Taco Wednesday

Ern was being cutesie today.

Got a box full of good stuff in the mail from Grams.

Made a mess.

In the evening Lydia and I escaped and had dinner at Cantina Monarca in Bellevue.

We had a margarita flight.

The end.

Ern's Real Birthday

Ern had already done his big midwestern birthday bash but that happened a bit early. Now was his government birthday so we had a little celebration at home.

Nana's friends Carol and Bob gave Ern this wooden tractor. They always had the unique ability to give me gifts that weren't on my list that I still thought were cool. It was nice to see that they were still at it.

Ern had some other gifts to open.

He got this cool snail puzzle roller thing. This one has some staying power. He was just playing with it 11/16/25. Not bad at all.

We gathered round and looked at some of our photos from the day Ern was born.

Pukes on a Plane

Lydia's family is endearing and funny because they want to see Ernie like every minute he's in town. They want to drive to the airport just to wave at you while you walk to the entrance with your luggage. My family is more understated I think. They'll visit with you for a few hours then will go home.

So with that in mind we still had a family social calendar for today despite needing to pack up the St. Louis airbnb and deal with the flight home.

I think some of them met up at the park before this while I packed. Then we all met up at City Foundry STL for some lunch. This place is one of the few things about St. Louis that I am a little jealous of. It's a former industrial site that they've renovated and turned into a very cool eat/work/play type of joint. I think it even has a music venue in there somewhere that I haven't yet had the pleasure of exploring. The food area is cool because it's packed full of fun little food truck-esque establishments that you can peruse.

Lambert Airport has some decent playground equipment shaped like planes and trains and stuff. I think there's even a little thing where a kid can load pretend luggage into the plane. Airport playgrounds are one of those things I never spared a thought about and now that I have a baby are suddenly pretty important places in my life.

THAT PLANE IS HEADED STRAIGHT FOR THE ARCH

I this this is the face he made when we told him to stop chewing on the flight safety card.

One minute he was chill the next minute he was throwing up on everyone. Bad things aren't allowed to happen to me, however, and so I was outside of the blast radius. Everyone else shed a layer of pukey clothing.

A Great and Grand Occasion

Big Ern got to spend some quality time with his great-grandparents Pam and Fritz in St. Louis. I don't think I ever met one of my great-grands so it's a cool opportunity for Ern to have hung out with his on several occasions. 

It's funny I think this was supposed to be one-on-one time but Ernie is so popular that when word was out that he would make an appearance lots of other relatives glommed on.

Ernie deciding which of their priceless artifacts to try to break next.