The fall is finally here, and I am thankful for many reasons. This summer has been pretty busy, between weddings, weekend out-of-town trips, Cardinals games, Relay For Life, and playing softball and soccer. So I'm pretty glad my social calendar is starting to wind down a bit. I certainly could use a break, and my past few weekend nights of staying in or going to bed before midnight have been proof of that.
I've been so busy, that I have completely neglected my blog this summer, so I'd like to do a little summer recap (mostly so I can explain why I haven't been blogging as much as I should):
10. Getting hardwood floors.
OK I know this one doesn't sound exciting, but when you get older, this is the kind of stuff you get excited about! Something to look forward to, ain't it? :)
SMCSTC stands for Social Media Club of St. Charles, similar to SMCSTL, which I've talked about quite a bit before, but it's just for us St. Charles folk! I'm on the board, and I am in charge of the SMCSTC blog. (Yes I am now am the writer of three different blogs!)
We had our first event back in August, which was just a networking happy hour at Quintessential on Main Street in St. Charles, and we had a pretty good turnout.
My friend Dave and I at the first SMCSTC event on Aug. 2 at Quintessential.
Our next event is scheduled for Sept. 27 at the Cottleville Wine Seller, featuring guest speaker Robyn Wright, a professional blogger in the St. Louis area. If you're interested in attending you can register here.
8. Ingrid Michaelson Concert.
Ingrid has gotten me through a lot of rough days, and I know most of her songs by heart, so it was pretty amazing to see her live, and, of all places, at The Pageant, one of my favorite and most intimate concert venues. Plus getting to see her with a fellow Ingrid-lover, my good friend Carrie, and seeing two of my other college friends, was pretty great, too!
My dad was a huge bike rider. Anyone who knew him knew it was one of his passions, and if he could be anywhere, he'd be out riding his bike. He had five bikes when he passed away, and I took two of them.
This was how many miles my dad put on his bike before he passed away. I've since then hit 1,500 miles on it!
Finally, seven months after he passed, my sister, Tyler and I decided to go on our first bike ride of the year. It was totally random, because my sister was actually in town for Relay For Life, which was inadvertently cancelled due to "inclement weather." Don't get me started.
We started at Greens Bottom on the Katy Trail, and rode south 'til we hit the 40 bridge, where we usually stopped for a break and turned around. Once we got there though, we said, "This is it?" Because it was only about a three mile ride! We used to think it was much longer than that when we were kids! So we kept going, and actually found a new side trail that went off the Katy Trail for a bit. It was a great day and it felt so good to get out on the bike.
I've gone bike riding a few more times since then, including a couple weekends ago with my aunt and cousin, who also took my dad's bikes. We rode the Katy Trail, too, but started at the Page Extension bridge and went north to Main Street, had lunch at Big A's, one of my dad's old favorite restaurants, and rode back. The weather was gorgeous!
6. Birthday suprises for the boyfriend.
My boyfriend, Tyler, turned 27 this year, and I decided to give him a few surprises. The first of which was giving him his new Google Nexus 7 tablet a week early! I went in on it with his family and it was everything he had hoped for and more!
Then, on his actual birthday, I surprised him with a new pair of red Chucks, which I told him he should wear for the Cards game I was going to take him to. I kept the location of the seats a secret though, and the fact that we were going to be meeting a few of our friends at the game.
When we got there, he was surprised again to find out we had all-inclusive seats in the Coca-Cola Scoreboard Patio!
We ended up losing that game horribly, something like 15-0, but we tried not to pay attention to that. And the last surprise of the night was when we saw his name appear on one of the scrolling digital scoreboards at Busch! It said "Happy Birthday T. Rook!" It's free as long as you submit it online 48 hours before the game you're going to. Pretty cool!
5. Herman Wineries Trip.This is the fifth year in a row I have done this trip to the Herman wineries with my college friends, and it has always been one of my favorite weekends of the summer... Next to the KC road trip we take every year to see the Cards take on the Royals, even though I've had to miss it the past two years.. and they won't even have a weekend series in KC next year!
Anyway, this year was no different. A little warmer than usual, but still an overall successful trip!
4. Chicago Trip.
This was the first time we decided to see a Cards/Cubs game in Chicago as a group... and while it was a little chaotic at times, being in a big city and all, it was a pretty good trip overall. The Cards lost, which wasn't cool, but hanging out in Wrigleyville before and after the game was fun. And of course we got some deep dish pizza!
My Cubs friend Mattie, who planned the whole trip for us. Despite the fact that she's a Cubs fan, she's pretty awesome!
This would take too long to talk about here. So I'll let you read the rest over on my other blog for St. Charles Patch. But, to sum it up, the first event was cancelled, which was a huge bummer, but our rescheduled and much smaller scale event went pretty well, and I shared my caregiver's story with 200+ people. I was the top overall individual fundraiser with $1,800, and my team, Bobby's Big Shots, was the top fundraising team with $6,572 raised. Pretty amazing.
I think she is going to feel pretty excited about being the #2 highlight of my summer, but it's true! I helped her out a lot with her wedding and while it was stressful sometimes, it was a lot of fun! Plus it was cool that my boyfriend was in the wedding party too, since he is best friends with the groom (they were the ones who set us up!) We had so much fun doing everything before the wedding (bachelorette party, bridal showers, dress fittings, shopping, getting mani/pedis) and the day of the wedding couldn't have been more beautiful.
And the #1 highlight of my summer was...
1. Cardinals games.
To most of you this probably isn't a shocker, since going to Cards games is what I DO in the summer... but I surprised myself a little with this being my #1 highlight of the summer. (I also realize I'm kind of cheating since this actually counts as 12 separate events.)
See, the thing is, out of the 12 games I've been to this season, the Cards have lost nine of them. NINE LOSSES. That's no bueno.
But still, despite the losses, we went to some good games, and what's more important to me, is the memories I'll have of those games.
A few of those highlights include:
The home opener against the Cubs.
The night they honored Tony LaRussa (and yes we got TLR bobbleheads!) and the last game we will probably see Chipper Jones play in.
Sitting in the lower seats once because we paid for it, but two more times because we got lucky.
The American Cancer Society game where we got to walk on the field. (And yes this was the game that went 19 innings and we eventually lost.)
Eating a two-feet long hot dog, AKA the "Giant Slugger," with the tag line of "Go Big or Go Home." We went big and finished the whole thing in about 15 minutes.
Taking off work for a day game and seeing pitching prospect Shelby Miller's debut on Sept. 5.
Source: KTGR.com
And all of the great promo nights where we got beer steins and the championship rings!
We have one game left that we are "scheduled" for tomorrow, so hopefully the Cards can pull out a win for our last game of the season and end our summer on a high note!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment