Visits and outings

It's so funny how you move to a new city and you have every intention of visiting every single landmark and good restaurant, etc, but 1 month in and you're so burned out about seeing everything that you just spend all of your weekends at home not doing any sight-seeing and watching reruns of weeds.  So, it's so nice when you have friends to come visit you: you get to show them all of the places that you have been wanting to go and do all the things you've been wanting to do.  It gets you off your ass and it gets your house really clean in preparation for their visit (because who wants to have visitors go back home and say, God, their kitchen was a mess...dog hair everywhere!)   

Our friends Jordan and Rachele came to St. Louis and stayed with us while Jordan interviewed for Pediatrics residency out here.  They brought their two sons, Beckham, who's almost 3, and baby Gavin, who was almost 6 months old.  It was nice to have kids around the house...Desmond really enjoyed watching Beckham play and he loved going up to Gavin and lightly touching him and trying to give him a hug and besito (kiss in Spanish, which, incidentally, he does open-mouthed.  Don't go thinking that we kiss Desmond all open-mouth or anything...he's done that ever since he started kissing people.) 

At City Museum...Billy did all of the activities with Desmond because I was too chicken to do them.  I can't even go down the playground slide without almost passing out from a mixture of fear and anxiety.

Action shot.

Billy says that this picture perfectly describes my and Desmond's relationship.  Take that however you want to take it.

A slightly friendlier picture of us :)

Look at Desmond's luscious hair.  I'm just now starting to appreciate how wonderful it is.  Truthfully, when it was apparent that Desmond was going to have blond hair, I was kind of sad about it...I had grown up visualizing my future kid as having dark hair, so when his hair started sprouting blond, I was borderline disappointed. 

Having the time of his life...

On top of the scariest slide ever.

We do love visiting the St. Louis Arch.  Underneath it is a huge expanse of grassy field where Desmond could just run his happy little butt off.

This kid STILL only has 6 teeth.  He just barely started sprouting a 7th tooth, but I feel like this is taking way too long.  The kid is a champion at masticating food with his rubbery gums. 

Rachele and I underneath the Arch.  Behind us is crappy East St. Louis (East of the Mississippi River; St. Louis proper is west of the Mississippi).  In front of us is a much more picturesque view of downtown St. Louis.

We should be in an ad for a parenting website or something.

It was so nice to have some friends visit us and it was so nice showing them around our city.  Here's to hoping that Jordan gets and accepts a residency out here!