An odd day

Saturday was an odd day.  Plans had been made quite awhile ago to meet Ben's mom, step-dad, sister, and brother-in-law in St. Louis for the day and night.  They live, respectively, 6 and 7 hours from Columbia so St. Louis cuts 2 hours off that drive to see us.  Of course when we made the plans, we didn't know that we would be closing on our (first!) home on Friday, but oh well.  We have all month to move.  More on that later.

So we took off Saturday morning and arrived at our hotel on the west side at about 11:00am.  About 15 minutes out, we got a call from Eileen, Ben's sister, telling us there was an issue.  The power was out in our hotel, and they had no idea how long it would last.  Huge storms and tornadoes had gone through Missouri the night before and St. Louis had some damage, primarily on the side of town where we were staying.  We didn't see any damage until we about 5 minutes out.  They started calling places we wanted to go to see if it was the whole city or just sections, and then started calling other hotels.  We finally found one with 3 available rooms and booked it.  Luckily the other attractions all had power so we were good to go.

We ate lunch at 5 Star Burgers in Clayton, which, well if you like burgers, go.  Best bison burger of my life.  Then we headed out to the Anheuser-Busch brewery to do the tour.  We then had plans to go to the Arch, although you couldn't pay me to go up it again.  People with motion sickness should not go up that thing.  Then we planned to hit the City Museum and get dinner while hopefully catching the Bruins game.  The brewery tour was great!  The highlight for sure is seeing the Clydesdales. 

Those horses are magnificent.  They are ginormous and absolutely gorgeous.  We did the tour and ended up in the tasting room at the end when plans got a little, um, messed up.  My friend was letting our dog Ollie out while we were gone, and she called, panicked, because Ollie had pushed the gate to our fence open and made a break for it.  He ran to the woods around our neighborhood, and she saw him go through the creek.  Then that was it. She couldn't find him.  So Ollie is my baby which means I was internally freaking out.  He also won't listen to anyone but Ben or me.  It took us quite awhile to even earn his trust, and we knew he wouldn't come to anyone else calling him.  After some panic, a few tears in the tasting room (just a few--I was trying hard to stay stoic and respectable), and giving them about a half hour to look, we decided we needed to head home.  So we started the 2 hour drive back.  Ben's family decided to come too so we had to cancel our 2nd hotel room of the day.  That drive was not what I would call fun.  I was trying to stay positive--of course we would find him.  But there was also that part of me that couldn't help but worry that I would never see him again.

To make a long story short and sweet, about 15 minutes away from Columbia, we got a call from a neighbor that he was in their fenced-in back yard.  We have no idea how he got in there, but it looks a lot like our house so we think he thought he was in his backyard.  My friend went and got him, and he was waiting when we pulled in our drive.  That nutter.  He was soaking wet and covered in burrs but seemed to be quite happy.  I felt horrible for Christy, and I was a bit emotionally on edge.  So our plans changed quite a bit.  I am just so glad he is okay!!  And so that's the rest of the story.