Visiting St. Louis

On my recent trip to St. Louis to visit my family, I felt like a real tourist as we toured the Fox Theatre and the St. Lous Cathedral. I will add a disclaimer that I only had my camera phone for pictures and the quality is pretty horrible. I hope you will be able to see and experience the beauty of these places (especially if you've never been there ... or even if you have) despite the blurry pictures. :)


On Wednesday night, we went to the Zoo where they were having a wine tasting event with live bands. There were TONS of people there for the "free" wine. I went to hang out with my parents, see the animals, and hear the music. There weren't many animals out, but we did see the bears. The band was only so-so. The highlight was the free ride on the zoo carousel with mom and Paul. They just don't build them like that anymore. It was really fun.



On Thursday, we did some real touristing. We toured the Fox theatre in downtown St. Louis. For those of you who aren't from there, the Fox was built in 1929 as a silent movie theatre, but quickly converted to movies with sound. The Wurlitzer organ in the pictures is original to the theatre and was installed to provide the "soundtrack" to the silent movies. Stan Kann (seen a few times on the Johnny Carson show) is also original to the theatre, kind of. :) He's been playing the organ there since the 1950s. He's quite amazing and very spry for a man in his mid-80s. It was a really neat tour, and one I highly recommend.



After the Fox, we went to the St. Louis Cathedral. PLEASE maximize this slide show and really take it all in. It's so unbelievably beautiful in there. Every picture, every inch of the ceilings are MOSAICS! That's right: little pieces of broken glass, some with gold leaf, all come together to make these beautiful pictures. I only wish more of my pictures would have turned out.

We finished up my trip with some shopping, and just plain ole relaxing vacationing. It was a great trip, and so good to be back home.

Great Life

A couple of weeks ago, I completed Part two of my Great Life training. It was such a great opportunity to reconnect with my true self. Sometimes its hard to look yourself square in the face, so to speak, see all of your flaws and baggage, and then overcome it. The benefits, though, are beyond comparison. This is what I learned about me:

I am a loving, powerful,
courageous woman!

Through my love and courage,
I create fun, joy and peace!!

A funny story: For dinner our last night (and this is us dressed in our magnificence), we went to an outdoor mall called the Gateway and had dinner in the food court. It's amazing how much attention I received all dressed up! :) My favorite was the little girl who was about 4ish, saying to her mom "Look at the little girl. She's dressed like a princess!" My second favorite was the guy at Taco Time shouting across the food court: "Nice dress!!" He wasn't even being sarcastic! Usually, I shy away from such attention, but it was really fun, and I was able to have some really great conversations with perfect strangers. Everyone should try going to the mall in a formal!

ROAD TRIP!

As I alluded in my narrative of our trip to Washington DC, my dear friend Cristy got married! She is now Cristy Moreira. The big day was June 28 in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, and was definitely worth the road trip to be there. Eddie was so kind to join me so I wouldn't have to do all that driving on my own, but since he doesn't like to drive more than 6 hours at a time, we built many stops into our trip. We stayed the night with his Aunt Marilyn in Rigby, ID on the way up. We arrived Saturday with perfect timing and totally enjoyed the reception at a cute little park. Coeur D'Alene is BEAUTIFUL!! Eddie kept insisting that we weren't really in Idaho at all, but in Northern California. Actually, being 30 minutes from Spokane, we were much closer to being in Washington than California, but whatever. ;) There is an amazing lake there, complete with resort and boat rentals. I couldn't get enough of it, and have a new idea for a great family vacation spot.


After spending the night in Missoula, Montana, we were off to Yellowstone -- teachers on summer vacation can turn any road trip into a real vacation! That area of the country is amazingly beautiful!!! Mountain streams, cattle ranches, cool rock formations, etc. Yellowstone is great too. We didn't see the whole park by a long shot, but focused on Old Faithful and the Upper Geyser area. THAT is something everyone has to see once in their life! The Visitor's Center displays what time the geyser will go off and tell you to plan + or - 10 minutes. Old Faithful was just that, faithful, for us, though, bursting 100+ feet into the air right on time! Kind of crazy to think you are standing INSIDE an active volcano, but pretty much the whole park is just that. I also learned that you can fish inside a National Park ... who knew?? A couple of the pictures you'll see are of the sides of the caldera where you can see the remnants of the forest fire that burned much of the park in the 1980's. A ranger said that it sometimes takes 20+ years for the burned trees to fall over, and 80 or more years for them to decay. It was weird to see what looked like a bunch of match sticks laying all over the mountainside.



Another night at Marilyn's and then it was back to work. I've been working to get all of the library books at our school cataloged into the computer before we move everything to our new building ... which is next week.