7 QT 30: Saint Louis, sloths, and high heights
It's Friday! That means we're one day closer to the weekend. We're looking forward to having a friend come in from out of town this weekend! But before we head off to the airport to pick him up, here's a quick look at what happened last week with the Langrs:
1. Our IKEA airbnb
We celebrated our first wedding anniversary last Sunday. We decided to take a long weekend trip to Saint Louis to celebrate together. We planned out our weekend and booked our airbnb. Friends, if you've ever wondered what it would be like to live in one of those display houses they set up at IKEA, just stay in this airbnb. It was beautiful. Without exaggerating, I wandered around pointing out things to Joseph and saying "this is so cute!" for the first ten minutes after we checked in. Don't believe me? Check it out:
2. It turns out I'm kind of afraid of high heights
We spent most of our first day in Saint Louis at City Museum. 'Museum' is kind of a misnomer, it's more of a giant playground. Which was totally fine with us! I was totally fine with exploring the inside of the museum, then we decided to go outside. Look at this place! Although it's really neat (and there are tons of slides!), it is also really really high up. There may have been quite a few times where I told Joseph "Nope! Not going up there!" So despite my love of mountains, my heart still beats pretty fast when I'm suspended in the air on a wire playground. Who knew?
Also, I woke up the next morning looking like I'd been in a street fight. It turns out I bruise easily and my knees had not liked the adventure at City Museum.
3. Lazy sloths, oh, how you frustrate me
We wandered all over the Saint Louis zoo on our second day of our miniature vacation. I was keeping my fingers crossed that they would have a sloth (easily my favorite animal). Good news - they did! Bad news - it was being its typical sloth self and was hiding in its hanging bucket. So I got to see it's little hand peaking out of a hole. I guess I could have waited around all day to see if it would climb out, but I think it would take a good couple of days for it to move to somplace more visible. I'll be back, sloth!
See its two little claws? Sigh. One day I'll see one of these animals in person. One day. Until then, Youtube videos will have to suffice.
4. At least the penguins were out and about . . .
If you love penguins as much as I love sloths, you need to go to the St. Louis zoo. They easily have one of the best penguin exhibits I've ever seen (out of the two I've seen. But still).
5. It's not everyday you get kicked out of a cathedral
We were able to attend Saturday night vigil Mass at the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis. Holy smokes, how beautiful is this place? Over 83,000 square feet of mosaic artwork. So many beautiful scenes and some of my favorite saints were on the ceiling. Their Mass program invited us to "stay after Mass and explore our mosaics and art", so we did. After Mass we went to explore and found their side chapel. We knelt down to pray and were just getting ready to check out the next hall when the security guard looked into the chapel. "Are you ready to leave yet?" he asked. It turns out that they close up shop after the vigil Mass. So, of course, we had to come back Monday and check out the rest of the church (and their museum downstairs!). But now we can add that we've been kicked out of a cathedral to our list of fun facts about us.
6. Julia Child would be so proud of us
We decided to go to a French restaurant for our fancy anniversary dinner. If you're in the area of St. Louis, I'd highly recommend Vin de Set. We got to the restaurant, sat down and got to know our waiter a little. He brought us out a glass of champagne when he found out we were celebrating. I had the duck confit - oh my stars. I have to learn to cook French food. Joseph ate gold tile fish. Then we split an amazing crust-less cheesecake slathered in caramel and apples.
After we finished our meal, our waiter brought us out a little note card in an envelope. We opened it in the elevator and found an anniversary card signed by their entire staff! How cute are they?
7. Wilson meets a new friend
When we were getting things ready to go for our weekend trip, we realized we had completely forgotten about having someone stop by and check on Wilson. We're such bad rabbit parents, sometimes. Thankfully a friend that I met at Bible study was available to swing by the house and feed Wilson during the weekend. She even sent us a picture of him to let us know he was doing just fine. A huge shout out to Sally for bunny-sitting this weekend!
In other Wilson news, I've finally watched Castaway (for the first time!) and fully understand Wilson's namesake.