Day 107

Whew we finally made it home after a super fun weekend in st. louis.  Rick's parents started calling it the trilogy because it was literally a jam-packed weekend.
So, here are the highlights:

Wednesday
When we got into town, Wednesday evening, we met Rick's parents at the Stagger Inn (the local watering hole) for a few beers and some shuffleboard while we were waiting for Carly and Chris to arrive.  As the night progressed we somehow befriended a man named B.J.  Big Rick speculated with me on what B.J. stood for... his guess: Big Jerk... I didn't have the heart to tell him what most people would think it stood for.  B.J. proceeded to whip us all with his awesome shuffleboard skills.  It was only after he'd beaten all of us that he pointed out his name on the Shuffleboard Tournament Champions plaque hanging prominently above the table.  I think we got hustled.  Then B.J. got kind of creepy.  When he went outside for smoke breaks he pounded on the window and gave us a thumbs up whenever someone did something good in the game. He also made some comments about strippers and never being married that led us to believe B.J.'s only social interactions are at the Stagger Inn... every... night.  We finally bailed to get dinner, but it took some serious convincing to get Big Rick to leave.  He was ready to spend the rest of the weekend playing shuffleboard with B.J.

Thursday
Well, I already shared the highlights of our 4 mile run and our dinner conversation, so I'm just going to move on.

Friday
We started out the morning by making a whole bunch of bowling pin and bowling ball cookies.  There was some confusion about butter measurements and doubling the recipe, but we got it all straightened out.  This is our third 'fancy' cooking making adventure.  Last year we made Turkeys and Snowflakes which ended up being a lot more difficult and time consuming than planned.  We were on a tight schedule this year with Big Rick giving us the countdown until leaving time starting at 6 hours out, so it's a good thing these were easy.
After we finished the cookies we headed down to the bowling alley for the big show-down.  My team... team Bowlshit... won our first 2 games, but lost the third.  We beat Rick's team once, but then lost in the re-match two games later.  Big Rick, Meg, Meghan and Erin took the trophy beating out all of last years champions.  We finished out the night with (more) pizza and beer.

Saturday
We started out the morning looking at all of Pat and Rick's wedding pictures.  It was really fun to see those, for obvious reasons, that's not something we do in my family.  I also got to see some really cute pictures of Rick when he was little.  He was seriously the cutest kid ever... I'm not biased at all.
Then we ventured down to the Arch, but decided it was too crowded to try and go up.... maybe next time.  After that we hit up the Rock-n-Roll Craftshow.  Rick and I did one lap around the vendors and then sat down to watch the glassblowers work their magic.  There were not nearly enough safety precautions in place there.  I think someone almost got burned at least 3 times, and one guy was definitely stoned.  We did some people watching and realized that we were not nearly cool/hip/funky enough to be hanging out at this place.  Funny side note: they were giving away free monster energy drinks, which Big Rick thought you had to shake and mix up before drinking.  He proceeded to spray energy drink everywhere.
After the craft show, we got a beer at the loop, ate dinner at the Schlafly's Brewing Company and headed to the hockey game.
On the way home from the game, Rick and Chris somehow convinced everyone we needed to stop at White Castle.  I'm not a huge White Castle fan, but we'd had quite a few $9 beers at the hockey game and was easily convinced.  When we pulled up to the drive-through, Carly shouted, "Order a crave case!" which Big Rick proceeded to do, not knowing that a Crave Case is an entire briefcase filled with 30 little burgers.  Chris had to get his own combo meal and we topped it all off with several orders of onion rings.  While waiting for our order to be ready (strangely they didn't have 30 burgers on hand at midnight) Chris, Rick, Carly and I made up a rap about being in the truck to entertain ourselves.  It went to the tune of I'm on a Boat.  Our order arrived and the smell of onions settled over everything as we all chowed down.  We finished the entire thing, before we got home.  Ridiculous.  Rick somehow managed to eat 10 greasy, soggy, oniony burgers!  I only had three, and I felt terrible later, my stomach hurt so bad I couldn't sleep.  Rick managed to sleep through the night, but felt really bad about eating all those this morning, so we had salad for lunch and dinner.  I figure it all evens out.

Sunday
Rick hustled us out to the car bright and early this morning.  This is becoming a disturbing trend for him.  Today we ate a lot of salad, watched Harry Potter and tried to recover from our trilogy of a weekend.