S.L.A.B 1, Part 1

I've been a little absent from the blog this month....I've been busy vacationing :) We started out the month with our week long beach trip and then I left the following Thursday for SLAB 1!  SLAB stands for Shannon, Laurie, Alison, Blue. We decided to have an annual SLAB reunion, starting this year. Shannon moved to St. Louis, MO last November so that was where we decided on for our destination.  It was so great to be with these three again. I hadn't seen Blue since the wedding and Shannon since before she moved. We were there for three days so I'm going to break this up into three posts...I have lots of pictures to share.

Alison and I arrived in St. Louis around 1:30 on Friday and took a cab into the city to Shannon's work. Shannon had to work until 5:00 so Alison and I got lunch and mani/pedis to kill the time.  We picked Blue up from the airport around 5:30 and headed to Shannon's grandparents house. Shannon has a lot of family in St. Louis and they treated us just like family! Her grandma made us a feast of fried chicken, green bean casserole, and mashed potatoes. It was sooo delicious.  Here's there house...isn't it adorable?

Shannon and her grandparents...she's the tall one for this side of the family :)

After dinner we headed to Shannon's flat. She has this amazing apartment! It's an apartment exclusively for artists. Shannon is a graphic designer so she fits right in. Her loft is amazing....exposed brick, cement floors, exposed pipes, updated fixtures. Alison, Blue, and I were all in love with it! 

We were pretty tired after our travel day so we figured out sleeping arrangements and hit the sack. I somehow managed to share Shannon's amazingly comfortable bed for the entire weekend. It was awesome. The next day was jam packed with touristy things. 

Shannon took us to this amazing breakfast place called Rooster. We all had delicious crepes and the wait wasn't long even though it was packed! 

A round of mimosas before starting the day.

The great thing was that everything we went to on Saturday was within walking distance of Shannon's apartment. She really hit the jackpot with that place.  Next stop was the famous Arch! The Gateway to the Midwest!

Shannon: tourguide

It was here that I took my most famous picture of the weekend:

I got made fun of the entire weekend for that instagram...I'll admit, the ones they took had a bit more face and a bit more light but come on....this is art!

Shannon and I in our frisbee numbered baseball seats we found on the sidewalk.

This is where Shannon got the title for her car...

We also stopped by the library on our way home. I wish I had a picture of this place. It is truly incredible! They have completely renovated it and it's gorgeous and modern on the inside, and old/elegant on the outside. There were conference rooms for book clubs, an amazing kids room where Shannon whooped me at Checkers. The design of the place was just incredible! I think I would go there just to hang out if I lived in St. Louis.

After cooling down back at Shannon's place we walked down to Schlafly's tap room. Schlafly's is a famous brewery in St. Louis so we had to check it out. The best part was that our first round came in glasses that mirrored our height in relation to one another.

Shannon, Laurie/Blue, Alison

Afterwards we headed to a MAD house! Seriously...this place was crazy! It's called the City Museum and this guy just built this absolutely crazy jungle gym out of everything imaginable. We spent an hour here and then booked it home. It was exhausting and just plain crazy!! Plus we didn't really fit in a lot of it...it was extremely claustrophobic and there were kids popping out of tunnels and holes everywhere!

Here's the museum. Yes...that's a school bus hanging off the roof.

No words

This was a hole in the ground that you had to fall through. It ended in a slide and you found yourself trapped under ground and the only way out was a tiny crack in the wall that none of us could fit through or a tunnel we had to squeeze through on our hands and knees.

Shannon working on her physique.

 What is that?? You could climb on everything you see in this picture. Everything you see is part of the jungle gym.

Same here.

Here's Shannon driving the bus off the roof of the building.

Alison getting coached across the stepping stones.

Alison and I rode the Ferris Wheel. It was on top of the roof and you could see the whole city! It was fun but we asked the operator to let us off first and he did. It was rickety and high and there was a storm coming in....we did not want to be stuck at the top of a metal Ferris Wheel in a lightning storm!

And this is how you got down from the Ferris Wheel level.

That night a huge storm came in so we skipped the piano bar and stayed in instead. After the long day we had, it was much needed!

More to come on Day 2 of Slab Reunion: St Louis!