Number 57 update...

It may come as a shock to most of you, but Erin and I did not hit it big... maybe next time!

Number 57

On their way home to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving, Erin's cousin Katie and her boyfriend Mike stopped and spent the night in St. Louis. It was so much fun to get to spend a night with them at our apartment, and what made it even better is that Katie came excited to cross something off of the list with us!! Katie told us as soon as she got to our apartment that we would be going to buy lottery tickets later.

We ate an incredible dinner at Zia's on the Hill, and then went over to Schnucks to buy our tickets. Luckily for us, there was a very experienced Lotto player there picking numbers when we walked up to the counter. "Crazy Jane" told us which were the best games to play, and we started filling out our cards.

We decided to play $5.00 each - we each picked two rows of numbers and then let the machine choose the rest of the rows.  Hopefully we picked some winners, because the jackpot is $42 million!!  We'll find out if we won after the drawing on Friday night :)

We also each bought a scratch off ticket while we were there... unfortunately the most that any of us won from the scratch offs was another free ticket...

We'll let everyone know if we win the big jackpot!!

Number 16

It has been a dream of Erin's to go to an orchard and pick apples for years.  The fall has come and gone for the last several years, and by the time we knew it the season for picking apples always ended before we could get to an orchard...

We had already planned to spend the night on Friday out in O'Fallon with Ben's parents, and were excited when Andrew called on Thursday night to say that he'd be coming to spend the weekend too.  Ben planned a surprise trip for Saturday morning to an apple orchard in Augusta, Missouri called Centennial Farms.   The weather on Saturday morning was a little bit cold, and kind of overcast - so it really felt like fall :)  Ben, Erin, Andrew and Ruthie all piled into Andrew's KIA and drove about 30 minutes out to the farm.  At the farm this weekend the apples that were ripe for picking were the Fujis.  We picked about 9 pounds of apples, took a hay ride, and enjoyed some hot cider before we left the farm.  It was such a fun morning, and now we have delicious fuji apples to enjoy at home!!

Number 6

The last thing that we did before we took Maureen to the airport was stop at Crown Candy Kitchen for milkshakes.  We learned about this little treat from the Travel Channel's "Man v. Food."  The host of the show took Crown Candy's milkshake challenge - consume 5 of their super sized, super thick milkshakes in only 30 minutes.  Adam was not up for this challenge, and neither was the guy who was at the end of his own attempt at beating this challenge when we walked in...

We waited in line for a tiny little table inside the retro ice cream parlor/cafe, and sat down for our shakes.  Maureen and Erin both ordered oreo, and Ben got a chocolate banana malt.  The shakes were DELICIOUS, and well worth the stop.  We'd highly recommend that you make this a stop on your next trip to St. Louis!!

Maureen and Erin in line for a table

Cheers!!

Number 4

We went with Maureen this afternoon to downtown St. Louis to visit the Gateway Arch and Westward Expansion Museum.  Maureen purchased three tickets for us to take the "journey to the top" before we left our apartment, so when we got to the Arch we were able to take our time taking lots of photos and learning about this historical landmark.  We stood in line for quite a while waiting to get to the "car" that would take us to the top of the Arch (some of us waited more patiently than others...).

We finally got to the place where we could load onto the "eggs," and watched a short video about the construction of the Arch.  By this time we were all super excited, and we were hoping that Ben wouldn't make good on a threat of releasing some 'perfume' on the way up. 

This wasn't the actual car that we took up, but it was one that you could take photos in on the ground level :)

We piled into the small car with another couple, and took off.  We were surprised at how quickly the climb to the top of the Arch was.  We zigzagged in our little elevator car for about 3 1/2 minutes and then the doors opened.

Maureen and Ben walking into the observation area

The view of the city from observation windows

We stayed at the top of the Arch for about 10 minutes - taking photos and looking out of the windows.  It was really beautiful to see the whole city from this high up!!

630 Feet from the ground!!

Number 41

We were so excited for Maureen's visit to St. Louis this weekend!! We told her that she could pick anything from our list for us to do together while she was here, and naturally we decided that it was appropriate to tour the brewery of world's largest beer maker - Anheuser-Busch.  We loved learning all about the brewing process, seeing the Budweiser Clydesdales, and of course the free beer samples at the end :)  We had such a great time at the brewery, and an even better day with Maureen here!!

Maureen and Erin waiting for the tour to begin

One of the Budweiser Clydesdales

There are thousands of cases of beer in underground storage under the brewery's buildings - only enough to last for about 18 hours if the brewery's production was stopped...

This was the filling/packaging line that was closed for maintenance on the day we visited :(

Our free beer samples and pretzels :)

Cheers!!

Number 17

Last night we went to the last show of the season at the MUNY!!  The Muny is an amazing 10,000 seat outdoor theater within Forest Park in St. Louis.  Every summer they put together productions of 7 different musicals, each one runs every night for one week.  The cast, crew, and orchestra for all of the productions at the Muny are nothing less than professional quality.  Many of the actor/musicians that we saw this season have extensive experience on Broadway and with nationally touring Broadway shows.  The best part about the Muny (at least for us!!) is that they give away every seat in the last section of the theater on the night of each show!  We were able to see 7 really great musicals for only $18!!

The first show we saw was the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast.  We got to the theater early, took dinner and our friend Emily with us, and waited in line for about 30 minutes to make sure that we'd be able to sit in the free section.  We had a great time seeing the first show, and an even better time singing along to all of the songs!!

The second show of the season was Titanic.  We were both expecting this show to be, well, somewhat of a downer... We really liked it!!  The music/singing was awesome - the leads were so talented.  We weren't surprised that the boat sank at the end, but we were surprised when it started to thunder during the first act and rain at intermission.  We waited out the dark clouds, and enjoyed the second act :)

After Titanic was Damn Yankees.  Our friends Emily and Andy came with us to this one.  We told Andy that he'd like the show because it was about baseball :)  This show, like the others, was great!
 

By the time we went to see Cats, we had developed our new Muny strategy: show up right before the show starts and try for the free seats - if there aren't free seats, then pay for the cheap seats (at $9 a seat it's worth it to skip sitting in the heat for the extra hour).  A couple of minutes before the show started there were TONS of free seats left... We later decided that it was because Cats is, at least in our opinion, a terrible show with not a lot of plot.  The dancing was really impressive, but the storyline left quite a bit to be desired...

We tried our "show up right before the show" strategy again with The Sound of Music... not so much luck.  Everyone loves this show!  We made it to the box office and bought the only 2 seats we paid for of the season.  We enjoyed the show, and continued to sing the songs from the show to each other for days afterward!!

We took Ben's parents, well actually they took us, to Footloose - It was so much fun to see this show with them!!  The dancing was really great and exciting, and the singers were fabulous.  We loved the 80's style band (and costumes!).  Erin, of course, wore boots to this performance :)

The last show of the season was, unfortunately, also the hottest show we went to.  We really felt like we were living in the early 1900's by the Mississippi River with no A/C...  Our new friends Chris and Liz braved the heat and humidity to come to this show with us - welcome to St. Louis!!  The singers in this show were fantastic, and as the Director of the Muny said in his pre-show speech, this show was "the cherry on top of a great season!"

Number 67

Tonight was the perfect night to cross Number 67 off of our list - Have a Picnic in Forest Park.  We didn't know until moving to St. Louis that Forest Park is the largest City Park in the nation - even bigger than Central Park in NYC!!  We have enjoyed spending as much time as possible in the park this summer, and feel that Forest Park is one of St. Louis' greatest assets.

The weather in St. Louis has been, shall we say, uncomfortable for the last couple of weeks.  It has been over 100 degrees many days, with heat indexes of 110 degrees and higher... Tonight felt like we had left our balmy summertime and fast-forwarded to mid-October.  It was absolutely wonderful to sit outside and enjoy a tasty dinner!  We also enjoyed seeing many other people at the park tonight - picnicing, exercising, and just enjoying the evening.  We'll cherish our memories and enjoy the photos we took tonight, because the high temperatures in St. Louis are going to creep back to the high 90's in the next few days...

Pre-Picnic Ben

Pre-Picnic Erin

The view from our picnic spot - The St. Louis Art Museum

We saw many other picnic-ers too!

The fountains in the lake provided a soothing soundtrack for our picnic :)

Number 51

We crossed off another goal after work tonight. We were able to talk for a long time yesterday (during our car ride home from Chicago) about how we were going to go about reaching our weight loss goals. We decided that we wouldn't waste any time, and that we'd go straight from work to Club Fitness to get signed up for memberships.

The location that we visited today is only about 10 minutes away from our apartment, and it just opened up a couple of months ago. The club was much nicer than we expected, and it is very affordable - only $30/month for both of us!! They gave us cards to use for 24 hour access at all of the Club Fitness locations in St. Louis. They said that we'd need the swipe cards to get in the building between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. - they must not realize that Erin is almost always asleep during all of those hours. We stayed after filling out our membership papers to work out on the treadmills for about 30 minutes.

Erin is mostly excited because another Club Fitness location (the closest one to our apartment) offers several Zumba classes per week, and they allow guests to come along!! Ben is looking forward to getting back into the habit of exercising several times per week too. We both have appointments with personal trainers tomorrow to get us started on using the equipment in the club, and to establish a baseline for our progress.

It probably won't be for a while, but look forward to seeing our "after" photos when we both reach our final weight loss goals!

Number 77

This weekend we had a great time visiting our sister-in-law and nephew at their new home in Chicago. We had such a great time with them, and we got to check off #77 from the list. Abby and Sam took us to Lou Malnati's Pizzeria on Saturday. We ordered a large "original" Chicago style pizza. The super deep crust was layered with mozzarella cheese, ground sausage, and chunky marinara sauce. DELICIOUS!! We can't wait to go back to the Windy City to try more deep dish pizza!!

Number 64

On our first day of our 1001 days we hit the ground running by starting our first blog. We are going to blog along the way as we work our way through this list. We hope that we can entertain you along the way!