Paint Louis

I have to intro this post with a story. One time, when I was a teacher, I wanted to make my classroom look less boring. (White cinderblock walls are HARD to decorate . . . but I did it!) So I told all my students that I was looking for someone with graffiti skills to graffiti the word "Multimedia" above the door. A few hours later, a young hooligan with crazy long and affro-ie hair, lots of piercings, and pants that didn't cover his bum, entered my room. He was perfect.

I asked him to do a sketch and showed him the spray paint cans I had bought from Walmart. He took one look at my paint and rolled his eyes at me, "Those aren't going to work. I'll bring my own paint." Apparently to be a good tagger, you have to get special tips for the paint cans that can only be bought on the black market. Nice. I didn't ask any questions.

He showed up after school a couple of days later, I approved his sketch, and he got to work. I think it took a couple of hours. And it was super cool! He DID add a little "embellishment" that wasn't in his sketch - he signed his gangster name to the side of the painting. It didn't bother me and I didn't think much of it.

The next day, first period had JUST started when the vice principal and school cop showed up. Uh oh. I assumed they wanted a student. Nope. They wanted me. Word spreads fast when it has to do with gangsters and graffiti. Apparently the whole "let a student graffiti the school wall thing" was a bad idea. It took some convincing, but eventually they decided I could leave the work of art up there if I would just paint over his gangster name. Phew.

This thing worked like a charm, and having the cop show up just made it even better, because students like to tell each other cool stories about when their teacher gets in trouble by the cop. So for a couple of weeks I had all sorts of students coming into my room to check out the wall.

I remember when the student who actually painted it came by with a couple of girls to show them his piece of art. One of the girls said, "Oh my gosh! This is so cool. I am so going to make out with you for this." Classic high school.

I just spent an hour trying to find a picture of my Multimedia graffiti wall for you to see - tragically I couldn't find ANY pictures of my Skyline classroom! Le weep!

BUT I do have some awesome pictures of PAINT LOUIS. Apparently St Louis has a wall that is legal for taggers and they even have a festival every year where the really good taggers are invited to come and paint something cool. I've been wanting to go ever since I heard about it, and with Nathan and Rachel Ditto in town, we had an excuse.

Dan, the St Louis thug

 This wall is literally MILES long. Every inch covered in paint. And sometimes we had to avert our eye from the ahem, "inappropriate" things. Gangsters can be lame that way sometimes.

 Can you tell what it says?

Of course the missionaries had to get in on the action. Giant name tags. Well done.

Yay for friends who like us enough to come visit!

Friday Night Fish Fry

Despite the bad rap that St. Louis often gets for poverty and crime, its actually quite a religious city. Churches are all over (many of them have gorgeous architecture) - in fact there's a church a few blocks away that rings beautiful bells on the hour (they're quiet - not like the church bells in Gilmore Girls). Most of these churches are Catholic, which means many people observe Lent. (My first introduction to lent was my freshman year of college - my roommates decided to go without sugar the whole time, which meant any treats that were dropped off were enjoyed by me. My sweet tooth loved it.)

Anyway - part of observing lent includes giving up all meat (except fish) beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending on Easter. So a lot of the churches and private high schools hold Friday Night Fish Fries during Lent as fundraisers. And they're always super fun.

This is us at LAST YEAR's fish fry. Thanks to Nathan for introducing us!

This year we went to the #1 rated Mexican Fish Fry. The line was 1.5 hours long, but since husband will chat it up with just about anyone, the long wait didn't seem very long as we were getting to know our line buddies. They were awesome. Especially the guy who was the spitting image of Cousin Eddy from Christmas Vacation (he even spoke the same way!) The only tragedy of the night was that we were having too much fun to stop and take a picture of our new friends.

We're Alive!

It's been a while. I promise we're alive. The past 2 months have been, well, long. But I finally seem to have the upper-hand on what could probably go down in the books as the longest miscarriage ever. So I am back, and ready to share our adventures.

We recently celebrated spring break - and since husband graduates soon it will probably be the last time we'll have this break in a lot of years. Which is quite tragic. (Yes, I miss all my teacher holidays. Someone needs to tell the corporate big wigs how much happiness would enter the world if we all had a spring break. And a winter break. And a summer break.)

The break started with a game of bowling. I'm awful.

But I DID get a strike.

Then, we drove to Denver. And on the way we stopped at this historic site. What an amazing and sacred place.

Denver. It's high on our list of places we would love to live after husband finishes school, so we decided it deserved a visit. And when I found out that Denver has a Cafe Rio, we put its address on the gps and it was literally our first stop. It did not disappoint. And we may have stopped there again before we left. (Trust me, when you've lived years without a Cafe Rio close by, you become obsessed.)

And of course we had to pull over when we saw Jamba Juice. (Can you tell I miss the west?)

Hooray for meeting up with good friends!

If you've never been to the Red Rock Amphitheater you're totally missing out. It's amazing. And beautiful. And the best part? Its in the MOUNTAINS. I don't care what you say - mountains are amazing and I need to be near them.

La la la!

This has nothing to do with Denver. Or Spring Break. It's an old pic, but I guess in the craziness of the past couple of months I forgot to post it. I've always told Dan he could grow facial hair if he didn't want to kiss his wife (meaning, I don't like facial hair). So he grew it out while he was in Hong Kong last January (told you this was an old picture). Guess what? I liked it. Hot husband!