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.

Johns Do St. Louis

We returned to St. Louis, MO after a thoroughly celebrated first birthday party in Springfield, IL.

We met up with the gang at the Saint Louis Zoo.

Granddad took a turn carrying Ern.

Lydia had also planned me a nice little surprise birthday party of some sort. We headed to Schnucks to look for beers. I thought it would be cool to get some 40 oz beers since it was my 40th birthday party. We hit maybe 2-3 stores and it turns out that 40s aren't that prevalent, even in St. Louis beer metropolis.

Seattle has a great beer scene but seeing the plethora of macro brewery products did give me some nostalgia, I will admit.

This absolutely atrocious 42 ounce Olde English malt liquor was the closest thing I could find. It tasted like it, too, was celebrating its 40th birthday. If I was capable of planning more than 15 minutes into the future I would have made use of my Anheuser-Busch contacts to procure said gigantic brewskies.

My surprise party was awesome. They rented a party bus that drove us around to all my favorite spots. We had a really good turn out and everyone dressed up as different "Johns". John Lennon, John Stockton, etc.

Ernie John even made an appearance. It was probably a little late for him but I requested the cameo so that my friends could meet him.

This stop was my favorite brewery in town: Earthbound. They make lots of weird cool flavors. And it's not just "let's put frosted flakes in this one" kind of cool, though I think they do some weird ingredients. They also make gruit, for example, which is a type of beer made before hops was a widespread ingredient. Sadly this brewery would close later this year so that makes this visit even more special. It may be the last time I set foot here.

Lyly was Olivia Newton-John.

Lainey "John Lennon" showing Ernie her guitar.

Brandon and Natalie came down from Chicago which was very surprising as well. I did my best to drink that horrid malt liquor but warming up did not help its flavor profile one bit.

Jay was John Belushi.

Zoe was John Deere. I remember how much I used to complain to my friends about always going to the same few bars in Soulard over and over and rarely succeeding them at getting them to try anything new. Well now I rarely see those friends anymore and a stop at McGurk's was major flashback inducing. Getting old is weird.

Silver Ballroom

Emily was Jimmy John's and Cassie was Elton John. People's costumes were pretty great.

Our last stop was River City Casino. Best birthday ever.