...15 1/2 hours later and on Saturday, Sept 29th, we touched down in H-Town. It had been about 9 months since we had stepped foot in the states. It was good be home, love Houston! Our wonderful friend Patrick, whom we love dearly and one of Eric's best friends for a long time and a friend I've known almost as long as I've known Eric, picked us up from the airport, what a nice guy :) And took us straight to Chuys (ohemgee, I missed Mexican food) to meet up for a big family dinner! We arrived early and enjoyed about 5 baskets of chips with salsa, queso, and creamy jalapeno ranch dips, I'm salivating just thinking about it...mmmm...and a couple margaritas for me and pacifico's for Eric. It's just so good once it hits your lips! Patrick stayed with us through apps and dinner, and Eric's brother, Steven, arrived shortly after we did to join us. We finally took our seat and the whole family showed up. My parents, my brother and his girlfriend, and my Grandpa then Eric's Dad, step mom, her sister and family, and his brother, and of course Patrick :) It was a really good time. I'd say the company and the food were on about equal standings...I mean it had been 9 months since we'd had Mexican and 9 months since we'd seen the family ;) It was a fun night and we really enjoyed seeing everyone all together like that. It doesn't really happen that often.
(what a great looking bunch :) )
After dinner we went back to Patrick's house and Steve joined us there. He stopped at his house first and showed up in the tuxedo bachelor party shirt from Eric's bachelor party and the bottle of whisky Eric had engraved for him as a best man gift...he brought it all out since it had been 5 years and another groomsmen (Patty) was there as well. We had a really great night, stayed up way too late and woke up way too early for my liking, but we had places to be and people to see. But, before all that I made us all breakfast stromboli...for those that have not been privileged to try this breakfast of mine, I am sorry for you because it is awesome, that is all. :) And no breakfast stromboli morning is complete without mimosas! YUM!! Our busy day started at Patricks, then took us to our old house :`( ...or right next door to it to see Drew and Rachel. The best neighbors ever, so sad to have left them, but it was good to see them. I hadn't realized how much I missed Rachel until I saw her again. We spent some quality time with those guys until it was time to leave and head to Eric's dad's house to see them and watch the Texans game. We hung out with them for a little bit before we had to take off from there to my parents house for dinner and to stay the night. Jet lag caught up with Eric here, unfortunately. He fell asleep on the couch about 6:00pm, woke up for dinner, tried to make conversation and proceeded to fall asleep again on the couch afterwards, claiming my parents must spray lavender on their couches, lol. I didn't make it too much longer after dinner either, so we called it a night. Unfortunately for me, shortly after trying to go to bed my internal clock flipped and decided I should be awake :( I basically got no sleep that night, Eric woke up about 1am wide awake and we chatted a bit and watched some tv and he eventually fell back asleep leaving me wide awake still. We had like a 7am flight that morning for Orlando to go see his mom, so eventually I just got up and got ready to go.
(check out the dust on that bottle, it's been sitting for 5 years!)
The first day of October was started with no sleep and a trip to the airport. We left the house about 4:45am and headed for the airport to go see Eric's mom in Orlando. She picked us up from the airport and greeted us each with big huge hugs :) It was really good to see her. We went from there to a great spot for lunch a little over an hour away. It was a little bar and grill with a deck on a lake. Man was it nice to sit outside and enjoy a meal without sweating my ass off! I miss fall weather. Right under the dock are a couple little crocodiles that hang out, they were there just chilling like normal, kinda cool. Lunch was really nice and we stayed there chatting and hanging for a couple hours probably, then took off to hang at his moms and see his Grandpa who came over later for dinner and to watch the Bears monday night football game. Dinner was amazing. First off, his mom cooks for like 10 people when she makes food, even though there was only going to be 4 of us for dinner, lol. It's great though, always fantastic leftovers!! We had rib eye's the size of your face probably and cooked to perfection, so good. I forgot how good American beef is, the Australian beef we get here just isn't the same. Nothing compares. We also had potatoes and a massive caprese salad. It was all so good. We watched a bit of the game and fell asleep early again, damn jet lag! At least I actually got some sleep this time though! woohoo!
The next morning his mom put together an awesome breakfast. Bagels, cream cheese, tomatoes, onion, and lox...mouth watering delicious. If you can't tell by the way I'm describing all my meals I really miss the food from back home. And of course no great breakfast spread is complete without the mimosas! :) After we stuffed our faces we headed to Sea World! Yay! We had a blast at Sea World. Got to pet the sting rays, see the dolphins, turtles, this really cool 3D sea turtle movie, a wild arctic helicopter simulation ride, sharks, the sea lion show, I got to feed some sea lions, we rode a roller coaster and last but not least of course we saw the Shamu show! The roller coaster was legit. At first you get in it, pull the harness down and your feet are dangling in the air, and then each row swings backward and your back in now closest to the rail and you are facing the ground. You ride whole thing like that, crazy! So fun. After our fun outing to Sea World we stopped for a late lunch at a pub and then back to his moms. Eric took off for a bit to see his uncle and I hung with his mom, or at least tried to, I passed out on the couch about 7pm and was done for. I tried to wake up about an hour later and talk, but the gravity was pulling me back down and I was unable to fight it. I felt so bad since it was our last night there, but I seriously couldn't keep my eyes open. Eric came back to the house with his uncle a little after I finally made my way to bed and those two, his mom and grandpa all stayed up late talking and laughing the night away. I woke up every once in a while and heard them all, it was nice to hear, I thought about going out to say hi at one point but thought it best to leave them reminiscing :) It was another early morning, I got up about 3am to get ready to head back to the airport, after making myself another breakfast bagel with all the fixings, I got ready and we took off. Saying goodbyes is always hard, but I'm so glad we were able to spend a couple days with his mom.
The next few days flew by! We had the 6am flight back from Orlando, so we meet Jimmy and Stephanie for breakfast and then Eric played his first round (of many over the next week and a half) of golf at the course, he couldn't wait any longer to play with his boyfriend ;) I stopped by the daycare to see my mom and aunt and uncle and threw in a little shopping all while Eric was golfing. We hung out with our good buddy Jordan and saw Eric's old work colleague and friend, Brian that night for dinner. The next day we stopped to see Eric's dad for a bit and then we made the trek to Sugarland to see our good friends Ty and Jamie!! Love these guys. We went to dinner with them, Mexican food, duh, and stayed the night with them playing games and catching up. In the morning Jamie went and got Shipley's kolaches (thanks, love you!), holy crap were they good. I miss kolaches, they were DELISH!! Can I have another please?? You can ship me one, I'll wait ;) We have now made it to Friday, almost a whole week in the states. I had lunch with Stephanie and Rachel and their kiddos, it was nice to catch up with them and get a little girl time. I squeezed in a little more shopping while I was at it too :) After I picked up Eric we headed to midtown to a cool new bar called Celtic Garden to meet Mary, a work friend who is moving out here next year. We wanted to chat and tell her how great it is out here and the kinds of things she should bring, passing down our expat knowledge! Next stop was dinner with my parents at PF Changs, love the lettuce wraps there! YUMMM!
Saturday...Happy 5 year anniversary to us!! October 6th! 5 years before we were saying our I do's, crazy how time flies so fast. It's was a great 5 years and can't wait for all the rest of them! <3 We woke up at my parents house, let me tell you, it's weird staying with my parents again. I haven't spent the night at their house since summer 2004! Geez! But, the wonderful people they are, my mom was making us first breakfast :) After breakfast we headed to Drew and Rachel's house to have second breakfast :D breakfast tacos, mmmmm. We meet there and then took off for the Texas Renaissance Festival, YES! Love it!! We met Patrick and good ole Kyle P. there, who drove down from Austin to see us, yay! We had a fantastic day. I love the Ren Fest. The boys played just about every game you could play there and probably spent $100 doing it, lol. They threw battle axes, knives, tomatoes, darts, the hammer to ring the bell, played bow and arrows, king of the log, and did jacobs ladder, they did it all. We saw some good shows and just had a really good day with some really good friends. Couldn't have asked for a better anniversary day. Afterwards, we headed home to change and get ready for the night. Eric took me to Oceanaire at the Galleria for our dinner. Love this place, they have the BEST macaroni and cheese you will ever put in your mouth, it's to die for. Have I mentioned how much I miss the food back home? sheesh! The tops of our menus said Happy 5th Anniversary, very nice :) After dinner we met Kyle for one last drink and to say goodbye to him. Miss you!
The next morning I dropped Eric off at a super exclusive golf club called Lochinvar. Cameron does a United Way silent auction every year and Eric was apart of a group of guys that won an item to play golf with the CEO of the company at this course. This place is so exclusive that women aren't even allowed on property. It's really hard to find too. There is a driveway leading to a gate, and the only marker on the driveway is an address marker with the number, nothing else, it's a long drive that curves around too, so when you drive by it you can't even see the gated part. You aren't supposed to know it's there unless you know what you are looking for. We drove right by it the first time and finally found it on the way back. We pulled up to the gate, and luckily it was just a box and not a real person, because honestly I'm not sure they would have let me in, but I had to drop Eric off. Eric leaned over me and told them who he was there to play with and they let us right in. I have never felt so out of place being a woman before, I felt like I didn't belong and someone was going to stop me. We drive up and he gets out and there's a guy in a cart waiting on him and gets his bag out of the trunk and the whole bit. Eric says good bye and I'm off. He told me later that they actually said something to him, asking him about me. He told them I wasn't coming back to pick him up that one of the other guys was taking him, they thought that was best. Crazy! Eric had a great time and really enjoyed playing this course. While Eric was off playing I ran a couple errands and met up with Patrick at buffalo wild wings to enjoy some food and some football, being that it was Sunday and all :) I got to see Dan and Sara too for a few minutes when they popped by as well! We spent the night at Patricks again since we were meeting one of my best friends in the morning for a little photo shoot.
We met Rachael at 7:50am in the Woodlands for our shoot. 4 outfit changes and 3 locations later we were all done! It was a lot of fun and Rachael took some amazing photos. We absolutely love them. I'm going to give her a little shout out now, you can check out her web page at http://binfordcreativephotography.com/ !! And here's a couple shots from the shoot...
After the shoot I took Eric to play more golf, what a good wife I am ;) Anyways, this time it was a golf tournament with his friend Mike Henry and the other 2 to fill their foursome an old work colleague, John Holmes and Jimmy. They ended up winning the tournament and got a pretty nice trophy, way to go boys! While all that was going on I spent the whole day with my Rachael!! It was sooooo nice to spend so much time with her and hang with her kiddos too, love all you guys!! We even went to our spot for lunch, Black Walnut Cafe, that place is awesome. They have the best food and their english muffins with the fire roasted salsa is phenomenal. Later Eric and I met up with Steve and his fiance, Malena, to watch the Texans play some monday night football, and they won, GO TEXANS! YAY!!
The next day we had lunch with Eric's dad and step mom, Karina, at Los Cucos. What? More Mexican you say? ummm, hell yeah more Mexican!! Later on we watched his cousin's football practice and left from there to meet Mark and Kim for a bite to eat. Not Mexican this time, pizza! We went back to their place after and Eric and Mark smoked a couple stogies on the patio and I fell asleep on the couch, whoops! Guess I wasn't over the jet lag...the next morning you will never guess what Eric did...nope you are probably wrong, he played golf ;) I had breakfast with Kim and then went and spent a small fortune at Target! holy crap, I needed Eric there to tell me no, lol. Our friend Mary that is coming over in February is letting us put some items in her shipment, so some stuff that you can't really get over here or it's more expensive or whatever we bought some of and put in a box for her to bring for us. After Target I picked Eric up and we headed into town to Niko Niko's for gyros...oh and to see Lydia and Peter!! First off, since a big part of this blog seems to be about food, oh.em.gee. Niko Niko's is amazing. If you haven't been, stop reading and go now! Now that I've wiped off the drool, back to it. Lydia and Peter were home for a bit from Kuwait, where they are expats. I was so happy to learn that we would be home at the same time and I'd get to see Lydia. Love that lady! It was really nice to catch up with them. And nice to talk to some other expats while we were home, because they get it, we are going through the same things and traveling and everything else. They have been in it longer than we have and obviously a different location, but it was really nice and I loved getting to catch up. That night we had a nice family dinner at Eric's families casa and spent the night with them chatting the night away. It was a really nice day.
me and Lydia :)
It's now Thursday, October 11th, this is the day Eric's 3 day Member-Guest Tournament begins at his old course. Only this time, he's the guest of his bf. It's the first time they were able to play this tournament together as it's a member-guest and they were both always members before. They pretty much spent every waking moment together for 3 days. As I wanted no part of having to deal with this and play third place to golf and Jimmy, lol, I high tailed it outta there and went to Chicago! Before I went to the airport though I had lunch with the very pregnant Christine. I'm so happy I got to see her and her baby belly! She looked great and it was nice to get to spend a little time with her, however brief. Can you guess what kind of food we ate?? If you said Mexican, you would be correct, Gringos this time! The pollo marisco is heavenly. I had a good flight and made it into Chicago early evening and hopped on the EL and went to meet my good friend Nicki!! It worked out quite nicely that Eric had this tournament, so it allowed me the time to fly up and see a few of my own friends :) Once at Nicki's I got to see Tommy for a bit and Jordan and Ashley came over to hang out as well and have a girls night in. That would be it for seeing Ashley and Tommy, but thankful I did get to see them! Back in Houston, Eric and Jimmy won the putting contest at the course and the first night was a little stag night with all the other guys and a lot of Eric's friends.
Friday was a busy day. Full of manicures, pedicures, shopping and lunch. What a horrible way to spend a day ;) The weather was also great. It was actually chilly! Nice to have a bit of a change in temp and need a jacket outside!! We took it easy in the afternoon and Jordan and I helped Nicki put together some envelopes for her save the dates. I wanted to be able to help with something wedding related if I could since she asked me to be a bridesmaid :) Wedding is in May, so I should be back in Houston in April prior to the wedding. Later that night we got prettied up and started at a touristy, trendy bar. Jordan and Nicki hadn't been either, and me being in town gave them the excuse they needed to go. We went to Rebar at Trump Tower, it was a nice bar, tasty drinks, pretty too! After that was Roof at the Wit. If you can guess, it's a rooftop bar with a nice view of the city. Next stop was Uncle Fatty's to meet up with a few of Nicki's friends. This bar was a younger crowd and busy and a lot of fun. They had something like a 15 person band on stage. All sorts of instruments, singers, back-up singers, and dancers. They sang all cool 90's music, it was so much fun. Down South Eric and Jimmy had won all of their matches and were playing like pros.
The next morning Nicki dropped me off at the airport and I said my goodbyes to her and to Jordan, missing you ladies! Can't wait to see y'all again :) Won't be long now! My parents picked me up from the airport in Houston and we went to lunch, Ruby Tequila's, yep, more Mexican. I couldn't get enough of it. Gotta enjoy it while you can! Eric and Jimmy had won their first match that morning and so won their flight and were in the finals, or the horserace. So, I went and got ready and had my parents drop me at Stephanie's to hang and wait on the guys to come back so we could all head up to the course for the awards dinner. The boys ended up getting second place in the finals, very cool, and very proud of our men. Since Eric isn't the subtle type, remember that suit I mentioned that Eric had made in Phuket that was ridiculous...this is the event he had the suit made for and the matching one for Jimmy. The suits were a huge hit, and I mean HUGE hit. Everyone loved them and wanted to try on the jackets. I wore a navy dress to match and Steph wore a yellow dress to match...if you are wondering how both of these colors match, see below :) We had a great time at the dinner and I got to see a lot of people, all the husbands and their lovely wives. It was really nice to see all of them again. After the party was the after party for the fun to continue. It was a good night, lets leave it at that ;)
Sunday morning we got up and went out to breakfast at the delicious Harris County Smokehouse. After breakfast we proceeded to get ourselves and the trucks ready to head to Reliant Stadium for a little tailgating and some football. Sunday Night Football against the Packers. No need to discuss the outcome, just everything leading up to it...Tailgating opened and started at 3pm. We had quite a big group, trucks of people piled out and even a party bus! These people are for real. The Mercers brought their awesome pit grill and speakers and had an awesome set up and even better food, provided by them, Gettin' Sauced Cookers! There was food, drinks, beer bongs, jello shots, washers, a tv and music...everything needed for a great tailgate! There was even line dancing in the street, I'm pretty sure only at a tailgate in Texas would you find line dancing in the street, I love it! We went into the game and got to see Lyle Lovett perform the National Anthem, it's always good to hear that in a football stadium, feels like America! The half-time performance was one of the guys from RunDMC and he sang Tricky and Walk this Way, it was pretty good. The Texans however were not. We left at the start of the 4th and went back to the tailgate, when it was all over we helped clean up and then headed home.
The following morning was another breakfast with Jimmy and his fam at a little Mexican place, they had a really good breakfast :) We went to Eric's dad's for a bit and hung with them and went to Which Wich for a late lunch, so good, love that place! After that we met my aunt and uncle at Gringos for a drink and maybe some chips and salsa...That was the only time Eric got to see them, I had seen them a couple times while I had stopped by the daycare. We definitely wanted to make a point to see them since they did come see us out here, and because we love them and just wanted to see them :) Next stop was to visit our other friend that made it out to see us, Mitch! We went to Champs in the Galleria to watch Monday Night Football with Mitch and another friend EJ. One final stop after that, back to Eric's dad's to hang with his family and brother for a bit.
Tuesday, Oct 16th, our last full day. Man, did the time fly, wow! I spent my morning and early afternoon at the mall doing a bit of shopping for myself. Sometime it's difficult to find good clothes out here that fit. Eric spent this time at the office saying hello to all his old work peeps. My food court lunch of the day...Chick-Fil-A...mmmmm. delicious! A little later we stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings again for one last chance at a few chicken wings and to pick up some sauce to bring back with us. We made a run by some old friends of Eric's for a quick visit and then on to my parents house for dinner where I made them my famous pizza! We had to say goodbye to my parents that night since we wouldn't see them in the morning as they had to head out to work. I hate goodbyes, but it was easier this time than when we left in January. Stopped by Jimmy's real quick after that so he and Eric could say their goodbyes and get that one last hug in before they had to separate again, lol. One last stop at a bar for a drink and to say goodbye to Mike Henry and Steve. So many goodbyes in one day, that sucked, but it was still a good day. :(
Our last day in Houston...after running a few errands in the morning we managed to make it to Whataburger by 11am for some taquitos and fries...oh yeah, tasty stuff. We went back to our parents houses to gather up all our things and pack up, then had to head to the Woodlands one last time to drop off Patrick's jeep that he so graciously lent us, and then we stopped at Rudy's for lunch with Eric's dad and Karina. Final stop, the airport. We checked in and were able to spend about an hour relaxing in the lounge. Our flight was 15 hours back to Dubai, it actually went pretty quick. I watched 4 movies and was able to sleep a little, not enough. I can never sleep much on a plane. We made it to Dubai about 7:30pm and our flight to KL was at 4am. We landed a little later than we were supposed, which was good, so our layover was about an hour shorter than it should have been. Emirates does this nice thing, where if you have a layover longer than 9 hours and you pre-book it, you get a free hotel room to rest and shower up or whatever. So, we checked in and dropped our carry-ons off and grabbed a cab to the Dubai mall. We had to pick up our hookah that we purchased on our first trip through Dubai. We grabbed some Lebanese food for a nice 10pm dinner, walked to mall a little bit. It was some celebration there, EID, and the malls and stores were all open 24 hours. A couple stores we walked by had signs that offered an extra 10% discount between 3-6am, some people are nuts! Before we left, we were able to see more show at the fountains and one last gander at the Burj Khalifa, both were still stunning. We left the mall and headed back to the hotel, showered and went back to the airport for the 6 hour flight back here. And that's all I have to say about that!
We absolutely loved our trip home, but it's hard to call it a vacation when you are constantly busy. Thank you to our families and friends that let us stay with you, or made a special effort to see us and hang out with us. We really appreciated it, you guys mean everything to us. It's hard to work everyone in, but we did the best we could and love all of you. Hope you enjoyed this blog, it's a bit of a long one, I know, but I didn't want to leave anything or anyone out of it. Love you guys.
xoxo
Shannon
