Recently in Weekend Category

This is what I did on Friday when I got home from work: left my hat on and jumped in the Snuggie that Alex gave me for Christmas. Laugh if you will, but that thing is warm! In fact, it was about the only warm thing I experienced on Friday. Outside? Below freezing with a windchill that dropped into the single digits at least a couple times. In my office? Cold enough that I had to pause in my work every few minutes to sit on my hands and warm them up. (Unfortunately that trick doesn't work for toes.)

Even our house is on the chilly side. We simply can't get it above 68-70 degrees in the living/dining/kitchen great room, which is a fine temperature when we're cooking or moving around, but kinda chilly when we're relaxing on the couch watching TV. Either one of our heaters is not operating very efficiently, or it's just too big of a space to successfully heat when it's this cold outside. I'm hoping it's the former, since neither of our heaters has never actually been checked out. When we closed on the house in July, the inspector wasn't able to test the two heating units since the outside temperature was too high. (In a funny twist, one of my coworkers is buying a house and his inspector wasn't able to test the air conditioning this week because the outside temperature was too LOW.)

Add that to the list of things I need to call our home warranty about, along with the mystery of our constantly tripping circuit breakers.

On the plus side, our second heater unit seems to be working well -- the bedrooms and the bonus room are quite toasty!

So, Becca ended up with an 18-pound turkey -- for free! -- from the grocery store. She didn't actually cook on Thanksgiving, but she did defrost it. It was going to go to waste if it didn't get cooked soon, which meant there was only one reasonable solution: Thanksgiving, Part 2! There were 8 people who decided they wanted in for more turkey and assorted goodies so we all ate to our heart's delight at Becca's house.

We even had pecan pie that was FLOWN IN from Angleton after Jason and Debbie decided they'd take a little jaunt down there in an airplane. The restaurant at the airport there is known for it's pie. And it was quite delicious.

Cari, Becca, Cari's stepmom, and Jason dig in!

Jose and Debbie enjoying some yumminess.

I made sweet potatoes. My sweet potatoes are extremely delicious, if I do say so myself. It's one of the only things I make without using a recipe. I just keep adding stuff until they taste right. :)

A couple weeks ago, Jose and I were up late one night and he spotted a commercial on TV for the Houston Zoo's Feast with the Beasts, a big fall fundraising event that they started in 2006. This year's event was on Friday night. We had never heard of it but it looked like fun, so even though the tickets were a bit pricey, we decided to check it out and scooped up a couple tickets.

Turns out, Feast with the Beasts was awesome! I don't think I've ever been to the Houston Zoo -- if I have, it was at least a decade ago -- so that in itself was fun. As soon as we walked in, we were handed our two drink tickets for use at the bar, and fifty different restaurants from all over Houston were set up in tents handing out samples of some of their best food. We certainly didn't make it to all fifty tents, but the ones we had were quite tasty. My favorites were seafood risotto from Crapitto's Cucina Italiana, butternut squash risotto and a cream puff from Masraff's, and beef and mushroom empenadas from America's -- but really everything was good. Even though we were eating bite-sized portions, I was stuffed after an hour.

While we were eating, we also got to wander around the zoo and check out some of the animals. I loved the elephants, but we also got to watch both a komodo dragon and a lion enjoy their dinner (for each, dinner was a whole turkey). Around 9:30, the restaurant tents started packing up and we headed over to the stage. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was the entertainment for the evening. I used to listen to them years ago, and it was fun to hear them live. They were great.

All in all, it was a SUPER fun evening and we will definitely be going again next year.

I must apologize in advance because the photos are CRAPPY with a capital C, thanks to a combination of my point and shoot and the darkness.

The baby elephant was very entertaining as the trainers took him through his tricks.

The komodo dragon was HUGE.

Tents were set up all around the zoo.

Yum, turkey dinner.

The weirdest food item of the night -- cupcakes with maple icing and a piece of BACON.

The weekend was packed with activity. It was also packed with more gorgeous weather. I must say that I am a fan of the recent trend here, which involves cold fronts passing through on Thursday or Friday and leaving us with cool temperatures and cloudless skies for the weekend.

First there was Friday night, which we spent grilling kebabs and carving pumpkins over at Gavin and Jen's. The jack-o-lanterns all turned out really well. I'm partial to my scary face (second from left) because I'm a traditionalist and like scary faces. But I've got to admit that Jen's witch silhouette looks really, really cool...and Jose's grim reaper got compliments from some of the trick-or-treaters that came to our house. Even Becca's bats look pretty awesome, especially considering she seemed to have exactly zero clue about how to carve a pumpkin. That was amusing, to say the least.

Halloween was pretty relaxing overall. We got our first trick-or-treaters just after 6:00. The sun went down at 7:00 and for the next hour we handed out candy to a steady stream of witches, princesses, football players, ninjas, and other assorted characters. Jose bought about 6 bazillion pounds of candy, so we just dumped it all in a bowl and let the kids choose what they wanted. It was hilarious to see their reactions. Some of them would just take a couple pieces. Some of them would look at my suspiciously and ask "how many pieces can I have?" as if it was some kind of trick. And of course there were a few kids who dove into the bowl with two hands to grab as much as they could possibly hold.

It was fun to guess all the costumes and see all the cute little kids. I even got compliments from a 4-year-old on my red sparkly devil horns. By 8:30, things had pretty much wrapped up since all the kids in our neighborhood are middle school or younger, and we spent the rest of the night hanging out at John and Kelly's house.

We spent a good portion of yesterday at Wings Over Houston. The flying was great and the weather was fantastic, but overall it was only a so-so year at the airshow. The traffic was a NIGHTMARE. We left the house more than an hour later than we'd planned, and it took us an hour to get parked -- and that was despite our slighty underhanded flouting of the directional signs that saved us a bunch of time. Then I was turned back at the gate because I had my camera backpack -- bags are allowed, but no backpacks. This was frustrating because 1) I had specifically looked on the website prior to going, and did not see anything saying no backpacks and 2) once we got in, I saw dozens of other people walking around WITH BACKPACKS, including one person with the exact same photo backpack I tried to carry in. So the guy at our gate was apparently just on a power trip. I ended up slinging my camera around my neck and carrying it around like that.

By the time we actually got through the gate, both Jose and I were frustrated and grumpy so we just plopped our chairs down straight ahead of the gate by the runway. We had originally planned to find Jason, Debbie, Byron, and Becca but we didn't feel like searching the crowd, so sorry guys! But we did almost trip over John and Kelly while we were walking to get some food, and they ended up moving their chairs over to where we had set up camp.

Traffic on the way out was just as bad as it had been on the way in and it took another hour to get home. On top of that, I don't think I got many great photos, but of course that's not the airshow's fault. I'll post a full set of photos once I have time to go through them sometime this week.

October is really a packed month in Houston with so many fun events going on. The Bayou City Art Festival, Ballunar Festival, and Wings Over Houston were all in the same four-week span! The next few weeks should be more low-key leading up to...the STS-129 launch on November 16!

The annual Ballunar Festival was this weekend. The organizers really did themselves a favor a few years ago when they moved it from August to October -- the weather is a thousand times more pleasant, although wind was a problem this year.

Meryl and James made the trek down to Clear Lake and the four of us went over on Saturday night. We got a little caught up in the traffic, but finally got parked right as the balloons were flying over. There weren't that many in the air; I've seen many more in years past. It was the wind, again.

After sunset, they began inflating a field of tethered balloons for the balloon glow. It was fun to watch them inflate the balloons. A good team can get them up really quickly, using a fan at first to begin the inflation, then moving to the burner when the balloon is larger.

"Um, is that the BUTT of the Energizer bunny?"

"Why yes, I believe it is."

"Hmm ... They really should have turned him around."

"Why yes, they should have."

I didn't take my "good" camera, so these photos are all from my point and shoot. My first photo of the "all burn" was overexposed, but still cool. The all burn is my favorite part of the balloon glow.

We found Gavin and Carina and talked to them for a while too. Carina seemed to like the balloons, although I have to say she seemed to like her hot dog and the idea of going back on the "spinny ride" more.

Gavin took precautions to make sure Carina didn't get lost -- and if she did, her name and phone number were conveniently taped to the back of her shirt. Though this actually seems like a good idea, I still had to laugh. It was funny.

The balloon glow went on for a while. Some balloons definitely glow better than others -- warm colors like red and orange and yellow looked particularly bright and beautiful.

After the glow, we headed over to BJ's for dinner. It was fun to have Meryl and James come down for the day (they got to see our house and watch some of the Penn State game before we headed to the festival).

Saturday and Sunday were pretty much the best days in the history of Houston.

Now, I know I've "only" lived here for 7 years (or 12 years -- it depends on how you count), but I feel confident in stating that it was the best weekend of all time. We didn't do anything particularly special, but the weather was completely GORGEOUS which made it nearly impossible to stay inside. We even opened our windows for the first time since it was nicer outside than it was in the house.

On Saturday morning, we tackled the yardwork. Jose mowed both the front and back while I edged. He mowed BOTH yards in the time it took me to edge the front. Edging was HARD. This is probably because the lawn was long overdue, and I was forcing the edger to cut through huge clumps of grass. But I persisted, and in the end I prevailed.

(For the record, I think -- I hope! -- that it will be easier next time, now that the edging has been done and the little "ditch" between the concrete and the grass has been created.)

After we mowed, edged, and finally got around to spraying the flowerbeds with weed killer, Jose had the brilliant idea to wash our cars! Washing cars was the perfect activity to keep us outside for another hour, plus it was just fun.

Please note the neatly edged lawn visible in both those photos. Thankyouverymuch.

Yesterday we took advantage of the weather by going for a run. This in itself is not unusual, but consider that we were able to run at noon and it wasn't even uncomfortable! I did 2 miles with Jose, followed by another 2+ miles on my own. Last night when I wondered why my skin felt warm, I realized that I'd actually gotten a bit of sunburn. In October! So I've got to remember to use the sunscreen even now.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing, but also spent a couple hours browsing a few of the furniture stores around Clear Lake. We're in search of a round coffee table to replace the one in our living room that was great when we just had a 3-person couch, but is too large to fit with our U-shaped sectional. We didn't have much luck, so the search will continue.

We had dinner over at John and Kelly's on Saturday night, with cooking courtesy of Melissa and Matt. I couldn't help but giggle every time Matt opened the grill to check on these two beer can chickens, because they just looked hilarious. They turned out quite tasty, as did Melissa's pasta salad, green beans and FRESH blueberry pie. Yummo. (According to Melissa, the first thing she wanted to do now that HTV is at the space station and her life can return to relative normalcy was "cook and bake." I was only too happy to help consume the results.)

Other than that, it felt like we spent the entire weekend running errands. Seriously, I have no idea how our to do list ended up with that many items, but we spend at least 3-4 hours both Saturday and Sunday running all over Clear Lake. There were stops at Lowe's (we need to kill both weeds in the flowers beds and fire ants in the backyard), the grocery store (no matter what we do, we can't get out of there without spending a small fortune), Jared's (my rings have to be inspected every 6 months or the warranty lapses), World Market (to complete the set of chairs for our dining room table), and a variety of other quick stops. I normally love running errands, but by yesterday I was pretty ready to just sit on the couch.

Thankfully we enjoyed a lovely ending to the weekend. Jose baked some salmon steaks using a new rub he got at the market in Seattle and they were AWESOME. Seriously, it was perhaps the best salmon I've ever had, and I'm amazed that it came out of our kitchen. A yummy dinner and a few hours of watching TV after that, and I was a satisfied girl.

This weekend was very fun. We spent Friday night laptop-shopping for Jose, whose 5-year-old laptop was on the verge of complete exhaustion when you asked it to perform simple tasks like open a web browser or sync an iPhone. After reconnaissance at Fry's and Best Buy, we decided to sleep on it and spent the rest of the evening playing Wii over at Kelly and John's house. They had a game called Raving Rabbits, or something, that was quite entertaining. There was also much Mario Karting.

Saturday was an almost exact repeat of Friday. We went out to run a few errands, including a stop at Lowe's where we picked up pretty much every paint sample brochure (the "idea" booklets with pictures of various colors in various rooms) they had. Yes, the first week in our house will be a painting party. We headed from there to Fry's where we bought Jose a Fujitsu laptop will a 500 gb hard drive and 4 gb of RAM, as well as many other specs that we investigated but I don't feel like writing down. In comparison, my Dell laptop, which I bought 4 years ago for twice the price, has a 40 gb hard drive and came with 1 gb of RAM. It is really amazing how quickly computers improve.

After getting a new computer, it was tough to pull Jose away from it (now I know how he feels about me sometimes!), but we did end up back at Kelly and John's again to grill some steaks and -- you guessed it -- play a lot more Wii.

We finished the weekend last night in Galveston to celebrate Jason's birthday. We ate Greek food at a place on the seawall, then played a round of mini golf. Jose won with a 13-over-par score of 49. Let's just say we are not the kings of mini golf by any means. Much fun was had playing with a giant kooky dragon. Oh, and Jason got eaten by a snake. Perhaps not the ideal thing to happen to a birthday boy, but that's how it goes.

It was a busy, busy weekend and I have the pictures to prove it!

On Friday Jose and I skipped out of work a little early to go see our foundation! They poured it that morning and by the time we got there, the top was already hard enough to step on. (We only stepped on the patio, just to be safe.) It is completely amazing to me how fast things have started to happen. One Friday we discovered they had broken ground on the house, and a mere week later, we have a foundation! I can't wait to see the framing start.

They also poured the driveway and part of the front sidewalk. There area few more photos on Flickr if you're interested, but I understand that no one is as interested as I am. :)

We left the house and immediately hit the road to Corpus Christi for the holiday weekend. We spent more time at Jose's aunt Dalia's house that we did at his mom's house, thanks to all the events planned. His aunts hosted a bridal shower for me on Saturday afternoon and that was a lot of fun. Unfortunately some of his cousins had to work, but we still had a good time playing games, eating a HUGE cake, and opening presents. I had to wear a veil and corsage that his aunt Mary made -- I was very impressed with her craftiness! We got some great things for our house, but it made me wonder -- what are the rules on using wedding gifts before the wedding? Can we use kitchen stuff now or do we have to wait until we're married?

Playing bridal bingo

I even let Jose open some of the presents. He was not entirely forgotten either -- his aunt Ami gave him a manly tool kit. :)

Our "loot" from the shower -- Jose has a very generous family :)

We stayed over at Dalia's house for the rest of the day and the rest of the family eventually arrived to help finish off the cake and snacks from the shower. Later that night, we met a couple of Jose's high school friends at a hookah place. That was a new experience. It was interesting, but fun to see his friends again and meet one of them for the first time.

Sunday of course was Easter, which meant another huge family gathering. (My small family is going to be overwhelmed by Jose's giant family at the wedding, I think!) There was tons of yummy barbecue to eat -- pork, chicken, and beef -- along with beans and rice and potato salad and lots of dessert. Jose and I had to get on the road back to Houston, so Jose and his brother spearheaded an effort to get the cascarones (confetti-filled eggs) started early so we could participate before heading home. Confetti filled the air and it was lots of fun.

Some of Jose's cousins with some significant others thrown in for fun

I don't know why I'm frowning at the beginning of this video. I look mad, but I wasn't! I think I had just been looking down to see how much confetti I had attracted so far. There is now confetti in my car, and when I took a shower this morning confetti came out of my hair.

It was a most excellent weekend.