Dallas Roadtrip

Last weekend, we took a little road trip down to Dallas. I was wanting a change of scenery, and we were looking for somewhere within reasonable driving distance, but still feeling like we were "getting away". Dallas fit the bill, and we put together the trip that week.

Are you familiar with urbanspoon? It's a website that features places to eat in your local city. I use the app on my phone. What I like about it is that you can search restaurants by user ratings. People give it a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down", leave reviews, leave recommendations, etc. It also tells you what the average price per plate is, and a lot of times lets you view a menu.

So we got on urbanspoon and looked to see what was good. It brought up a restaurant called "Mesa". 100% of the people "liked it". It said the average was $10 bucks a plate. Reasonable.

Matt loves mexican, so of course he didn't turn down my offer of trying there.

We put the address in our GPS and it took us there. The final turn led us to a street that was definitely Hispanic. All the signs were in Spanish, they had the "quincinera" shop right there...I was like "YES!" this is going to be authentic.

Matt pulled right up in front of the place, and a kid came out and took our keys from us. Valet? we were thinking... Valet was very out of the ordinary for the street we were on. But, what the hey. We were there, and we were hungry. Matt passed off the keys to the dude, and we went inside. We ordered the food and it was fantastic. It wasn't $10 a plate like urbanspoon advertised- oh well. Matt's humble reply always is, "it's okay, we're on vacation."

 So we paid for our food and went back out of the restaurant. Matt handed the kid our ticket to get our car, and the guy grabs our keys and goes to "pull up our car". The DUMB thing was is that it was literally two parking spaces down. The guy backed our car out, passed one parking spot, and then pulled the car into the empty slot. He definitely made an easy few bucks.

Across the street from our hotel was a place called Pioneer Plaza. A lot of sculptures like the one below of cowboys on horses, and TONS of sculptures of longhorns. Pretty cool.

Continuing the theme of "good eats" we ate at a place called Twisted Root Burger. Good Burger, but probably not in my top burgers I have had. Still enjoyable, nonetheless. I loved the atmosphere of the restaurant...the signs, the toilet planters...

After lunch we went to Dallas World Aquarium. Cool place.

 Rolling our stroller up to the entrance, a guy was playing a saxophone. Very Beautifully, I might add. He looked at Selah, and then pointed at her, and said, "this one is for her." And started playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." How precious. He played it very jazzy like. Selah liked it.

A place recommended by Guy Fieri, was Pepe and Mito's. All I have to say is, "THANKS GUY! We owe ya one, buddy."  this was awesome food. Can't say enough about it. Matt ordered nachos and said, "these nachos are great." If you can please the nacho man, you know you've done good.

 photography by Corinne.

And another stop from Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive ins, and Dives was called Cane Rosso. A pizza place.
Again, great food. This was my favorite meal of the trip.
Guys head and signature was above the door on the wall. 

 This dessert pizza was amazing. Crust, with mascarpone cheese spread, apples, carmel, and cinnamon. Fantastic. I WILL be repeating this at home.

 check out that red oven behind me. Their claim is that it gets so hot the pizza can cook in just a few minutes.
Wouldn't mind having one of those.

And a stop on the way home at Corinne's Catfish. We didn't eat here, but it was a good picture location, i think. Especially when the Corinne in the picture is just so dad gum pretty.

We had a really good time. Not pictured is jumping on the bed in the hotel, swimming in the hotel pool, and a few other fun activities including going to the Dallas Farmers Market. The girls were very well behaved, besides the common complaint of "I'm tired of walking." I told Matt we weren't ready for Disney World yet. He agreed. ;)

All in all, good trip.

Audie says

This morning Selah farted.
Audie: "Not cool, Selah."

Real Life

The activities that took place this evening.

Birthday/Mother's Day

This year, my birthday fell on Mother's Day! Two great celebrations in one day.
Matt spoiled me the entire weekend, treating me to my favorite restaurants and taking over diaper duty. Saturday we went to the farmers market downtown and the art fair. I did a little shopping on Saturday as well. Sunday morning, Matt took the girls to Dillons to grab donuts and orange juice for breakfast. We gathered with our friends for church, and ate lunch together, and
the rest of the day was low key and enjoyable. I love birthdays!

A Jeep Hurricane, cousin picture, and drinking from the drain

We went to my sister's house this morning to play. My nephew Cameron has a powerwheels Jeep that the girls' have been dying to ride in. After a few rides around with Cameron as the driver...

...Audie took her turn for a spin or two.

 -followed by a group grandkid picture for Grandma on Mothers Day.
Audie, Selah, Corinne, Kylie, and Cameron

And what happens when you leave a 3 year old to get her own water?

She creates her own way of doing it!
(Previous to this picture, she stuck her straw into those little tiny squares that drain the water that spills.)

Wheeee!

Selah is one!

May 2nd left as soon as it came around! We celebrated Selah's first birthday. Can't believe it has been a year already! She is such a sweet little baby and we love her so much!

Here are a few snapshots of the day-

We set Selah down to have her first birthday cake. She was cool with it at first...

 Really? This cake is all for me?
...okay, I'll try it.

And from there it went south.
Somewhere in between Matt giving her a lick from his finger and her getting some on her leg, she wasn't having it.

 She bee-lined out of there as fast as she could. Never having eaten even one bite.

After she got cleaned up, she was happy again.

back in business

Who knew I would run out of space on the WORLD WIDE WEB! Sheesh. You'd think that with all the technology space would be vastly available in all of the internet clouds they have out there.
oh well. Purchasing new space was only 5 bucks. NBD.

They told me it takes 24 hours to get the new space applied to the blog, so we should be ready to blog again by tomorrow! Until then, I'll leave you with one of my favorite pictures. This little lady is going to be 1 in a couple of weeks. Where does the time go?

Bike bruises and books

Corinne took an awful spill last week on her bike.

She was riding fast, lost control and wiped out on the concrete. She cut the inside of her mouth pretty bad, and swelled up like a platypus. Poor little girl.

I have been meaning to blog about this for a couple of weeks now-
I am really excited about finishing this project!
Almost a year ago, Matt bought a whole bunch of "Little Critter" books off of ebay. The girls love these books, and read them over and over. They practically memorized the books.
I wanted to put that to "good use" and decided to write books for them- in hopes that they will read them over and over and memorize them as well. I started making a list of life lessons that I would want to teach the girls, and lessons that they would remember.

So I wrote a book on manners, one on sacrificial love, and then I asked a few people that are influences in the girls' lives or people that I have reaped wisdom from over the last several years to contribute a life lesson. I also asked them to pick a character to represent themselves in the story, and then I wrote a book full of short stories around those life lessons. 

 This project took about 8 months to complete! One of the biggest things I have done to date- I'm really proud of the results.
I did have INCREDIBLE help from one of my friends, Amy. Amy is an author and aspiring to be published someday. She totally made these books come to life. I cannot explain enough how grateful I am for her help in this project. She is so talented and gifted in the area of writing. (and grammar!!) She did an incredible job and I am so grateful for her.

 All of the "life lessons" were so great! They are: Think before you speak, love unconditionally, forgive quickly, always do your best, friends help you see life clearly, be thankful for the time that you have, just go for it, and pick your battles.
I did all of the illustrations myself. They are very elementary, but I am glad that I was able to do it.

I am pleased with the results-- (to be put into book form, I sent the books into lulu.com-- very impressed with their work!). Email me and let me know if you'd like a .pdf file to read! I'd be happy it to you!

Ear Piercing

Audie has been mentioning here and there about getting her ears pierced. I never jumped on the idea, because I thought it would be a fleeting one. But Saturday she mentioned it again, about the 4th time over a month. We decided to go ahead and let her get it done.
Matt kept telling her it was going to hurt, but she kept saying she was brave.

She climbed right up in the chair. She was pretty excited.

 Corinne is such a drama queen. She closed her eyes and kept saying "I can't watch- tell me when it's over!" She does this same thing whenever Audie or Selah gets shots at the doctor.

 She was a little unsure after it was done-- I think it hurt her- but she didn't cry!

 She looks like a whole year older now. She went from cute to pretty.