A Greek Feast for Dominique's Birthday

On the 24th of July, the Friday before Dom's birthday, Josh and I met Ben and Dom at Momos for an absolute pig-out! It's too hard for me to remember what all we ordered, but I remember devouring tzatziki and pita, humus, spanikopita, beef dolmades, saganaki, domatokeftedes, potatoes and who knows what else?!

And if that wasn't enough, our waiter brought Dom a baklava for her birthday, which of course we split just as soon as we all finished eating our delicious carrot cake cupcakes from Cose Dolci (in Ferguson) which I had brought with us!


"D" is for Dom.

We practically had to shuffle our fat, little asses out of Momos once unable to consume any more food. Dominique thought she might like to find a place for after-dinner drinks in the Loop, but after driving down to Skinker and back with NO hope of finding parking and seeing a dude waving a knife around as another guy was holding his cut up hand in the air, we decided to hop on over to Sasha's Wine Bar in DeMun.

A good time was had by all...


The Hicks Brothers (minus Joe)


Ben refusing to take a decent pic.


Schischters.

The "Race for the Cure" - 2009

This past Saturday 66,136 St. Louisans banded together and "raced" for the cure. Over 3.25 million dollars were raised locally for the St. Louis affliate of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization. Out of the sixty-six thousand participants, 23 of them included myself and roughly 20 other PGAV employees.


Back Row: Jean, Emily, Frank, Kartono, Brian, Angela, Josh, April, Erin, Jeremy, Carol and Julie. Front Row: Katie, Josh, Rosey, Kelly, Stephanie, Anselmo, and Claudia. Not Pictured: Nick, John and Leticia.

Before the race, the PGAV team met in the "Social Cafe" of the PGAV offices for a light breakfast. Shortly after 8:30, we began our walk TO the race. Once we arrived at Soldier Memorial Park, we immediately wove ourselves into the walk and continued on.


Kelly and Stephanie


Jeremy and Kartono

All in all we walked over 4.5 miles (in a 5K race) including our walk to and from the office. Our walk began at 4th and Olive, continued down Olive to North Compton, South to Market and back to 4th and Olive. Along the walk, one of the best scenes is when you crest the hill around 20th (or thereabouts). Olive is completely packed with walkers as far as the eye can see.



The only thing more amazing than this view is when you turn around and see walkers behind you as far as the eye can see...



The Race for the Cure is truely amazing experience.
Thanks, everyone, for all of your support!!!

Ah...Memorial Day...

This time last year, Josh and I (along with our families) were rummaging through the remains of our belongings following the Memorial Day Fire of '08. Lighting may have struck our house and burnt her to the ground, but we would be defeated so easily. Josh and I spent the next 6 months stressing ourselves to the max! We had to document everything and rebuild our house (while living in a rental home) while trying to stay focused at our jobs. This proved to be extremely difficult but is all behind us now! Thank the Lord!

I began a blog with updates on the Hixey House last year, but upon moving in to our house in December, I kind of just stopped writing. I plan to post before and after pics on that blog:

http://hixeyhouse.blogspot.com/

over the next few days, but in the meantime, please enjoy a little sample of before and afters here!


Okay, so this is more of a during than a "before"...


And this is how she stands now...the yard still needs some help.


Post-fire photo of built-ins and fireplace.


Dog's-eye view of the fireplace as it is today.

I promise to post real before and afters on The Hixey House Chronicles.

Arthur Bryant's

Thursday, Josh and I left St. Louis around 4pm on our way to Kansas City for a night of Margaritas, friends and fun! We met up with Bailey and her son, Jake, Sara and her fiance Jeff, Marcus and Jason Boone (who unfortunately was in town for a funeral). The drinks were salty and sour, but the chips, salsa, guacamole and tacos were de-lish!

Following dinner and drinks, Jason, Marcus, Josh and I went over to the Peanut for a few beers before calling it a night.


Jason and I at the Peanut - "Cheerleader face!"

Friday morning Josh and I woke up bright and early to continue driving on to Council Bluffs, Iowa, for Rosey and Jeremy's wedding; but that's a whole other post!

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon...Josh and I stopped at Arthur Bryant's for our usual Kansas City lunch. Everytime we're in KC, we stop at Arthur Bryant's before heading back to St. Louis.


Josh just before stuffing himself silly!

While we're eating, Josh says, "Look who's outside." I turn around to have a look (mind you, at any given time there is a line of people out the door waiting to order some bbq). I'm expecting to see Danny, Jason or the Palans, but instead I see the spikey-blonde-do of who else but Richard Blais! Richard was one of my favorite chefs on Bravo's Top Chef (Season 4).

I'm not the usual celebrity groupie type, but I did ask him for a photo after a bit of coaxing by Josh. Richard was extremely humble and quite appreciative of our compliments. What a stud!


Richard Blais and I at Arthur Bryant's on Brooklyn.

Trivia Gone Wild at the St. Louis Zoo

This past Saturday, Josh and I were privileged to attend the annual Trivia Gone Wild charity event at the St. Louis Zoo. The zoo has been one of PGAV's loyal clients for many years, and we have been patron's of their trivia night benefit for a little while too.

This year's theme, "Go Ape in Vegas," prompted many clever costumes. Christina, dressed as a slot machine, took my vote for best outift!


Christina and Jeremy (newly engaged)

The questions were less "trivia" and more "How many hours are volunteered per year at the St. Louis Zoo?" - I mean, who knows this? Regardless, people had fun; maybe too much fun.


Angela and Josh


The apes are Emily and Angela.


Steve with the nugget ring.


Rosey goin' after that cash!


Kartono and Angela

Lame-ier Sculpture Park

This past Saturday after breakfast with the Hicks', we decided to drive over to Laumeier Sculpture Park for an afternoon of bird watching. I kid. I kid. It had probably been a good 12 years since I had last been there, and Josh guessed it had been roughly 15 years since he had last visited the park.

I don't know if I was young and dumb or if I had actually like the "art" when I was a teen...but wow! I couldn't believe how uninspiring that junk felt when we revisited the park this past weekend!

My poor parents have some crap-sculpture in their garden that I (quote un-quote) designed 2nd year that is reminiscent of the lifeless hunks of metal these alleged artist have welded together and presumably called "art". However there was one piece that struck me as beautiful, and that was Joseph Havel's "Twins" (as seen behind Josh in the photo below).

I probably thought this particular sculpture was interesting because, in a sense, it reminds me of the "Cow Chair" by Niels van Eijk.



My least favorite work of "art" was the "Eye" by Tony Tasset. What am I saying!? I'd be hard pressed to pick my least favorite! Now, I understand this collection is of a more modern ilk, but what ever happened to the intricacies in the craftsmanship of Gian Lorenzo Bernini or Michelangelo?! I mean, I would have been delighted if there had been a Noguchi in the park; too bad there wasn't.

Regardless, we had a wonderful time walking around discussing different modern day art philosophies...or maybe we had just enjoyed the weather and each others company.

Chim Chim Cher-ee!!!

I gotta say - I am super excited right now!

For the past two months (at least) I have been anxiously awaiting the pre-sale of tickets for the Broadway production of "Mary Poppins" at The Fabulous Fox. Yesterday I finally received the e-mail announcing the pre-sale, which was to begin this morning at 10am. I set a reminder on my outlook calendar and you'd better believe I got on there promptly at 10:00 this morning with Josh's credit card number.

We now have two of the best seats in the house for the first Saturday evening performance!



I'm usually not that into musicals, but I can still remember the words to "A Spoon Full of Sugar", "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", "Chim Chim Cher-ee" and "Let's Go Fly a Kite", so I'me extremely excited to check out this Broadway Musical!

Now I just have to wait patiently for the actual show which isn't until August 15!