st. Louis

Wow... what a week of "first's". the First, first was our first thanksgiving away from family, which involved baking my first ever turkey and stuffing. Turns out... it was a huge success! The turkey was borderline nightmare... I actually had 2 turkeys I was preparing since we were having Thanksgiving with 2 other families, I was going to bake one and one of the other family's was going to bake the other. So I took the turkey's out of the freezer and put them in the fridge on Monday, so I checked them Wednesday night and they were still frozen solid. My heart sunk. So we woke up at 6am Thursday morning to put them in a water bath. yikes. Clark was supposed to play Turkey day football with a bunch of the guys, but gratefully he had pity on me and stuck around to help... which was good since he had to make 2 trips to the grocery store, and help me pull out the freezing cold gizzards and neck from the turkey.. gross. Do they really need to include those? I mean, really how many people eat it? Anyhow, we did it and it turned out great. So in addition to the turkey and stuffing, I also made the Kasteler family traditional Yams and Apples casserole... mmm. My FAVORITE part of thanksgiving. And oh, yeah, I almost forgot I also made brown bag apple pie. All the favs! Gratefully, everything turned out yummy and we stuffed ourselves silly.

Our second first this weekend was our first trip to St. Louis. We went with another family from our ward so we could go to the temple. We arrived late Friday afternoon in time for Clark and I to go through the temple while the other family watched our kids. We all stayed at a hotel with a swimming pool, so of course that was a hit with the kids. The next morning, the other couple went to the temple while we watched all the kids at the hotel. It worked out great! That afternoon we took the metro into downtown St. Louis to check out the Gateway Arch (named because it was the "gateway" to the west... learn something new everyday!) and the St. Louis Union Station. We had a blast! The kids loved riding the train and just running around. We have a whole list of fun and FREE things to do next time we take a trip to St. Louis.