick dinner since I was getting pretty lazy: sweet-and-sour chicken, steamed brocolli and rice. I prepared the egg rolls after dinner while my husband waited because we were going to watch a movie he had recorded on our Media Center. We watched "Cheaper by the Dozen" , it's a fun family movie.

So today (Sunday), we went our personal parish, Sts Peter and Paul Church for mass. It was the parish festival today. I bought a working clock (with a train picture in the background) for $3 and a huge cookie tin for $.50 at the garage sales, put a bid at a silent auction (I am sure I didn't win the bid since I was only the second person to put down the bid) and had brunch afterwards. I was disappointed with the brunch since it wasn't cooked by Chef Doug(one of our parishioners) instead it was catered by Kenrick's, but still we were donating to the parish fundraising. We left at noon to go home and change our clothes. I warmed up my egg rolls in the oven and went to Michael's aunt's deck party. It was a party for the people who helped rebuilding their deck. We didn't help with the deck, we had only complimented it (*LOL*) but we still got invited. Everybody liked my spring rolls and I let his aunt have the leftover and she gave me some of her leftover barbequed meat which was superb! Nice trade, huh?

So, that was the boring detail of my weekend. We left the party at 3.30p.m. and I did my laundry. Now I am just relaxing and getting ready for the week ahead.

Annual Great St Louis Balloon Race

I thought I had made an entry on the balloon race from last Saturday but I guess I was just dreaming of doing so. We spent a good half of the day last Saturday at the Great St Louis Balloon Race event. It was a very nice family event. We saw families with their kids and dogs. We came just about the same time the vendors are starting to open their booths and the inflatables being inflated. Walgreens were giving free health screening so I decided I might as well get one. I was pronounced healthy (Thank God!) except for my bone density - I'm osteopenia - that means I have a risk of getting osteoperosis if I don't take enough calcium and drink enough milk. Afterwards, we ate overpriced gyros and drink overpriced lemonades. There's something about the fair food - you don't mind eating them even if they were overpriced.

We saw the flying dogs show and the Purina Incredible Dog team shows. It was fun watching the dogs performed.I took some pictures but they weren's so good. You can visit the Purina's website to see some pictures of the incredible dogs. A dog can fly to get the frisbee discs thrown at itself, stand on the trainers fee, stack 4-5 frisbee discs in its mouth etc. It was amazing...

The balloon race which normally starts around 3.30p was postponed. We kept wondering when it was going to start. The weather forecast showed scattered showers and I am guessing the pilots were worried about atmospheric conditions. They held a meeting at 4p.m. They finally started taking off around 5p.m. However, instead of the Energizer Bunny Balloon, Macy's balloon was the lead balloon instead. I guess the atmospheric pressure wasn't enough to inflate the super huge bunny. We saw that it tried but then the team had to pulled it down.

Just in case if you are wondering about the objective of the balloon race: the other balloons chase the lead balloon and whoever drop the bird seed closest to the lead balloon wins.

We stuck around long enough to see a couple balloons being fired up and taking off. People cheered as soon as they saw a balloon ready to take off. It was really fun.