{an eleventh birthday in the city}

We celebrated this sweet girl's eleventh birthday all day yesterday. 

We have a tradition in our family around birthdays- one year the birthday child gets a party with friends, the next year the birthday child gets a family celebration. This was a year for a family celebration for Gracie. (There is also a really fun mother-daughter birthday weekend getaway coming up very, very soon and a night at the movie theatre seeing "Malificent" with friends next week. No shortage of celebration for our Gracie!) She got to call the shots for the day and she was pretty easy to please!

Her requests for the day were banana pancakes for breakfast, time to craft, and Ted Drewe's instead of a birthday cake. We ended up throwing some other fun surprises into the day as well- a trip to the craft store to pick out new yarn, an afternoon movie on the couch (she chose Sleeping Beauty since she just got done reading Malificent), and bagels in Old Webster for lunch. The fun continued when Ben came home from work early to spend the evening celebrating as a family. Gracie was pretty relaxed about what she wanted to do, and when we suggested a little exploring downtown, she was all in. 

Have I said how much I love St. Louis? We drove fifteen minutes from our home and had an evening where we felt like we were on vacation. We tend to stay in our little Webster Groves/ Kirkwood bubble so much of the time that it was great to expand our St. Louis horizons a bit. We had a delicious dinner at a restaurant we'd never tried before, Bailey's Range. Gracie, our future interior designer, was in awe of some of the cool touches around the restaurant. We would definitely go back. 

After dinner we walked down to the City Garden to explore and climb and play. What a really great place! I might have gone a little crazy with pictures, but the lighting was so good and the kids were so happy that I just couldn't help myself!

The day ended with ice cream at Ted Drewe's in the middle of the craziness that is that place on a warm summer night. We pulled up and Drew said, "Woah!" There were people and cars everywhere! We scoped out a parking spot and most of us stayed sitting on the back of Hank while Ben and Gracie fought the chaos to go buy our malts and concretes. As usual, nobody ate only their ice cream and there was lots and lots of trading of bites. We weren't home until a couple of hours after Katie and Drew's normal bedtime, so everyone pretty much crashed.

It was a fun night celebrating a special kid. Love her to pieces!