Home Again

We had a great vacation this year, and actually missed all of the crap Gustav decided to dish out to our area. We left Saturday morning after staying up until 3:30 trying to get all the last minute things done. We didn't want to cancel our bi-weekly gaming session, but we had planned to cut it short and end at 10. Yeah right. No one left until 1 something. At one point I was ironing clothes and playing at the same time. I'm all about the multi-tasking. The worst thing was that I forgot to finish my church stuff so I had to work on that after everyone left! But it all worked out and God blessed us with plenty of energy for the drive.

Saturday, we met my brother at his apartment, and rode with him to go out to the cemetery to visit my sister-in-law, Sherina. That day would have been her 35th birthday. It's still hard to believe that she's been gone for 3 years now. She will always be loved and missed. We left there and went to visit her mom since she wanted to see me. We haven't seen her since Sherina's funeral, but we've kept in touch. We had a nice visit with her before heading back to my brother's apartment. Then it was time to head out to Little Elm since we were going to stay with my brother's girlfriend, Janet, for a couple of days. This was cool with us since I'm trying to get to know her a lot more since she's making me an aunt in a few months. I can't wait!!! My bro took us all out to Carrabba's for dinner, and it was so yummy. I haven't had good Italian in ages. We were pretty lazy Sunday, and slept late before getting up to a nice brunch prepared by Janet. I finally got to eat at Cold Stone Creamery that day too. I'm glad I don't have one around here because that stuff would be a huge addiction for me. Fun times! Monday was another laid back day with some shopping in Frisco, and an awesome dinner at Uncle Julio's afterward. That place is amazing. Yummy fire roasted salsa with a nice amount of cilantro, tender marinated fajita beef taco, creamy, cheesy chicken enchiladas, and great chili rellenos. Everything was top notch from the service all the way through to dessert. I will definitely return when we go back to Dallas later this year.

Tuesday we left Janet's and headed out to the Natural Science museums. We spent several hours just exploring all sorts of cool stuff from Egyptian history to dinosaurs to hands-on exhibits. Yes, we are big ole' nerds, and I can't wait to go places like this when we have some kiddos in the house.
Wednesday was our actual anniversary, we struggled through the crappy parking and ultra busy streets of downtown Dallas to get to the Crow Collection of Asian Art. All of the bitching and screaming about trying to find a parking spot and the over priced parking was worth it to see that amazing collection of art. They had art from the 15th Dynasty all the way to the present day. That night we got all dressed up and headed out to dinner at a fabulous Indian restaurant, Taj Mahal. The food was divine. We had a wonderful anniversary.
Unfortunately it was time for us to head home on Thursday. We had a list of places we wanted to go by to shop at on our way home. We went by a cool comic shop and then an anime shop too. We went to Penzey's, and were like kids in a candy shop. That place is a cook's paradise. We finally got to smell and sample all kinds of spices that I had been looking at in their catalog for a while. I can't wait to use the tandoori and vindaloo spices that we got. Hopefully we can start making our own Indian foods to hold us over between visits to Dallas. We stopped off at a small Chinese food restaurant that was in the same shopping center as Penzey's for lunch, and I'm so glad that we did. That place was inexpensive and gave us a delicous meal.

We took our time getting home since we didn't know if we had lights or not. The lights had been out in our neighborhood for a couple of days at that point. Thankfully when we got home they had been on for a couple of hours. But we still lost a bunch of food which sucks. We didn't have a bunch of damage but, I'll call our insurance agent next week to have someone come out and look. There's no reason not to since our insurance will probably go up next year just like it did after Katrina. But all in all we faired pretty good, and all of our family and friends are good which is a blessing.

I did learn something new. My heithen ass cat can not be left alone in the house. That orange demon broke a bunch of my stuff, and I am still pissed off about it. Thank God he didn't get to the majority of my angel collection because I probably would have given him away at that point. I have a lot of angels that mean a lot to me because they represent my pregnancy, my daughter, and my sister-in-law. I kept them on the highest shelves I have in the hopes that he won't get up to them. He's learned how to jump on the kitchen counters too. I spent my first hour or so home cleaning up his messes. At least he kept his crap in his litter box. I have now disinfected my counter tops and everything on them several times and will keep doing that until I've broken him of that habit.

Ok, I think this post is long enough so I will shut up for now. Here's a link to all the pic I took on our trip.

http://picasaweb.google.com/AshleyD2005/3rdAnniversaryTrip#

Damn, I need to get ready for work tomorrow. Bye :(