Weekend Wrap-Up

Well, the birthday weekend went very well. Here is a recap:

Friday night was spent first at the Spaghetti Factory, where I got to eat their awesome cheese garlic bread and my favorite.....spaghetti with mizithra cheese, oh yum! Our friends Dan and Willy joined us for dinner as they too had Cardinal tickets. Thanks for dessert Dan and Willy! Ha ha! We had parked at Lumiere Place (for free) and then rode their shuttle to the ballpark. The Cardinals won the game, Albert Pujols hit a home run, and the new guy Mather, whose first major league game was that night, had 2 awesome catches in right field and got his first major league hit. I was present at Willie McGee's first major league game back in the 80's too. Anyway, it was a great night. The rain held off long enough for us to get back to our car without getting too wet, thanks to the shuttle. For my birthday earlier in the day, I received a cake from Cold Stone Creamery, the first season of "Friday Night Lights", a gift card to Creve Coeur Camera, a gift card to Scrapbook Factory, and a memory card to use in my phone from Hubby, B1, and B2. I also received a home-made card from each of the girls.

On Saturday night, we headed back to the landing with more than food in mind (at least in my mind). We picked up 3 friends first and then headed to St. Louis. We parked in the lot adjacent to the Spaghetti Factory and then went to Hannigan's for dinner. I had never eaten there before Saturday night and we were pleasantly surprised. Three other friends met us there so our party consisted of eight people. We stayed there about two hours total. Then we went to The Big Bang, which has been a blast the two times I have now been there. Those guys are amazingly talented and can play anything you ask for on the piano! They did country, rock, fight songs, everything. It was great. We stayed there for like five hours! We were lucky to get 2 tables right in the center of the crowd and we were entertained the entire evening. The drinks helped too! Ha ha! While we were there, seven of my former students (who are all now of age) showed up. I knew three of them were coming, but the other four were a surprise. It was great! We left the landing about 1:30am and headed back to Illinois. Hubby (who was our DD and had been drinking diet Coke all night) decided that he needed food and the rest of us were in agreement. So we went to Denny's. I love that place late at night! I went to bed at 3:00am.

Today, Sunday, we celebrated with my parents and brother by eating dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. I love that place too! I had the Chinese chicken salad which was great and for dessert this time I tried Oreo Mudslide cheesecake. I try to make myself try a new one each time. I haven't had a bad one yet! We also had Buffalo Blast as an appetizer. If you like buffalo wings, you should try these. It's like they take shredded chicken, mix it with cheese and some hot sauce, bread it somehow, and deep fry it. It sort of looks like pieces of fish when it comes out on the plate. Yummo! My parents gave me a knick-knack to put in our sunroom and money towards my camera purchase.

It was a great weekend. I was lucky that my big day fell on a Friday so that I could make an entire weekend of it!

Now, during June, I plan to post a picture each day. I can't guarantee how successful this will be, but I am definitely going to try. I may have to take some of the pictures with my cell phone camera, so I'm not going to promise anything as far as quality either. We'll see how it goes! Here is the first one, a picture of my cake from Cold Stone. The cake was called "Cookie Dough Delirium."