Laura's Birthday Celebration 

Mike and I journeyed to St. Louis last Saturday allegedly to celebrate Laura's birthday.  She had plans for her actual birthday so we visited a week early.  However, I had an ulterior motive.  I wanted to visit St. Charles Halloween Celebration called Legends and Lanterns located in the St. Louis area.

When we first arrived at Laura's apartment Mike graciously allowed her to open her presents a week early.  She received a quilt made by her mother (with fabrics selected with Aunt Kathy) and a framed picture of an elephant that her niece Sela drew.  Afterwards, Mike did some chores around her apartment.  He did some rewiring of her TV so the remote would now work and he hung the new picture.

Then we headed out the door to take Laura out to lunch at Red Robin.  Unfortunately for me Red Robin serves refills on French fries so it took awhile to get Mike and Laura out of the restaurant.  Interest in visiting Legends and Lanterns was waning on their part until Laura realized that Grandmas's cookie shop was located right in the middle of it.  

The administration at Laura's place of employment loves Grandma's cookies.  Once they introduced them to Laura she loved them too.  She had told me about them many times but I have never really had any.  (She brought us some once but I think they were stale because Mike and I were not impressed.)  

Grandmas's Cookies is located in a building that was built in the 1800's.  The Grandma of Grandma's Cookies fame was actually in business as a seamstress and just gave out free cookies to the kids who visited her shop (same location) with their parents back in the 1970's.  The cookies became such a draw that she closed the clothing store in 1976 and switched to the bakery business.   Between us, Laura and I, ended up buying twenty five cookies just to make sure we had a true taste testing.  Needless to say, Mike and I revised our opinion of these cookies and will definitely find away to visit again.  

When we arrived on Main Street in St. Charles, we encountered many Halloween 'characters' on our way to Grandma's cookie shop.  Unfortunately we did not see very many of them because we got distracted by Grandma's cookies and the Victorian Mourning Exhibit located in the park in a train depot.  However, Laura and I did take the time to vote on the best scarecrow.  I chose the camel and she liked the witch.  

The scarecrow witch was not the only witch we saw.  There was also a live Gingerbread Witch from the story Hansel and Gretel who was located coincidentally right across the street from Grandma's Cookies.  I caught her checking out a young boy to see if he was fat enough to eat.  She pronounced him too skinny and told him to go eat lots of candy and come back.  

I think all of us had a good day and Laura and I have already made plans to come back to St. Charles next year.  We are planning to include Suzanne and Heath as they should be living here by then.