St. Louis Weekend

Curt has only had about one Saturday off of work a month for the past while. So we took advantage of his having some time off and headed to St. Louis for the weekend. We stayed with my brother and his adorable family. They are excellent hosts and my brother is an outstanding Chef (though not by profession). We had a great time.

We played and had a picnic in the park.

There was also a "Splash Pad" with shooting fountains, but Dax is still too little to appreciate cold or spraying water. He would cry in protest when I would even take him near the spraying water, so he spent most of his time there looking like this...

For the first time Dax tried out an Umbrella Stroller and a Pack'NPlay this weekend, he found napping in both to be enjoyable.

Dax got babysat Saturday night while Curt and I went on a hot date to the musical Wicked.

It was at the "Fabulous Fox" theater in St. Louis which is less than 10 minutes down the road from my Brother's. It was "Fabulous" and we will be back!

I had seen Wicked before, but it was Curtis' first time. He was excited, but not excited enough to not put up a fight about me taking this picture.

We, as always, had a great time in St. Louis. Wicked was excellent and we really enjoyed our weekend.

However, on our arrival home we came in and smelled something awful. We discovered our Fridge Freezer had popped open slightly while we were gone and we had a mess on our hands. All of our food in our freezer was thawed and spoiled, lots of meat, ice cream mess, mushy berries with juice running all over. YUCK. Also, the Fridge relies on the Freezer to keep things cool. So our Fridge was hardly cooler than room temperature. Everything had gone bad. Spoiled milk, eggs, deli meats, moldy fruit, hard stinky cheese and the freezer mess leaked all into our Fridge. It was fantastic.

However, I am lucky to be married to the most Optimistic Man alive. He drove for 4 hour in the dark by himself and after arriving home at 1 O'Clock in the morning was putting a positive spin on our cleaning out of our stinking, awful mess. Some of his optimism is delusional (in my, pessimistic, opinion). Without exaggeration, this is what some of his never-ending good cheer sounded like:

Shayla: "This totally sucks"

Curtis: "I think this is a great bonding experience, it's giving us some more time to talk about our great weekend."

Shayla: "This is going to absolutely KILL our budge this month, the electricity running the freezer all weekend and all the groceries we are having to replace"

Curtis: "Actually, I was thinking, in the long run it might help our budget because we now know everything that is in the fridge and can do better about using everything we have".

Curtis: "We really did need to clean out the fridge, anyways. And when was the last time we checked the expiration labels on the things like Pickles in the back of the fridge? This is at least giving us a chance to do that".

Curtis: "Aren't you so grateful that trash day is tomorrow and we don't have to smell the garbage for a week?"

Curtis: "We are so lucky to have another fr

eezer so this didn't spoil all my deer meat!"

After over an hour scrubbing and gagging, Curtis had me laughing it off. Of course, I didn't take a before picture. But doesn't this after picture look beautiful? My Fridge is so shiney!

My thought when we put our few survivors back into our fridge was on how EMPTY and sad it looked. But once again,

Curtis: "Wow, we look like healthy eaters! And we've been wanting to better about that!".

(I guess healthy people drink Water and have little else!)

Curtis was thirsty after the long night and was so excited that our Freezer-Pop popsicles were all melted and I couldn't get mad at him for sucking the juice out of them. He drank some melted popsicles and went to bed happy.

I have a Grocery List where I just tick-off the things that I am "All Out Of" and my shopping list is done whenever I make it to the store. I saw that Curtis just wrote "EVERYTHING" over the heading, he makes me smile.

Sometimes Curtis can seem a little too peppy and over-enthusiastic for some people. I feel like he needs to come with the disclaimer:

"I am not trying to be obnoxious, I am ALWAYS this happy".

I love that optimistic guy.