Rehearsal and Zia's...

...last Friday on October 1 (Rabbit! Rabbit!), Matt's cousin had her rehearsal for her wedding at Tower Grove Park. While I waited for the rehearsal to start, I messed around with the settings on my camera and I think I fixed it! Somehow it had gotten off 8 megapixels and was on the lowest pixel possible-grr! So yeah, all the second half of my September pictures printed out awful but I think we're back in business now. ANYWAYS, back to the rehearsal, it was a gorgeous afternoon and it was quick. Short, sweet and to the point-just what I love! Then they loaded up my car with all the decorations for the park. I was going to go grocery shopping on Saturday AM but there was no room in my car-oh well! Here's a picture of the cute couple, Chris and Sarah: We then headed to "The Hill" in St. Louis for dinner at Zia's. Parking was awful so I ended up parking like 2 streets away. As I was walking, I thought to myself, look-there's an AGD sticker on that car then I thought, "Wait...that looks just like Q's car!" I knew her FIANCE (they just got engaged!) lived in the area so I called her and asked if his street address was ####. She was like, yeah...then looked outside and saw me. It was really funny and random, I went in to say hi and got to see her new bling so I'm really happy I randomly walked by their house. Funny thing too, Matt got there later and he parked right in front of her car and didn't even know it!

We got to dinner and had their delicious house salad. I could never get tired of eating St. Louis style salads, I just think they're totally fab. The menu was preset and I ordered the Capellini Carciofi. It was yummy, lots of veggies it in, not enough chicken and I need a bigger bowl. I had plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day too. Matt wasn't there when we ordered so I ordered the Chicken Parmigiana for him. It came with a side dish of pasta with either red, white or olive oil sauce. I picked red for him, he later told me he would have gotten white. Never fails, I always pick the opposite!!!

Then for dessert, we had cannolis. I never really knew what a cannoli was except that I'd heard about them on "The Sopranos" and other Italian movies/shows. I ordered mine and was not excited about what I saw:

Turns out those green things were nuts and the whole thing was pretty delicious! I gave Matt one of mine and had a couple bites of his gelato. The two flower girls and their parents sat with us. I really enjoyed watching the family interact. When Matt got there, I leaned over and told Matt to watch them because I thought they were really good parents. Were their kids the best behaved? No but they were well behaved. What impressed me was that even though the kids were only 4 and 6, the parents wouldn't just tell them "don't do that" or "stop" instead they would explain or rationalize with the kids and botht the parents were very calm and patient. I'm in no ways an expert on parenting so think what you will but I was impressed and enjoyed eating with them, even if the one little girl almost crawled in Matt's lap to share his dessert!

OH! And Matt's aunt/cousin gave me a gift card to Harvest for helping out! Looks like I know where our anniversary dinner will be!!!