NOLA

Well I finally made my first trip to New Orleans. It was a really, really quick trip. Our friend was meeting his mom there to pick up his dog. So he invited us to ride along with him. We left early Saturday morning and we had terrible rainy weather the way there. It took about 6 hours to finally reach the city. We got all checked into our hotel and made our way down to ACME Oysters. Everyone raved about the chargrilled oysters and poboys. I ate 3 oysters and that was plenty for me. They weren't as bad as I had envisioned, but they definitely won't become a staple in my diet. While we were at ACME our friends from Houston happened to be in town so they met us for lunch. After lunch we had plans to visit the aquarium (I can never pass up an aquarium, something about them I love), but it closed at 5:00pm and the last ticket was sold at 4:30pm so we would have never been able to make it. So instead we took a much needed nap at the hotel.
We decided we needed a nice dinner out so we made plans at Emeril's New Orleans. It was delicious. The cheesy grits were to die for and I don't even like grits. After dinner we hit up Harrah's so I could get my gambling fix. I was doing pretty well for awhile and instead of cashing out while I was ahead I ended up loosing all my money. I tracked Al down and he was up about $15 so he let me take over for him. I ended up loosing all his money too. Good thing we set limits or I would have gone crazy and lost a lot more than $40. We ventured down the street to Hard Rock to get Al a shirt and a hat. We saw some drunk guy get arrested, so that was interesting.
The next morning we headed to the world famous Cafe du Monde for beingets (french donuts). They were delicious. We wandered around the Mississippi River and back into town and met up with Ron and his cousins and took the street cars up and down St. Charles street. The old homes were absolutely gorgeous. I could have looked at them all day. After that we had to leave good 'ole NOLA. I definitely want to go back there seems like a lot more to do to see. Also, we managed to escape with out being mugged. We probably had 30 people tell us to take taxis everywhere and watch everyone around us. Overall it was a really fun trip. I'll post pics when I get home.

Happy Anniversary to Us

September 4, 2009 brought our 5th anniversary. I can't believe we've been married for 5 years. It seems the older we get the more time flies by. The night of our anniversary we went out to dinner at Carino's. It wasn't very exciting, but we brought our friends Marianne and Blake with us. We did a small dinner because we were leaving early, early the next morning for our cruise. I LOVE you tons and tons and millions, Allen. Here's to many more years together.

Hunter Turns 2

It's no SECRET we Love our dog, Hunter. So last year I decided that if I didn't have a baby or was preggo by the time Hunter turned 2 we would throw him a party. Well August came and I was having no luck in the baby department so Hunter got a birthday party. Every year we have an end of the summer bbq, so this year if tied in to Hunt's birthday (we don't really know when his birthday is since he's a rescue pup). Al preferred to call the event out Summer BBQ, he thought it was dumb to have a dog party. We sent out evites and invited our friends to bring all their dogs. I thought it would be fun to fill up our little pool and have dog toys all over. The toys were a great idea, but the pool was a really bad one. The dogs kept tracking water all over the floor. I finally decided all dogs had to stay outside and the pool had to be emptied. We got Hunter the cutest baseball birthday cake (he was named after Hunter Pence who plays baseball for the Astros). It was adorable. We also got carob dipped milk bones and a little goody box of treats and toys for all his puppy guests.

Trey was the only one who got into wearing the birthday hats. We had hotdogs and some other dog friendly food. I think Hunter enjoyed having all the dogs over to play. By the end of the night we was worn out. Overall it was a great day with friends.

Where to start?

I often do things and think oh I need to blog about this, then I never end up blogging and then I forget all the fun things we have done. So thinking back on the last couple of months I feel like I've had something every weekend to do, but now none of it seems to exciting or blog worthy. So this will be a short blog update.

Happy Birthday to Me

Well I turned the big 28 this past weekend. I don't really know how I feel about 28 yet. I thought I'd be further along with my life, but what can you do. For my birthday we met up with some friends and headed over to New Braunfels, TX (outside of San Antonio). We floated down the Comal River. This year it was so, so crowded. We had to wait almost 2 hours just to get a tube. It hasn't rained in over 30 days, I know that's not too long for you west coasters, but here it is a really big deal. The river was pretty low and I think we all got our bums scratched by the big rocks, but it was really fun. It was a really long, hot day. Then Al and I and our very best Houston friends went up to San Antonio to celebrate a little more. Al and I celebrated my birthday and Jeff and Cindy celebrated their first real break from their kids. We met up at Boudros (my most favorite restaurant in San Antonio) for dinner and it was absolutely delicious. Then we wandered the Riverwalk for a little while, but we were all exhausted from the day, so we headed back to our hotels and we crashed. Then Sunday, Al and I went to the Quarry, it's a really nice outside shopping area that we like to visit. We had some lunch, caught a movie, and headed back to Houston. It was a great weekend. I'll post pictures of the river later, but here we are at dinner.

Sandcastle Competition 2009

A few weeks ago we went to Galveston Island's Sandcastle competition. We weren't too sure if they were going to actually hold the competition this year because a lot of sand was washed away after the hurricane and the beaches were left pretty barren. But, they had one this year and we were really excited. We got a really late start, so we decided to go hang out at the beach and then we would head over to the other end of the island and check out the competition. We had a great time relaxing and swimming. We then went down to the competition and had to wait in line for nearly an hour to get in, eventhough the competition was already over. This year, "green" was the theme and they didn't get to use generators to pump the water. They were a lot smaller than usual, but still most of them were cool. They have a couple different catagories such as: traditional castle, world events, entertainment, etc. Here's some pictures of our favorites.

Our Favorite Sunday Activity

Is napping....