Missouri visit April 2011

Have you ever seen the movie Planes Trains and Automobiles???? Ok, if you subtract the Trains portion of that movie, you can pretty much imagine how our vacation to Missouri went....Where do I begin? I guess from the beginning!

I think I should prelude by saying that my little sister Emily called me Monday night telling me that Bowling Green, Mo and the surrounding area (where we were travelling to) had just been hit by a tornado. My 1st thought was.... better now rather then when we came for our visit. I had been anxiously awaiting this trip since I would be there the same weekend as my 2 older brothers. We had a packed schedule and a tornado was NOT one of the scheduled events. As soon as I could view the 10 day forcast on weather.com, all you saw was rain, rain, rain... rain and rain!

Paul and I loaded up our Impala with our travel luggage and all of Harley's sleepover stuff he needed for grandma and grandpa Quillon's (where he would be staying while we were gone). Paul and I were both anxious to hit the road so we drove Harley to the in-laws and then headed to Richmond, Va to the airport. Needless to say, our excitement got us to Richmond several (like 5) hours before our flight left. We went to Target, JC Penny and several other stores to kill time. Finally we arrived at the airport and waited for our plane to leave. Luckily we did not have any troubles getting on our flight. We made it to St. Louis a little after 11 pm and off to my mom's house we went.

Thursday: I had a hair apt scheduled for 10 am with my girl Chelsea. She's amazing at what she does and I think she did a great job on my hair. It was so nice having it done again. It has been 10 months since I had been able to sit down and have it professionally done. Getting hair cut and colored in Charlottesville is way too expensive. I feel like a new woman.

After leaving Bowling Green Paul, Emily and I stopped by my sisters cemetary and put new flowers on her grave. I love spring time there. Everything looks so new and fresh. It was peaceful. We grabbed lunch at Taco Bell and off to Kirksville we went. The time had come when my husband would meet my grandparents. Adam, Kiley and Logan would be meeting us at my grandparents. This would also be the 1st time Paul would be meeting them! I was escited :) That trip went great. My grandpa referred to my husband as the "Law man" and then proceeded to tell him every negative experience he had ever had with police officers. If you knew my grandpa, you would understand why we all thought it was funny. It's just how my grandpa is.

We left Kirksville and headed to Hannibal where we would be meeting my mom's family for dinner at Fiddlesticks. Paul and I ate there the day we got engaged and he's been anxious to go back ever since. It was so nice to see my family that was able to come!

Friday: We had to wait around a while before heading to St. Louis b/c of a storm that came through BG. We got quite the down pour and it brought a little hail with it. Luckily it passed pretty quickly and we were able to get in the cars and head toward STL. Adam has been wanting to buy a shirt from Brassknuckles Motorcycle Shop so we headed in that direction and then would go to STL after that. My mom thought it would be nice to take the scenic rout. She claimed it was no longer of a drive which was aprox 30 mintes. We left her house and a little under 1 hour later, we arrived at the bike shop. When we got to the shop there was a sign that read "open by apt only, so don't even bother knocking on the door". REALLY!!!!! Plan failure #1! After a moment of "holy cow" we got back on the hwy and headed to the St. Louis Arch. We arrived to find out that it was National Park Week so all of the tickets are 1/2 off! Woo Hoo! What a great gift for a group on a budget :) The lines were not that long either so we were able to get in and our without any problems!

I thought it would be nice to take everyone to Ted Drews for ice cream. TD's in STL's famous ice cream. It's not too shabby of a place to go to if you are an out of town'er. So off we went. Adam though he would lead us in the right direction using Emily's gps. I was unaware that the GPS did not work properly. I was in the car behind Adam and when I realized we were going over the Poplar Street Bridge... heading into East STL (NOT... I mean NOT a good neighborhood to be in) I knew something had gone wrong somewhere. We were able to get turned around quickly and headed in the direction the GPS told us to go. We were taking this road and that road.... all of which I did not recognize. We were in the downtown gheto of STL and I could not figure out where he was taking us. We got to a small building and it said "Ted Drews Ice Cream, Closed until May". Failue #2. Adam and Paul both though they witnessed a drug deal going down when we pulled into the parking lot. At once point Kiley asked me "Liz, is it safe to say we are the minority in this area of town". HAHA. All I could do was laugh! We decided at that point to call it a day and head back to moms.

Saturday: BASEBALL DAY! So Saturday we all got up and left the house right at 8 am and headed to St. Louis for the St. Louis Cardinal's vs Cincinatti game at Bush Statium. I swore when I chose that date that the game started at 12:05 pm... which is why I forced my family to get up so early! We had planned to meet John and Megan at the statium around 10:30 so Logan could look around b/f the game started. So off to St. Louis we went. While we were driving, Adam called and told us that the St. Louis Airport had been hit by a tornado and was currently shut down. Paul and I had a moment of freak out (or was that just me? I think it was just me) so we spent most of our drive to STL on the phone with my dad, Delta, Expedia and whoever else we fould think of who would have ANY information about the airport situation. Well... we got to where we needed to be... when we needed to be there... but there was something strange. There was NO traffic going into downtown STL. There were NO cars in the parking garage we went to just a couple blocks away and there were NO people in the team store when we went in to look around at team clothes. After Paul and I wondered around for a while, I picked out a great looking sweat shirt (which I about had to sell my soul in order to afford it) my mom came up to me and was like "umm, so the game does not start until 3:15". I was like "WHAT"... crap! Here it was 11:30 am... but it made a ton a sense why NO ONE was in STL yet :) I felt like a dooface and John made it a point to remind me several times that I was the person in charge of knowing when the game was and that I had epicly (sp?) failed at my one job. I reminded him that I had planned the ENTIRE weekend so he needed to let this slide! So the question was... what to do, what to do. Well, believe it or not (I still don't) we walked to Hooters for lunch. OK, so you have to understand that for several members of our group (including my mother and myself), Hooters goes against everything we believe in. But, I will give the situation the benefit of the doubt, we did not have much in the way of options when it came to places we could go to eat and kill several hours. AND... even though I wanted to give every girl in there my jacket and/or cover up my husband's eyes as he ate, the food was not horrible and we (as a family) had an enjoyable time and it will be a great memory! I will have to say this ON THE RECORD. I don't car what ANY man says... they are lying to you if they claim Hooters has the best wings. That's right ladies... your man LIES!!!!! Anyway, to continue my blog... we left Satans Restaurant ;) and headed back to the statium. When we got there we kinda split up and John, Paul and I found out way to our seats. When mom ordered the tickets we decided b/c we were all on budgets that we would get the cheapest seats available. Little did mom know, they were the very highest seats you could get (well, almost). Let's just say... mom's a little terrified of heights. We can chalk it up as yet another memory :) It's amazing how burdens can because a great blessing because although out seats were rediculousy high, when it actually started raining, we did not get wet at all! It was wonderful!!! I am sad to say though, that the Cardinals did not win the game. After the rain delay, they puttered out and we went home not feeling like the winners we wanted to. All in all, it was a wonderful game though. We were able to watch Albert Pujols and Molina recieve their Gold Gloves from last season. I cannot believe we were actually there to witness it! It was awesome! That evening we finally made it home and we found out that our we did not have any new news about STL Airport. It was still showing that our flight was leaving on time. It was very hard for me to believe, but we decided to go to bed and check on it in the morning since the flight did not leave until 5:55 pm Sunday evening.

Sunday: HAPPY EASTER! Paul and I got up and we found out that our flight had been delayed. We also found out that they had only landed 7 planes in STL the night before so we knew that there would be a ton of conjestion in the aiport from people trying to re book flights and we feared that our flight was still going to be cancelled. We needed to make a pland and make it fast. It was already 8:30 am. Paul got on the phone and called the airport, delta and expedia all over again and the only thing we could find out was that the flight was just delayed. Mom and Paul were watching the deaprture statuses online and mom noticed that they would delay a flight and then would cancel a flight. One by one flights were being delayed/cancelled. We talked about it and thought... we could wait and go to St. Louis and hope our flight departed at 6:15 as currently scheduled or we could leave Bowling Green and drive back to Virginia. The problem with flying was that we had a connecting flight in Detroit. If our flight left any later then 7:30 we would miss our flight in Detroit and not make it home in time for Paul to start his job that next day. My oldest brother Adam told us he thought we needed to drive. So, we finally made the decision. Mom cleaned out her Toytoa Corolla for us and we left BG at 10:00 am and headed East. We made it home at 12:30 that next morning and I am so thankful for Paul b/c he drove all but 3 hours of the trip! My eyes would not stay open the last 2 hours.

SO, there you have it. That's the Stone family gathering 2011!

I will upload pictures soon!