Anniversary Trip Part 2

After our eventful site seeing day on Saturday, we needed to catch up on our rest. We slept in and checked out of our hotel around 11am. We had one more stop in St. Louis we wanted to make before heading back to Tennessee...the Anheuser-Busch Brewery in St. Louis!

The brewery offers free 1.5 hour tours daily, every 15 minutes. We really didn't know what to expect from a free tour, but were really surprised at how nice it was!

This is the starting point on the tour where you can read about the history of the brewery!

Everyone loves the signature animal of Budweiser...the Clydesdale Horses!

The stables for the Clydesdales! I had to get a picture of the chandelier because it came from the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas!!! :)


Here we are on the tour!

This is the aging cellar!

This building was built in 1891 and is still the heart of the brewery's campus!

The Mash Tanks! The inside of this building was beautiful!

Historical Building that houses the mash tanks and also the tasting headquarters.

Rinsing, filling, and bottling area. The filling line can fill 2,000 cans per minute!!!

Outside of the bottling building.

The tour was fantastic and very well done. At the conclusion of the tour everyone can get 2 free beers or soft drinks and pretzels. We really could not get over that the tour price was FREE!!! Barrett and I highly recommend a weekend get-a-way to St. Louis!

Anniversary Trip Part 1

For our second anniversary and Barrett's 25th birthday, we took a quick weekend trip to St. Louis, Missouri. We arrived in St. Louis Friday evening. Our accommodations were at the Hilton Hotel downtown. The hotel was a renovated bank building and was really nice!



After checking into our hotel, we decided on a nice local Italian restaurant for supper. The restaurant had a great menu with wonderful food. After we ate, we headed back to the hotel to rest up and plan our busy Saturday of adventure around St. Louis.

Our first stop on the trip was the famous St. Louis Arch.

Me in front of the Arch!

We were a little nervous about the cart ride to get to the top of the arch!

View from the top!

And another...

We made it back down safely! :)

Our second stop for the day was at the Basilica of Saint Louis. This church was the first church in St. Louis. Unfortunately, we were not able to go inside because they were having a wedding, but I made sure to take pictures of the outside!

Basilica of Saint Louis

Close up

The third stop in St. Louis was to the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis. This cathedral was built well after the first church. This specific cathedral is world renowned for the mosaic work inside.

View walking up to the cathedral

Getting closer...

Absolutely breathtaking...

After leaving the cathedral we headed to the St. Louis zoo. We were both really excited that admission to the zoo was FREE!! I have to say this was by far the best zoo I have been to. They have EVERY animal you can imagine and it is HUGE! Barrett and I had to put our "power walking" shoes on because we only had 2 hours to see all the attractions and animals. These picture are just a few of my favorites...

Hungry Hippo

B getting some love! :)

Zebra

One of my favs

Yay for the elephant! ROLL TIDE!

After all of our site seeing around St. Louis we were pretty tired! We went to Landry's for dinner to celebrate Barrett's birthday!

We highly recommend St. Louis as a fun weekend get-a-way place. There are several things to do around the city and we were surprised by how many things you can do for little or no cost!

I will post "Part 2" of our trip later!

Head & Shoulders, Knees & Toes

I hope this video makes you smile. Please do not mind my singing! :)

I just love my little Aubrey Grace!

Couch to 5K

I have NEVER enjoyed running, but Barrett and I wanted to get back into shape. I started researching on the Internet for programs or exercises that I wanted to do and kept coming back to 5k training. I came across the "Couch to 5k" running program. You can check it out here. We completed the entire program, and it was pretty awesome to see our endurance build up over time.

Since that time I have totally become addicted to running, and I hope to continue to push myself! Who knows, I may even start training for a 10k next!

*Destin*

I LOVE going to the beach.

This year we had a great opportunity to go to Destin with our good friends, Jon and Tiffany. Here are a few pictures from our trip!

Memorial Day with My Family

Wow, I am really behind in blogging. To be perfectly honest, I am trying to anything and everything to delay cleaning our house...so, blogging it is!

Over Memorial Day weekend, my family came to Tennessee for a visit! We had a great time!

Here are a few pictures from their visit:

The family at Amber Falls winery, here in South Central Tennessee!

Dad and Reid on "dog duty" at the coffee shop!

Sunday we headed to the river to jet ski!

I am so thankful my family was able to come for a visit! I am already counting down for their fall visit! :)