It's Christmas! Day 5: Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis

Today is my birthday! I know as adults (especially ones with children), we tend to not really think about ourselves on our birthdays. That's why I love having a December birthday. When I was a kid, I didn't like it that much because I felt like Christmas always outshined my day. People were always busy and didn't have time to celebrate with me. Family members would give me a gift "for Christmas AND my birthday". It just never felt special. Now that I'm older, I choose to see it as an ongoing celebration of life and I'm lucky enough to have everyone celebrating with me (even if they don't know it). Ok, now that you're all in on the celebrating with me, let's get back to why you're here.

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

For my birthday this year, my husband took me on a little one-night trip to St. Louis. We only live a couple hours away, so we visit here frequently. One day in November, I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw that a friend of mine posted about the Missouri Botanical Gardens hosting the Garden Glow again this year. I thought it looked like a blast, so I signed up my family to attend.

There are different ticket types for this event. On weekends and the couple of weeks during Christmas and New Years, tickets are a little more expensive. There is also a family day (on Wednesdays) where kids tickets are much cheaper. For our family, however, it worked out for us to go on a Thursday night, which fell on a “Merry and Bright Bargain Night”. Our tickets cost us $18 per adult and $10 per child. When you purchase tickets, you choose a time to enter. We chose a 7pm to 7:15pm entry time.

We knew ahead of time that there would be opportunities to pick up hot chocolate, s’mores, and other food throughout the Gardens. We got some s’mores to roast. It was great to take a little break by the fire.

My husband and I were really excited to try some of the specialty drinks. There was the Tree Topper (Fireball hot chocolate) which is what my husband got, Cozy Caroler (Amaretto hot chocolate), Snowed In (Peppermint hot chocolate) which is what I got and it was delicious with the peppermint schnapps, and the Merry Manhattan (whiskey, vermouth, bitters, and holiday spiced simple syrup). I even got a light up mug for my drink.

Covid safety is important to my family so we were pleased to see a statement on their website explaining their health and safety guidelines. Their rules included social distancing from people not your party, providing hand sanitizing stations, requiring everyone to wear a face covering, increasing the frequency and intensity of cleaning surfaces, limiting trash cans to limit touch surfaces, having health screenings for their employees, and adding plexiglass to their sales counters. Overall, we only noticed one person not wearing a mask (who we stayed far away from). So we felt pretty safe.

We had a great time! The lights were gorgeous. And we definitely recommend a trip if you get the chance.