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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