MANY highlights from the weekend!

What an amazing weekend! Steven and I went to Kansas City and he hung out with his dad and brother (we hadn’t seen them since 12/24/19!) while I hung out with two of my rock painting friends. We had such a great time. My friends and I already have our next meetup on the calendar!

Thursday 

• Eating at Terror Taco in St Louis. It’s an all vegan Mexican restaurant, and it was so fun to be able to order off the whole menu! We split a quesadilla and a “fright” of tacos, and they were very good.
• Visiting the Gateway Arch. We both hadn’t been since childhood, and it was fun to see as adults. We were going to do a helicopter tour of it but the office was closed, womp womp. It was still great to see though. And geesh, it was hot out! It was in the 50s in Illinois when we started our drive and in the very warm 70s when we got there. Too hot for April.
• Getting the St Louis Starbucks mug.
• Getting to Kansas City and seeing Steven’s dad. (And Steven saw his brother later that night but I was already in bed.)

Friday

• A run before I picked up my friends.
• Meeting my friend Tiff in person for the first time. Tiff is from LA and Val is from Denver, and I met Val when we were there in December. She and I were planning on hosting a big meetup for rock painters and picked Kansas City, and this weekend, but then people were iffy because of the pandemic (understandable) so we made it small – Val, me, and we invited Tiff – we felt like she fit our vibe. And she did! It was a perfect weekend!
• Exploring Kanas City with Tiff & Val. We went to the river market area and union station area. We walked around, hid a few rocks, and ate lunch at Jack Stack (I had an amazing salad). I had been SO looking forward to a weekend with no obligations and this was it! I felt very relaxed.
• Getting to our Airbnb. We booked a really modern looking Airbnb and it was so stylish and comfortable and perfect for the three of us for the weekend.
• Painting! I had brought almost ALL of my painting supplies, and Tiff and Val brought what they could and we got right to it on Friday! It was a blast to sit and paint together.

Saturday

• Walking to Starbucks and Mud Pie (a vegan bakery) to get goodies with Val. We walked a residential route and saw beautiful houses and hid rocks along the way. The vegan bakery was an interesting experience – basically a very long wait and they were understaffed, but everything was great. And we didn’t care it took so long since we were on vacation.
• Showing Tiff & Val how to resin. They were really intimidated like I was but then felt comfortable after I showed them how to do it, yay!
• Doing an Instagram Live and painting together and talking to the viewers.
• Eating a very late lunch/early dinner at Pirate’s Bone Burgers. OMG. This vegan restaurant had the most amazing burger I’ve ever had. It was as breakfast burger with a hashbrown on it. Tiff found the restaurant and I am so glad she did.
• Whisker’s Cat Cafe. When looking at Google Maps I saw we were right by a Cat Cafe! But when I looked Saturday am there were no openings. So we decided to stop there just to hide rocks and surprise surprise, they had openings so we went in! Val and I are big cat lovers so we were over the moon happy!
• Painting and planning our next get together.

Sunday

• Being close enough to our race to be able to walk to the start. We did the 4-mile Trolley Run together. I will do a separate race recap. It was so fun to do a race after having not for two years!
• Visiting the WWI Monument and seeing great views, and hiding rocks. And meeting a fellow rock painter! We were chatting with this woman about an art installation there, and we left a rock by it and she shouted after us that we “left” our rock. We told her we were rock painters and she was like “I am too!” So we chatted a bit and gave her rocks to hide.
• Going to Boulevard Brewing Company and painting while we had some drinks. I had not been to their new beer hall and it’s so nice! I loved how open and light it was. Bingo was going on in the room next door and it was a riot to listen to them.
• Seeing as many hearts from the Parade of Hearts as we could. We had been seeing the decorative hearts all over KC and didn’t look them up until the last day – there are 150 of them!
• Reuniting with Steven. It was so nice to see him after two days a part. I was excited to tell him about my weekend and hear about his. And I got to visit with his dad and bro a bit.
• Eating at Pirate’s Bone Burgers with Steven. I told him how good it was and he wanted to go too!
• Stopping by our friend’s Eric’s parents’ home to surprise them and them being home. We always have a great time with them, and they recently moved to the KC area and we decided to stop by on the fly and loved visiting and seeing their new place.

Monday

• Hanging out with my snister and fam in the morning. We stayed over at her place on the way back from KC to break the trip up. It was really nice to visit and tell them about my trip and get lunch together! And my sister had a bunch of yummy food for breakfast!
• Finally getting home and unpacking and seeing the cats. I was so so so tired! Fulfilled, but tired!

Lowlights

• Traffic in St Louis on the way out of town Thursday. Blah.
• Packing the car Friday am and bending my fingernail so far back it came off a bit. OUCH.
• The Kansas City spaghetti highways. The highways around downtown KC are so confusing we call them “spaghetti” – like someone just threw noodles on a plate and that was how the roads were designed. I made many wrong turns, drove in to KS by accident, drove on the wrong side of the road, etc. Ha.
• Lulu’s putting egg in the dishes. I was so excited to get Lulu’s (a Thai place) on Friday night but they put egg in the dishes and I don’t eat egg. Oops.
• Having a really bad headache Friday night and still having it when I woke up Saturday am. A chai helped! I slept so poorly Wed-Fri night and did not get enough sleep! It will take me a bit to recover from this trip.
• Dropping Tiff & Val off to head back. Sadness!
• Getting in SO late on Sunday night. Oops! Because of the extra unplanned stops, we didn’t get to my snister’s until 11:40 pm!