Cheese glorious cheese - and other things to be thankful for in 2008

If we were to ask Eliza what she's been thankful for in 2008, I think she would say cheese. This little girl loves her cheese - cheddar, mozzarella (even the fresh stuff), and even the cheese slices. I think her favorite of all has got to be freshly grated Parmesan; she can eat spoonfuls of the stuff and made quite a dent in a huge Parmesan wedge from our Christmas visit to Lolo and Lola's house which included a trip to Urzi's Italian market in St. Louis (told you that this was one of our favorite places to go...). Now that I think about it, this girl loves her dairy products - not only cheese, but yogurt, milk, and ice cream. Anyway, you've got to check out the wedges of Parmesan!




With the end of 2008 just around the corner, there are so many things that we can be thankful for but most important:

1. Our health - other than a few minor injuries (ok - mainly me with the broken finger) we've all been very healthy. Molly is learning the basics of gymnastics; Eliza was also in "gymnastics" for toddlers until her listening ears no longer worked - so now we're taking a break. Eric and I are just getting back in the swing after many holidays and our minor injuries.
2. Our families - we've been able to see all of our sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews this year! That doesn't always happen since 3 out of 4 of our siblings live in Texas. It's always great when Molly and Eliza can see all of their aunts, uncles, and cousins. We were able to host a Thanksgiving feast with all of my family and some of Eric's family for a blend of traditional Thanksgiving and Filipino foods. We were able to share an early Christmas with my mom and dad in Fredericktown and then also with Eric's family here in KC including his brother and family from San Antonio. The holidays have been great - full of family, fun, and food!
3. Our friends - we've been able to see a lot of our friends throughout the year and especially during the Mizzou football season. We've also been able to reconnect with long lost school pals through that crazy and addicting social networking site - Facebook. It's been quite fun "seeing" old high school and college pals and keeping up with their lives now that we're (still) growing up.
4. Our happiness - we're just happy people. Probably because Marbles is so entertaining...

Other notable happenings this year include Molly having a wonderful first half of kindergarten. She's grown into quite the 5 year old and has made so many friends at her new school. For Eliza - well - just reliving the world through the eyes and ears of a 2 year old is a joy in itself.

Now we're looking forward to a great 2009 with all new adventures!

We're off to the market...Soulard and Urzi's, that is.

Well, before we start our St. Louis adventure, I have to mention that we actually started our St. Louis trek on Thursday night. We left Lees Summit at the end of the work day and headed to Columbia to revel in one of our favorite restaurants of all time - Shakespeare's Pizza. We ordered the cheese garlic bread for a much needed starter (since we were saving up our hunger most of Thursday). Then the main event - an 8" cheese pizza for the girls and a 12" Masterpiece for us. And believe us - it's a masterpiece. Delicious! We also saw Gary Pinkel; I thought that was a good omen for the game.

Anyway, Friday morning took us to a couple of our favorite stops in St. Louis: Soulard Farmers Market and Urzi's Italian Market in The Hill. When visiting St. Louis, we typically hit Soulard Market on Saturday morning with the rest of the crowd but this time around we thought we would try it on a Friday morning. Still as cool as ever with great veggies, fruits, and flowers but we missed the freshly made mini-donuts. We were so bummed as we had forgone breakfast at Union Station for the mini-donuts. We still managed to find something for breakfast - a giant chocolate chip cookie (what can I say, we're on vacation) and an apple thingy at the Soulard Bakery. We also picked up some cherries, bananas, and beautiful fresh spray roses for the Lyngs who we were visiting later that day.

Next stop was Urzi's Italian Market located in The Hill neighborhood. We discovered this wonderful market when we lived in St. Louis over 12 years ago (yikes!). If you love to cook and are looking for wonderful seasonings and visit or live in St. Louis, this is a must-see shop. Even if we are just passing through St. Louis, we make it a point to take stock of our spice inventory in case we need to stop at Urzi's. In the past couple of visits, we've picked up bread dipping seasoning, pizza seasoning, fajita seasoning, and other goodies. This visit we're trying their pizza sauce and a hunk of parmesan cheese - should be yummy.

After Urzi's we headed to an afternoon visit with our friends, the Lyngs. We spent the rest of the afternoon catching up and boating on Lake St. Louis before heading back downtown for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory at Laclede's Landing. While walking around the landing, we saw plenty of people donning their true colors - black and gold - and got a couple of "Go Tigers!" along the way. We saw some of that ugly orange and blue stuff too (thumbs down as Molly would sign). Oh it's going to be a fun atmosphere!