Ben's birthday weekend!

I made a cake! It's the white chocolate layer cake from my Southern Cakes cookbook. It looked pretty and tasted nice, but I personally found the white chocolate flavor to be a little lacking. Luckily, plain white cake with white icing is Ben's favorite anyway, so it worked out! And thank goodness his parents were here to help us eat it! :-)We all went to the arch on Friday morning. We had gorgeous weather on Friday and Saturday. We looked at the building where Ben used to work (the red one!).
And we oohed and aahed over the arch, of course!
Then we all rode to the top! I did get in, after I took this picture. :-)
We looked at the stadium (where we would be later that evening) from above
Then we went to Laclede's Landing and walked around. And gambled in the Lumiere Casino (for all of about 5 minutes, which is how long it took us to lose $10). Ben's mom won $1, though! :-) We also went to lunch afterwards. My picture-taking was a little spotty!

Cause later that evening, we went to the baseball game! Army people parachuted in--so awesome.
The Cardinals won in the last inning--also awesome! Unless you're a Cubs fan like Benjamin. Poor Benjamin.
On Saturday, among other things, we walked around Ben's campus. Very pretty.
We did lots of other fun things during the weekend too--like go the Busch family home, eat lots of yummy food, get stuck in traffic near the balloon race, etc. :-) Maybe I'll get some more pictures to share later, but it was a wonderful weekend. We so enjoyed having guests!

Ben is 25!

In honor of his 25 years, here are 25 things I love about him!

1. His sense of humor
2. How he makes me laugh, even when I'm mad
3. His strong convictions
4. His eyes
5. How he can remember the tiniest details about random things
6. His compassion
7. His kindness
8. His intelligence
9. How he always greets me the minute he walks in the door
10. How he manages to surprise me, even when I think I've got things all figured out
11. How secure he makes me feel about his love for me
12. His crazy dance moves
13. His unwavering support of me and the things I do
14. His thirst for knowledge (even if it does mean he has to look things up on his Blackberry all the time!)
15. How important his family is to him
16. His optimism
17. His enthusiasm
18. His determination
19. His ability to know when I really need a piece of cheesecake
20. His willingness to endure shopping trips with me
21. How he always thinks I'm beautiful, even when I'm not
22. How he drops what he's doing to help me when I need it
23. How bad he is at lying :-)
24. How particular he is about his laundry
25. How he still gets a kick out of calling me his wife

Happy Birthday, sweetheart!!

Birthdays and visits!

Ben's 25th birthday is two days away, and his parents are flying up that very evening for a weekend-long visit. We're so excited to see them and have our very first visitors up here! I've been busy the past couple of days trying to get things ready for both events.

Yesterday I went to Target to get a few groceries and pick out Ben's gift. I had some things in mind, but completely changed my mind when I saw a particular item(s) on sale. I'm very excited to give him this gift because I think he'll really like it.

Ben's gift, woohoo!

Of course my visit to Target had some mishaps along the way. I got a handheld basket instead of a cart (ALWAYS a mistake, but I never learn!). Every single time I go, I really do sincerely think that I will leave Target with a few small items. So there I was, lugging around the larger than I anticipated gift, a nice basket that for our bathroom (I have been looking at baskets, measuring baskets, thinking about baskets forEVER. And this one is the perfect fit and was also on sale! Now I want a couple more of them.), a flattened mailing box, plus a heavy basket full of stuff. Fun times, but I made it to the check out line in one piece and set most of my stuff down in the floor. Then I waited and waited and eventually got to lug my stuff over to another line. And then found out that my bag of chocolate chips had split open in the bottom of my basket! Luckily, I was able to grab another bag pretty quickly! It was just one of those visits. :-)

Happily, though, I got everything I needed for the gift, for our apartment, and for the CAKE I'm going to make. It's another lovely one from my "Southern Cakes" cookbook. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Today it's a little cloudy and gloomy, and I am working on getting small things in our apartment finished for our visitors. Things like making sure all the rooms have a lamp that will turn on when you flip the switch. And washing towels. And finding places for all of our random stuff! :-)

Friday, Friday

We are still hanging in there, much the same as before! Every time I get positive feedback about a job (which is not very often, by the way) I spend an inordinate amount of time waiting to hear more. It's been driving me insane, but I am thankful to have heard back about anything. It's one thing to be wondering about the next step, it's quite another to be wondering if anyone out there is even looking at your resume! Enough about all that, though. It consumes quite a few of my thoughts as it is. :-)

They are working on replacing the windows and siding on our apartment building (woohoo for that! Ours was one of the THREE buildings in the whole complex to have old, crappy windows and siding), so we've been looking for ways to get out of the apartment while they're constructing. Yesterday we tried to go to a supposedly famous custard shop in a not-so-nice part of town. After getting there through all the bad traffic, the place was closed! So we relied on our lovely GPS to take us to Sonic instead. Traffic was so bad on the way back out that we missed happy hour by about 10 minutes! Oh, well.

Where we failed to get custard

Today we hit up the art museum in Forest Park, which was lots of fun. It's free to get in, and it's huge, so we just wandered around for a couple of hours before Ben had class this afternoon. I definitely want to go back sometime. And explore more of the park in general. The contemporary art was my favorite--I love all the bright colors. I also liked the numerous furniture exhibits they had. They had some great woodwork too, and it reminded me of my dad. The one that was my favorite was a big wooden coil that had been made out of ONE 25 foot long piece of wood. It was crazy to think about someone spending that much time bending the wood that way. If I was smart, I would've taken a picture. Or at least noted the artist so that I could look him up. I did neither. Instead, here is a picture of the museum from the internet. Beautiful, huh?

We don't have anything planned for this weekend, so I don't know what exactly we'll be up to!

Happy Birthday

To my wonderful mama!

Wish I could be there to celebrate!!

Things I Want:

• A job (duh)
• Highlights for my hair
• A whole new wardrobe
• A new pair of cute librarian glasses
• Exactly all the right decorations for our apartment in exactly all the right places

Things I am lucky enough to already have:

• A supportive, loving, funny husband
• A supportive, loving, sweet family
• Food to eat, a place to live, clothes to wear
• A phone to talk to friends from home
• Friends from home who call me! :-)
• Phone interviews and in-person interviews for jobs

That's all for now I think. Things are trucking along here basically the same as before. I am keeping my fingers crossed about a couple of job situations and trying not to be impatient because things feel like they're moving so slowly.