Christmas 2013

Oh, Christmas.  Once again, you've come and gone like it didn't mean one little thing to you at all.  Seriously though, I know I'm not the only one who felt like the holidays blew by.  Jason said it has something to do with there being one less week between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, which could very well be the reason!

I had the pleasure of using a little vacation time to road trip down to my pretty home city of Houston to see friends and family.  Last last Thursday (the day before I was to leave for Houston) I contracted a horribly awful stomach virus from Jason and spent literally all day on the couch nibbling on saltines and carefully sipping ginger ale.  Luckily, the worst of it was over by the next morning, and all day Friday I just experienced some bad cramping in my stomach that caused me to walk around hunched over like a ninety-year-old grandma.  I got into Houston that night and went straight to my mom's where we picked up some chips, queso and salsa from Iguana Joe's because, oddly enough, that's the only thing that sounded appetizing to me after being sick.  So we spent the evening munching and watching bad reality television.

Saturday morning, we decided to go over to my Aunt Kelley's to bake and decorate some Christmas cookies with her and my cousin, Kirby.  It was a fun few hours of frosting little christmas trees, snowmen, gingerbread men and stars while enjoying each others' company.  That night I drove over to Kingwood to my best friend Sam's apartment for a little Christmas get-together with my best ladies.  We exchanged presents, drank lots of wine and sangria, danced like wild women, took silly pictures, giggled and carried on as we have for many years.  I hope we never change!  It was the most fun I've had in a long time.  I love that no matter how much time passes since our last visit, when we all get together, we can easily just pick up where we left off and have the best time.

Sunday, my mom, my sister, my brother and I all met up with my aunts and cousins at the Galleria.  I'm so excited I got a chance to see it during Christmastime!  It's always decorated so beautifully with the huge Christmas tree in the center of the mall surrounded by the ice skating rink.  I wasn't really shopping for anything, as I'd finished all of my Christmas shopping quite early this year, but it was still fun to window shop and watch my sister and little teenage cousins get their makeup done at Chanel and peruse the glittery glass cases at Tiffany's.  Of course we ate lunch while we were there.  That was practically the first thing we did once we all met up!  And, of course, we chose The Cheesecake Factory.  I had to get my sweet corn tamale cakes on ;).

Monday, I went over to Tomball/Spring to my grandparents' house to celebrate Christmas with my dad's side of the family.  Meme made a traditional Christmas dinner spread, as she always does, and it's always so delicious.  After dinner, we opened presents and chatted for a while before I headed back to my mom's.

On Christmas Eve, we went back to my Aunt Kelley's to celebrate Christmas with my mom's side of the family.  Uncle Steve made a yummy gumbo with chicken and sausage, and there were treats all over the place for us to snack on before and after lunch.  It's always so wonderful to have all of my maternal cousins all together in the same place.  It was great getting to see my Aunt Kim and Uncle Dale, along with Esther, Sarah and Abigail.  I'm so jealous of Sarah right now because she just left on a 7-day cruise with her boyfriend yesterday!  I know they'll have a blast so I'm really happy for her.

On Christmas Day, we went over to my mom's finace's sister's (woah, that's a jumble) house for brunch and MORE present opening.  Yes, I get a ridiculous amount of gifts, and my family is only growing so it's only getting more obscene, haha.  After hanging out there for a couple of hours, my mom, Randy (her fiance) and I went for a two-mile walk around the park by her apartment, and then Randy made us sour cream chicken enchiladas for dinner, and of course, I made my mom make us some margaritas with her pineapple-vanilla bean infused tequila.  I live for that stuff!  Pretty sure I drank about four of those bad boys and then started passing out while we were playing Sequence and Yahtzee.

The day after Christmas, I hit the road fairly early to get back to Austin for an afternoon of work. Speaking of work, it really hasn't been too bad lately.  We're smack in the middle of our slow season so now is the time to clean everything out, get re-organized and relax a little before March madness begins.  And I'm not talking about basketball.  I'm referring to the madness that ensues in Austin in March - SXSW, among a couple thousand other conferences and events that take over around that time.

Well, my apologies for the lengthy post.  I know Emily will not approve! :)  I just had to tell you all about my fabulous Christmas events, and I hope everyone had a cozy, warm, family-filled holiday like I did.

Happy New Year! 

Jason's 30th

My sweet boyfriend, Jason, is officially 30 years old as of September 30!  I had decided a while back that I wanted to do something special for Jason in celebration of this milestone, and I've always wanted to throw a surprise party, so I figured this would be the perfect occasion.  I, obviously, couldn't blog about any of this before the big day so I'll walk you through the process a little bit.  I knew I wanted to invite as many people as possible - anyone and everyone that has made some kind of an impression on Jason.  I sent out emails and Facebook messages to everyone I knew Jason would want to celebrate with about a month and a half before the date I chose for the party, just to get an idea of how many people would seriously consider attending.  Once I had a rough estimate of the number of attendees, I began my search for a venue.  Originally, I was set on Max's Wine Dive, but their food & beverage minimum was out of my price range.  I checked with a few other restaurants and ended up happily settling with Red's Porch.  Jason and I had eaten there many times and really enjoy the food and drinks.  They have great specialty cocktails and a more than decent variety of local beers on tap.  It ended up being the perfect crowd pleaser, offering something for everyone.  

On the day of the party, I had wonderful assistance from my best friends Emily, Heather and Sarah and from my mom who arrived early in the afternoon to help me de-stress and get ready.  It turns out I was worrying and stressing for nothing because, even with storms rolling in all day and night, the party went on without a hitch, and Jason was absolutely shocked when he showed up and everyone yelled "SURPRISE!"  It was such a fun night, and I am so grateful to everyone that made the effort to come and help us celebrate this exciting birthday for Jason!

**All photographs courtesy of Emily's camera and Emily & Sarah's picture-taking expertise.

Lots of Work & A Little Play

I would say this past weekend consisted of a nice balance between work and play.  I worked from early morning into mid-afternoon Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but each of my days had a sweet finish.  On Friday, I came home to Jason and my aunt Kandace, who had dropped off my cousin Kody and some of his friends at a nearby state park for a camping trip.  Instead of driving all the way back to Houston that same day, to my delight, she decided to spend some quality time with us.  We chatted about this and that for a few hours (as per usual) before Jason served up a most delicious supper for the three of us - pulled pork sandwiches with baked beans and homemade potato salad.  After gorging ourselves and indulging in a little fresh-from-the-box Beer of the Month Club craft beer, aunt Kandace introduced us to the newest Netflix original series, Orange Is The New Black.  We watched the first two episodes and decided we'll have to continue watching, whenever we have time that is.  (Side note:  Both of our schedules are insane and all over the place right now.  We rarely see other for more than a few hours at a time these days, and it's the absolute worst feeling in the world.  We've been sitting on two Netflix DVDs for two weeks now, and we're falling behind on our weekly shows!)

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On Saturday, we both got home from work around the same time and quickly got ready to drive up north to meet some friends for dinner in celebration of Corey's 29th birthday.  We were all first-timers at Foreign & Domestic, a little neighborhood restaurant in North Central Austin off of 53rd Street.  The food was pretty pricey, but overall very enjoyable.  We ordered a couple plates of crispy beef tongue which was actually really good, and I ordered corn soup with pickled shrimp, which was interestingly served cold.  That was my first time to try cold soup, and I'm still not sure that I liked it.  For my entree, I got braised goat over corn pudding and pickled cherries.  I wasn't a fan of the cherries, but the goat and corn was a brilliant combination.  Jason and I shared the rocky road sundae for dessert, which was pretty tasty.  My favorite part of the whole meal was probably the cocktail I ordered three times - The Cyclist, a lethal mixture of Session lager, preserved lemon and ginger beer.  SO delicious.

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Yesterday,  Jason and I both got off work about an hour late and came home exhausted.  After sharing our unpleasant work stories, we brushed off the day and made another trip northward to see his parents and grandpa where we enjoyed some light conversation and a light dinner of Thundercloud Subs.  Despite our exhaustion, we decided to power through and see a movie at Alamo Drafthouse since it had been quite a while.  We chose Only God Forgives, the new Nicolas Winding Refn film starring Ryan Gosling as a quiet maniac.  It was a really pretty movie that showcased brilliant cinematography akin to that of Lynch and Kubrick, paired with a beautiful score that I would gladly sit and listen to all day long.  The story was pretty basic and the dialog wasn't much to be desired, but overall I found it entertaining, which is indeed the whole point of a film.

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Dad's Birthday Weekend

As I mentioned before, my dad and Rebecca made plans to come up to Austin this past weekend to celebrate his birthday, and, as always, we had the absolute best time together!  Friday night, Jason and I met them at Mai Thai downtown, which had surprisingly very tasty Thai!

Jason had to work Saturday night, so I accompanied my dad and Rebecca to the Oasis on Lake Travis where we dined with a couple of their friends.  Luckily, I remembered to take my camera along so I got some really lovely shots of the sun setting over the hills and the lake.  Post fake Tex-Mex, icey pina coladas and many a mexican martini, my dad decided he was unsatisfied that the Oasis did not offer tres leches cake as a dessert, so we ventured to the original Chuy's location on Barton Springs Road where we indulged in some tres leches and more drinks to our hearts' content.  I'm so thrilled that I got to help my dad celebrate his birthday, and I look forward to partying it up with him in all the years to come!

xoxo