Happy Father's Day!! — Patti Part Two

Just a shout out to my Dad and all the great Dad's I know! Hope you are having a fun and relaxing day! It's so great that Father's Day happens during the summer. Who doesn't love a great barbecue or my favorite - a huge bowl of fruit salad!!

During the summer I make this for myself every week and manage to eat it all in record time!

This week I took a work road trip over to St Louis for a meeting. I used to make that drive frequently because Keeley went to college, grad school and worked there for a couple years post school. Consequently I have a few favorite restaurants I was happy to have the opportunity to eat at again.

Homemade turkey and dumpling soup and a chicken strawberry salad with a delicious pretzel roll on day one. As good as I remember!

After the day of meetings my manager treated the team to a Cardinal game at the beautiful Busch Stadium. It's always fun as St Louis loves their Cardinals! The stadium is right downtown so the atmosphere is very energized.

Here's the great team I am fortunate to be a part of:

Unfortunately the temperature was over 100 degrees and that is hot!! So we sought out some AC and decent food and wine at a place just outside the field and watched the first 7 innings there! I swear we watched - tons of big TV's! We headed back to our seats for the last 2 innings. Unfortunately we couldn't bring them any luck for a win but we still enjoyed the time together.

Day Two we wrapped the meeting up by lunch and headed to another of my favorite spots - PI. Wonderful salads and pizza - in fact they have opened a location in Washington DC because it is President Obama's favorite pizza - and he's from Chicago!! There are also 4 locations now in St Louis - we ate at the new downtown spot.

We couldn't decide whether to get thick or thin so we got both!

On our drive back to KC my teammate Traci and I treated ourselves to a quick stop at a wonderful upscale outlet mall in Chesterfield. It's called St Louis Premium outlets and it was great! UGG, Kate Spade, Vera Bradley, Sperry, J Crew, Polo, Michael Kors to name just a few. Worth a trip across the state I believe! Made a work trip a little more fun for sure.

Saturday morning did another good 7 mile run thanks to my running friends and then lots of laughs at the Brookside Panera. What a great way to start a day! On my way home I stopped at a new place on the plaza the girls told me they knew I would love to pick up something for lunch. It's called T. Loft and they now have 3 locations in KC and 1 in Lawrence. It's a Health Cafe so everything there is very healthy and gluten free. Low calorie AND delicious. So I decided to give it a try and I was not disappointed. I had the Kalifornia Cobb Salad and that is not a typo. It had kale, spinach, turkey, avocado, tomatoes, cucumber and blue cheese. They have hot food, salads, egg dishes, fruit and grain bowls and delicious protein balls. I have had the protein balls as often they have a booth of samples post race. So delicious!!!

My next post will be from Bend Oregon!!! I am so excited to return and enjoy the fabulous mountains, Deschutes River, cool laid back town of Bend and spend time with my fabulous college friends! Just thinking about it puts me in a happy peaceful place. And then I will be moving on to Seattle so hoping to get some great pictures posted here and share them with all of you!

Hope you are making every day a great one and saying YES more often!!!