A Calvin Weekend

Vander Woude Visit
On Saturday, April 5, our friends from college, Brian and Debbie Vander Woude came to St. Louis for a visit. Their girls are in school and they decided St. Louis would be a good place for spring break.

Tangent: St. Louis is often referred to as a "flyover" city in the Midwest, because most people don't know it exists as they're flying from somewhere important on one coast to somewhere important on the other coast. That being said, it's a very family-friendly city with lots of free things to do. We've had a number of families with school aged kids come visit us over spring break and they always have lots of fun. We have a zoo, art museum, history museum, science museum, the City museum, a children's museum, and of course the Arch, the Cardinals, etc. etc. We've enjoyed hosting so many friends and family and showing them around. If anyone reads this blog and wants to come visit, we'd be happy to show you around for a cheap and G-rated family vacay!

We were going to get together for dinner at Incredible Pizza, but based on the throngs of crowds there, we opted for Hokkaido instead. It turned out to be a great venue for a bunch of old friends and their kids to get together. The last time we had seen Debbie and Brian was at our wedding, almost 7 years ago! They only had one child with them at the time, so it was my first time meeting the other two. They are such grown up, lovely girls! It made me wish we lived closer to the Vander Woudes, because I would have loved to have spent more time with them. [Waiting on picture from Debbie. Hopefully I can post a picture we took of our families together!]

St. Louis Art Museum Alumni Event

Alumni Event with Art History Profs. Henry Luttikuizen and Craig Hanson

Apparently there was a conference of Midwest Art Historians taking place at the St. Louis Art Museum that same week, and several art history professors from Calvin were in attendance. Calvin graciously put together an alumni event where we got to hear a lecture about the current exhibit on French Impressionism, and then get a tour. I was personally ecstatic to attend for four reasons: first and foremost, it was a reason to get out of the house for a Sunday afternoon date... Hot Sam!!  Secondly, I spent many hours in class with Prof. Luttikuizen, as an Art History major. It completely made my day to get to see him again, after not seeing him for about 15 years. I was also happy to be at the museum because they completed a multi-million dollar expansion two years ago and I still hadn't been to the museum to see it. (It makes me sad, as someone who still has a soft spot for art, that I don't get to the museum hardly at all anymore, but something about having two little kids prohibits that kind of thing lately.) Last but not least, I was happy to connect with other Calvin alumni in the area. (Prof. L joked that he thought the attendees would all be retired folks, but it turns out Ryan and I were about the oldest people there! I didn't realize we had so many recent grads in the area!)

After the event, Ryan and I discovered in a new Italian restaurant nearby. (We had to eat quickly because our 11th grade babysitter had informed us that she and her boyfriend were going out to Olive Garden for dinner to celebrate their 7 month anniversary.) We felt a little like we were playing hookie by being out of the house together during the day.

It was nice to get back to our Calvin roots for a weekend!