Mama Date

While we were in Dallas over Thanksgiving, I got to spend a whole day with my mom on a little date, which was wonderful!  My dad, sister, and brother-in-law went out to Lake Texoma for the day, and Brent went to Plano to see a high school friend.  That left mom & I to go to an amazing lunch at Campisi's (LOVE that place) and then out to see the Chihuly exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum.  Bless her heart... she had already seen it five times (they have a membership), but she was willing to go one more time with me.  The weather was beautiful (although a tad warm for my taste), and the arboretum was beautiful with all of the fall decorations and the Chihuly glass.  It was truly breathtaking how amazing these art pieces were.  They were way more impressive than I thought they would be, and there were way more of them then I thought there would be.  They were everywhere!  Next time we visit the Arboretum, we'll have a cute baby girl in tow!

(Mom insisted I get a picture in front of this door because this is where I took my bridal portraits 8 years ago!  I'm a little bigger these days...)

Love you, mom!  Thanks for the date!

Quad Cities Week One

It's been a great first week in the Quad Cities!  We had a really fun weekend checking out the area, and this week it's been pretty much business as usual with work for both of us.  Though it's not Durham by any stretch of the imagination, we have found some fun things to do!

On Saturday afternoon, we visited a place that we spotted on Day 1, Lagomarcino's.  This place had me at hello.  Lagomarcino's is an old time ice cream parlor and soda shop.  Their tag-line is "travel back in time at Lagomarcino's", and I have to agree!  It was SO COOL!  It's been family owned and run since 1908, and they carry all kinds of old-school lunch counter food, sodas, sundaes, shakes, and homemade candy.  It was a fabulous weekend treat.

The adorable street view

Lunch counter & soda fountain

The tile floors, tin ceiling, mahogany booths, glass candy cases, and Tiffany lamps are all original!

We tried the famous hot fudge sundaes.

I mean, how cute is this place?

That night for dinner, we tried a Thai place we had our eye on called Lemongrass.  It was SO CUTE and modern inside!  I do not understand why there was a 1.5 hour wait at Chili's and Texas Roadhouse, but this place had only 10 customers and no wait on a Saturday night.  Oh well... more for us.

Brent had the old standby - Pad Thai, and I had Gra Pow - ground chicken in a spicy garlic sauce with green beans, green peppers, carrots, and onions and topped with a fried egg.  It was truly delicious!

After dinner, the weather was beautiful, so we went and walked along the river.

On Sunday, we tried out a church we found driving around:  Harvest Bible Chapel.  We actually loved it!  We put on the visitor card that we're new here and don't know anyone, and a pastor personally called me this week to introduce himself and welcome us.  Very nice.  I've also received calls this week from my sweet friends and my sister, all of which made my day!  Life is good!

Things the Lord is teaching me this week:

• To enjoy my friendship with my husband and not take it for granted.  I'm so, so glad I get to be here with him and see him every morning and every evening.  I love going to new places with him, and he's truly my best friend.  I love all the little things we do like drinking coffee, taking walks, watching TV, playing Words With Friends, and going to bed at the same time, so I'm trying to enjoy and savor them.
• To live in the moment.  When I first got here, I cried a lot, and the time here seemed to stretch forward infinitely.  I've always been one to look forward to the "next thing", but I feel God telling me to just rest in the here and now.  He has relieved my mind from thinking too much about the past or future, and let me focus on now.  Yesterday I was even like, "oh yeah!  We have a great house back in Durham!"  I hadn't even thought about it for a while :-)

Mom Therapy

After a few stressful weeks of wrapping up the school year and moving to Illinois for the summer, I was in need of some TLC, and no one can comfort you quite like mom.  I had to go to Houston for a meeting, so since I was already in Texas, I made a quick trip to Dallas to see my parents.  I was only there for a little over 24 hours, but it was so nice.  I may have cried a few tears at the airport going back to Illinois, but only because my mom and I had so much fun.

On Wednesday, she picked me up at the airport and whisked me to Wisteria to browse home decor.  Then we shopped at Northpark, hitting up all the best stores.  I'm so jealous that they have an H&M there!  We found some great stuff in the Anthropologie sale section, and my mom bought me treats with her ridiculous Northpark gift cards (perk of being a Kindergarten teacher in a nice neighborhood - she gets tons of gifts!)  Here is my mom modeling some sunglasses at H&M and my Northpark purchases - a dress, a top, a skirt, and a bracelet.

Next, we ate lunch at La Duni, one of my Dallas faves.  After we we had shopped the whole mall, we headed to Sonic for happy hour and picked up two diet cherry limeades.

Limeades in hand, we headed over to Richardson for our spa pedicures!  I know, my mom is great.  We got the same color on our toes.  Obviously. 

We then had a nice evening at home with my dad.  Mom & I made a Greek cous-cous salad while my dad grilled salmon.  We even Facetimed with Brent so he could tell us about his first few days on the job.  I went to bed early after our day-o-fun. 

Thursday morning, we went to Target and then met my dad for lunch at one of my favorite restaurants ever - Campisi's.  It's this great, old-fashioned Italian restaurant that looks like it's run by the mob.  It's been open in Dallas and run by the same family since 1945.  It's super dark inside and lit by candles, and there is a jukebox at every table.  We always get the salad and salami pizza which tastes the same as it did when I was growing up.  After lunch, sadly, I had to go to the airport, but I can tell you from experience - Mom therapy will cure whatever ails you!

Cruising the Caribbean

Did you know that I have the best husband in the world?  Well, I do.

He has been busy with school this year, but he just got an internship (more on that later), so we decided to celebrate, and he took me on a wonderful spring break vacation.  I've never been on a cruise before, and we found a good deal on a great cruise (thanks, Susan!)  We sailed the Celebrity Eclipse from Miami to Puerto Rico, St. Martin, and St. Kitts for 8 days and 7 nights.  We had a blast doing something different together and getting truly off the grid for 8 days.  I don't remember the last time I didn't have access to a computer or cell phone for that long.  It was glorious. 

Since it was our first cruise as adults, we had a bit of a learning curve.  By the end of the cruise, we knew where to eat the best food and where the best pool chairs were and when the sushi buffet was put out and what types of excursions are best.  We deemed some people on the ship "cruisers".  These are people who have been on approximately one thousand cruises in their lifetime, and they are NOT messing around.  (My apologies if you are a cruiser.)  These people had laminated lanyards for their "sea pass" and they were going to be first in line for food and first off the ship at the port and they were going to wear flip flops and palm tree shirts to dinner.  And don't even try to get in their way.  We had a few good laughs about the many "cruisers" on board.  And then there was our favorite:  cruisers on cruisers.  This was a "cruiser" on a rascal or some sort of motorized chair.  Now THEY were serious.

Anyway... we learned!!  If you're interested, here's the recap!  Picture overload alert!

To save money, we drove 12 hours from North Carolina to Miami instead of flying.  It wasn't a bad drive at all, and we were greeted by a beautiful Miami sunset.

We stayed the night at the home of Brent's aunt, uncle, and cousin.  His aunt & uncle were out of town, but we got to hang out with his cousin, Jorge, and his wife, Kelly.  We had a great time seeing their new house and eating Cuban food for dinner.

This is one view of their backyard which is right on the canal leading to Biscayne Bay.  Who needs a vacation when you live here?

Well, we don't live there, so on Saturday morning, we boarded our cruise!  Getting on board was seamless and smooth, and we had so much fun that first day exploring the ship.  While docked in Miami, we ate lunch outside with a beautiful view of the port and the city.

We finally got into our room, and we loved it!  Our room far exceeded my expectations for a cruise ship room.  It was spacious and nice, and the bathroom was great!  We even had a large balcony with a table and two chairs, and it was so fun to stand outside our room and watch as we sailed away from Miami.

We celebrated our first night in the martini bar. (OK, and every night after that)

I was wondering if they still made towel animals on cruise ships... they do.

On day 3, we reached our first port of call: San Juan, Puerto Rico.

We took a walking tour with a darling old man who I sincerely loved.  He took us on a tour of the historic downtown of Old San Juan and the El Morro Castle and fort.  The views and scenery were spectacular.

If you ignored the tourist section with cheap shops and jewelery stores, downtown San Juan was quite charming.  The cobblestone streets are original.  The streets were paved in cobblestones because when the explorers came there, they filled their ships with stones as "ballast" to balance their ships.  Upon reaching the new world, they found so much gold that they dumped out the stones and replaced them with gold.  As a result, San Juan had enough stones to pave the whole city.  Crazy!  We also saw the church where Juan Ponce de Leon was buried!  My teacher heart liked that.

The buildings really were this cute.

We had dinner at a sidewalk cafe in San Juan.  The drinks and the atmosphere far exceeded the food.  Oh well.

Once we got back on the ship, we headed up to the 16th deck to the "Lawn Club".  The top deck of the ship is an actual lawn with real grass!  That night, they had wine, cheese, and jazz.  They even had cozy flannel blankets to sit on.

Our next stop was St. Martin.  It was interesting to drive through both the French and Dutch sides of the island.  We went on a beach excursion on the French side, and we had a lovely day relaxing and eating lunch in a tropical cabana-style restaurant.

Back on the ship.  Did I mention there was a martini bar?

Our third stop was our favorite by far:  St. Kitts.  We woke up and saw this out our window as we approached the island.  Not bad, not bad.

This was paradise.  Turquoise waters, mountains in the distance, secluded beach, perfect weather, and clear ocean.  We had the best day here swimming, walking, and reading on our beach chairs.  I finally read Twilight!  Yes, for the first time!  I can finally get my English teacher card back.  It was a great beach read.

The picture at the top of this post is us on the beach in St. Kitts.  Love.

This is a view from a lookout in St. Kitts where you can see the Atlantic Ocean (on the left) and the Caribbean Sea (on the right) at the same time.

OK, tourist trap alert:  sorry, but I couldn't resist.  Apparently there are 25,000 monkeys roaming St. Kitts, and many of the locals have taken it upon themselves to capture, train, dress, and keep these monkeys as pets.  There are people everywhere willing to lend you their monkeys for a picture.  We offered the guy $2 for this picture, but he told us it would be $10.  Seriously?!  $10 for a picture with monkeys?  I mean, they did have nice outfits and everything but...  We had already taken the picture, so we just gave him $10 and laughed about it the rest of the day.  We decided that Brent is going to quit school and we're going to be monkey keepers in St. Kitts because at the rate of $10 every 15 seconds, that dude is pulling in $10 million a year.  Just saying.

Did I mention there was a martini bar?

The pools on board the ship had these really cool covered cocoon lounges that you could sit in all day.  And we did.

On one of the last days at sea, there was a HUGE (and I mean huge) brunch display.  It was overwhelming.  This was just one small portion of the dessert display.

Brent enjoying coffee on our balcony

The last night, we ate in this really cool restaurant on board where you ordered your food from an iPad!

That night one of our favorite dishes was lobster escargot... yum!

For dessert, they had "make your own cupcakes".  How cute is this?  They bring you cupcakes, frosting, and toppings, and you make them how you want!!

All in all, the first cruise was a success!  Beautiful, relaxing, and different.  Thanks to my sweet husband for taking me!  Now, back to work...