Blessing Vacation

This is going to be really long, I told you I’d make up for missing posting…

I’ll post a link to a gallery with a lot more pictures later.

Here’s the details of our trip (or everyone else’s trip to us), I’m detailing food cause I asked help from some friends and they helped me with menu ideas.

Mom Ryan and Jared flew in late Thursday. They were supposed to come about 9, so I kept the kids up. At about 9 my Mom called said they were lost and to send the boys to bed, I got them ready and had to threaten that I wouldn’t let them see grandma if they didn’t go to bed that instant, and that if they did that they could come out for 5 minutes, I had to promise that I’d wake them up… They finally settled down about 9:35. Well what do you know, Mom and the boys showed up at 9:39, hahaha! By the way she’d been talking I thought it’d be at least ten. They did go right back to bed though the rest of us were too excited to do anything but chat until almost 1. We just ate some seven layer dip, and some other chip related gems we had.

The next morning, Friday, we were kinda tired… Michael went to school and Kevin took the boys (Ryan Jared and Aiden) out for the day. My Mom and I went for groceries. I believe most people had cereal that morning.

We got everything for a deli meats bar, but Kevin talked up Guy’s Meat Market (it’s the yummiest meat in town, they sell everything from a butcher to food ready to eat) so much that was what everyone really wanted. So they went for a run for BBQ sandwiches, soda and chips. I told Kevin to skip the soda and chips, but the meals were only 30 cents more per sandwich than they would have been with only the sandwiches, so he hooked us up. That was yummy. We had left over chips and soda until yesterday though.

For some reason I hadn’t gotten a shower yet at this point in the day, so I ran for that. As soon as I was dressed Mark, Peggy, Sam and Sara got here! That was a lot of people in our little apartment. My Mom and brothers slept here but everyone else got hotel rooms (did I already say that??).

We all headed out to Olive Garden and enjoyed a yummy meal there. Sam had told the waitress that it was Sara’s Birthday (hers had been the week before his was the day before). So they sang to them while I ran off to change Joey’s diaper with my Mom. I’m sad we missed it. Everyone came back to our place and again we played late into the night. Joey is used to quiet evenings, really little to no fuss because once the boys go down we get pretty mellow. So he got over stimulated and started to fuss a bit. Sam went and got Catch Phrase, and a lot of people played that. I went to bed with a screaming Joey who really just needed some Mommy time at about 11:30 and Kevin finally came in again at about 1.

Saturday morning Kevin had an exam that he had to go take, so we all caught up on a little sleep, and met up after his exam and decided to head off to the beach in Galveston for the day. As it turns out we spent very little time actually on the sand. We got down there and decided to go over to to 1877 Tall Ship Elissa, but as far as we could tell it wasn’t docked that day, so we just hung around the East end, and walked the historic strand, this is the area that has the museums, and the cruise port.

We had lunch at a quaint little restaurant with a Nickelodeon (old piano that plays itself when you insert a coin, not the one linked), a foosball table, and a bunch of barrel tables and bar stools, and well as a giant picnic table adorned with an old style water pump. The boys had fun with the foosball table for a while. Then some people got to worrying about parking prices, they’re expensive unless you get a voucher from one of the Pier 21 restaurants.

We saw a couple shops next to each other sharing the names of my SIL and MIL Sara and Peggy, even spelled right. That was too cute to not get some pics!

I had the brilliant idea that three of us (since we had three cars) should go into one of the restaurants and order desserts just to get the parking passes. They weren’t cheap desserts or really very memorable, but my FIL made a good point, for less than we would have spent on parking we got desserts too, so it was like paying the parking attendant and getting a discount as well as being handed a cold dessert.

Kevin’s Dessert, Key Lime Pie.

We finished up there, and headed over to the Seawall, half the family headed into Wal-mart for bathrooms and shopping for a few healthy snacks while the rest went for the beach. Instead of heading for the beach they went to a pier, I was in the Wal-mart group so I missed a lot of it, but when I got out to the group there were some surfers. We don’t have really big waves so this was pretty interesting to me. We enjoyed the cool sea air and just being out there.

Again we went back to our place for the evening, we had the Sandwiches we’d planned for Friday’s lunch at this point, and my Mom and I went to the grocery store to pick up what I didn’t have for Sunday dinner. Everyone was pretty tired so those staying in the hotel went for home as soon as dinner was over I’d guess around 8 or 9. While I was gone Kamille P. brought over this gorgeous cake it looked so good.

Sunday morning was nice, a little rushed but it all worked out. Since it was Fast Sunday the boys and I (because I’m nursing and can’t fast) had fruit bars. We got to church in time (yay for small victories) and had a beautiful blessing.

Joey and I after Church.

Everyone who was here for the blessing from the family, the Elders took the pictures for us, Thanks!!!

Our little family of five.

Kevin holding Joey, he also had a jacket but it was too hot to keep on him after the blessing.

Here’s another picture of the blessing outfit so that you can see what it looked like all put together.

For dinner we had One Dish Chicken and Rice Bake, my MIL’s YUMMY salad, a greens mix (this time my favorite organic baby spring mix), with thin sliced red onions, mandarin oranges, craisins (orange flavored this time) and then dressing (choice of ranch, Ken’s Steakhouse Honey Mustard Dressing, or Salad Spritzers Balsamic Breeze) with a side of croûtons, and rolls, with about 30 choices of drinks, OK, maybe more like 8, yeah 8, 1% or 2% milk, water, sprite, root beer, ginger ale, apple juice, cranberry juice, and V8. I was going to steam a veggie, but never got around to it.

The missionaries came over and that was so nice to be with them for the few moments I got to see them, as once again Joey got hungry and over stimulated so I had to retreat to my bedroom, I missed most of Michael’s blessing dinner for the same reason… Joey can handle all the brother commotion in the world, but once the adults get too busy and he gets passed around too much he really struggles.

Kevin and his Mom went out on the front porch and sat and chatted while many others took cat-naps, or just chatted. The boys went out there with them some, but when they got too hyper they got sent inside, which didn’t work out to well. I went out to ask Kevin if they could stay outside since he got to be out there, and it was such a nice day, and Peggy (MIL) suggested that we head to a park. Michael had just been telling Grandpa Mark (Kevin’s Dad) that he wanted to take him to his playground at school, so that’s where they headed. I was exhausted and didn’t want Joey out in the wind, and they didn’t want to take all of the cars, so just some went over there.

We cut into the cake that afternoon and my was it indulgent, it was all gone within a couple hours. It’s supposed to have pecans on top, but because of Joey’s nut allergies we passed on that, it was so good just the way it was. It was a Pumpkin Caramel Spice Cake. I’d ask for the recipe, but I’m afraid I’d use it, hahaha! Plus I’m sure it’s some secret, LOL!

I’m a very casual hostess. If you’re here for more than one meal, I’ll do one meal, but after that it’s every man for himself (other than of course making sure my kids have meals and snacks as they need) so when people got hungry again they just helped themselves, which I appreciate, there were plenty of left overs (I still have rolls and salad mix), and other things around so I hope everyone was cool with that. I saw a few batches of Nacho, they looked good.

Sam and Sara left early Monday morning so we knew they wouldn’t be back and it was hard to let them go when they left at about 11.

Monday morning we decided to keep Michael home to enjoy his grandparents and uncles for one more day. We had cereal again. We went to Hong Kong City Mall. We did a lot of window shopping and a little souvenir shopping. We went into the market and got some interesting treats as well as a good mix of veggies for stir fry. We definitely will be back there for some produce and to go shopping at our own pace.

We had dinner at the Tay Dong, and it was yummy! We ordered 5 meals for the 9 of us (eating table foods, since Joey only eats milk right now) and it was so good! The Ginger Beef with green onions was my favorite, but I liked all 5 dishes. We were seated at a round table with a revolving center, it was so fun to spin around, thought we had our fair share of table tug-o-wars, haha!

They had a lot of beautiful jewelry stores, a little fine fabric store (which I’ll go back for once I get a good pattern for a mei tai), and a bunch of fun restaurants. At one point I went into a store and saw a pair of shoes I liked, I asked the man there how I could tell on the box what size the shoes were, he looked at me and asked “what size?” I said 10 (actually 9 1/2 W, but who carries that size?), and he said, “Oh no, not more than 7.” Um, OK, Hahaha! Guess they weren’t that cute.

When we were done there we parted with Mark and Peggy so that they could go catch their flight. That was hard to see them go too. At this point we went to Fry’s again, hahaha! We had a good time there. Mom and I spent most of the time there huddled in the back home theater nook while the boys got to browse.

We came home and made the stir fry we’d picked out all the delicious vegetables for. We added coconut cream as I’d seen done on some cooking show. Note to self~ next time you go out on a limb while cooking, taste a little bit of it mixed up first, or get a recipe… Oh well, I thought it was good, but pretty much everyone else had as little as politely possible. We all crashed that night pretty exhausted.

I got up yesterday, Tuesday, and had a migraine, I got Michael to school and Kevin to work and managed to grab a little treat for the flight home for my family, and then came home and promptly passed out, I slept from then until the had to go! I was so sad!

It was the perfect length vacation IMO, I was sad to see my Mom and brothers go and even had the urge to barricade the door so they’d miss her flight (she said she’d go out the back door anyways), but it was also nice to come back in and have my little home to myself again. Joey was calm the rest of the day other than a little worrying when I was in the other room preparing dinner for everyone else for a little too long, and he was hungry too. We’re now just working to get back to normal life.

Sadly, I have not been able to do the blessing outfit photoshoot yet. 🙁 I’m going to need to get his tux dry cleaned first since he spit up all over it. It’s at the top of my list!!!