Our 7th Anniversary

Today is our 7th wedding anniversary, and we celebrated with a mini road trip. We left our house yesterday around 3:30, and we dropped Abby off with Grandma Pat. We drove to St. Charles and checked into a hotel - Town Suites by Marriott, room 101. The studio suite had a full kitchen, a queen size bed, and many other ammenities. Tracy, at the front desk, was wonderful!

We left the hotel and went to dinner at The Millhouse, in the historic district. We had an appetizer of Cajun shrimp. For dinner, Mike had a glazed beef tip meal with mushrooms, potatoes and vegetables. I had a grilled beef tip meal with vegetables - both were delectable!

We went back to our hotel, and planned our route for today. We watched Saturday Night Live and went to bed. This morning, we got up at 7 o'clock to get ready for church. We left St. Charles and drove to Hawk Point, Missouri, just outside of Troy, where the priest that married us 7 years ago is now the pastor.

St. Mary's is a very small parish - less than 200 parishoners, I would guess. The church was very cute and very old. We chatted breifly with Father Frank, and then went on our way. We stopped in Troy for breakfast at Denny's, and then we were back on the road for Augusta - the Busch Wildlife Reserve.

We drove around the Wildlife Reserve for two hours - taking pictures of the little remnants of fall color that I could find. We didn't see much wildlife, or fall color - so we left there and decided that a midday coffee would re-fuel us both.

We drove down to South County and stopped at Starbucks on Tesson Ferry. We had a quick bite to eat, and then headed over to downtown Belleville, thinking we might find some other picture opportunities there. Belleville was a bust, though, so we headed the Creve Coeur Camera in O'Fallon and met up with Allen and Laura.

Allen, Laura, Mike and I all went to Chevy's for dinner, and had a great time. We ate and laughed. I could've stayed out for another hour, but the girl was waiting on us to come home.

We are now home and Abby is in bed - both of us are exhausted! I can only imagine that we drove more than 200 miles today - but we had a lot of fun. Abby had fun, too - because she got to see all of her Grandmas this weekend - I am sure she was spoiled rotten!