And Then There Were Two

It was great to have all the kids home these last few days. Mary returned home from her Wyoming visit on Friday, and then on Saturday Peter and his girlfriend Jessa flew in from DC. Even though Troy's been working long hours lately, we got to see a lot of her and John too. So all in all it was just a fantastic time. First thing after they arrived on Saturday, we initiated Jessa with some St. Louis barbecue from Bogart's and a beer at iTap in Soulard.

We had the whole group at our house for dinner on Saturday night and managed to get a picture of all seven of us!

Of course Sirius and Allie were with us too. This is about as close as Allie cares to get to Sirius. Thanks to Peter for noticing and snapping a picture.

The kids all stayed at John and Troy's in Soulard on Saturday night. They came over for brunch on Sunday, and afterwards most of us went to the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park to see three exhibits. (John stayed home to watch the dogs and catch up on some sleep and baseball.)

After the museum we enjoyed root beer floats at Fitz's. Troy re-introduced me marshmallow fluff, which was a dangerous thing to do. (It's addictive!)

On Monday while John and Troy were at work, the rest of us went to Sump for coffee. As always it was delicious.

Mary left us to do some shopping and the rest of us continued to the Gateway Arch. Did I mention the weather was hot?  We're talking 108 with the heat index. It was a scorcher!

The Arch grounds and visitor center are all under construction so we were a bit restricted in what we could see and do, but that didn't stop us from getting some pictures with this beautiful monument.

This is my personal favorite - a selfie inside the itsy bitsy teeny weenie capsule that took us to the top of the Arch.

The boys had golfed 18 holes on Sunday morning. They got all of us out on the driving range the next night. It was hot so we didn't hit for long.

Mary and Jessa get the award for Most Improved Golfers!

Then it was back to our house for some dinner, compliments of Mary. She made us a yummy stir fry with rice vermicelli and a peanut sauce.

On Tuesday we met Troy for lunch and then she took us to Schafly and gave us a quick tour before her shift started. John and Peter golfed nine holes after John got off work. Later that evening we met up at iTap for trivia night. It was a long and difficult evening of trivia, and we were almost victorious - we took second place. There were lots of laughs and considering that some of the rounds were really tough, we did okay. And we'll always be able to tease Peter for his answer to a tie-breaker question "how many passengers travel through JFK yearly?" - 10 billion?!?! No Peter, the answer is nowhere near 10 billion. (But we'll all be able to remind him of that for years to come.) Needless to say, we didn't win that tie-breaker.

Wednesday was for goodbyes. Early in the morning we saw Mary off. She flew off to DC to start her teaching adventure.

Later in the morning we said farewell to Jessa and Peter, who took the Megabus to Chicago where they'll spend the next few days at a music festival with college friends. With the house empty we feel a little lonely tonight, but we also feel very blessed to have had such a fantastic visit and for such a great family!