One Long Weekend in DFW

If I could split my body about five different ways before visiting Dallas/Ft. Worth, I think I would. I just have so many people that I want to visit every time I go, and yet I don't have enough time to spend with all of them. And if I try to spend time with everyone, I end up not spending enough time with any of them. It's annoying. But this time I went to Dallas for five days to help out this situation, though I'm convinced no length of time will make it perfect.

I do always go to Dallas with some sort-of main purpose of what I'm going to concentrate my time on. This particular trip had two purposes: See Liz's new baby and Shannon's wedding shower.

Liz and David Zantop had Zach about 6 weeks ago. Zach was just the cutest thing!

He was also the best thing. I haven't seen a baby as well behaved as he was. He only had like two un-called for crying fits while I was there. And I was there for two days! We got to get out of the house and get lots of stuff done because he was so well behaved! I was really impressed. I hope mine comes like that (and just as cute too)!

Friday night was supposed to be the night I went to dinner with Chelsea and Natalie. But as luck would have it, that was the same night Natalie's family met her sister's boyfriend's family (whew...if you understood that off the first read, you are good). But I can understand, my brother better be there with me when my family meets my future boyfriends family. Anyways, then Chelsea came down with chicken pox for like the twelfth time. I was sad that she couldn't go out, but once again, I understood.

Luckily (as if I wouldn't have been able to eat dinner for the evening without some other people with me), we had invited Melissa and Liz to join us. So just us three met at Fireside Pies (with sweet Zach in tow). We had a great dinner, it was a really good restaurant.

Then Melissa and I went and grabbed a glass of wine at Tastings in downtown Grapevine. It was a cute little place that I want to return to sometime and actually do wine tastings at. They had these cool machines that would pour out three different sized pours all with the swipe of a card. Looks awesome (and yet dangerously easy to rack up a big tab).



Melissa said her good-byes (she had an early morning group run to make) and off I went to phase three of the day, Natalie and David. I met up with them and the rest of Natalie's family at the boyfriend's family's house. Her family always invites me to come along on such big events, they really value my opinion, you know?

I'm just kidding. Well about the ALWAYS being invited part. I'm not kidding about going over to Natalie's sister's boyfriend's family's house. That was 100% true. I know they totally didn't mind my tagging along, but it is a bit funny when you think about it.

It was especially funny when I put it this way. I walked into this house not really fully understanding what I was walking into. But Natalie met me outside and the first person I meet is the boyfriends mom. Now, I should first say, I have never met her sister's boyfriend (and I apologize Natalie, but I didn't and still don't remember his or his brother's name). So when his mom said, "Hi I'm so-and-so, I'm Travis's mom. Well, wait, you would probably know Josh. Well anyhow, I'm both of their mom's." I thought to myself at that point, I feel a little bad that I am here and I don't know the boyfriend or the brother (who's was the man of the party, because it was his birthday). But I chose not to burst her bubble and I nodded as if me and Josh went way back.

But it really did turn out to be alright. I even managed to say the right person's name while singing "Happy Birthday."

(In case you are wondering, I have messed that one up before. At an eight-year-olds birthday party. Who was my cousin. And where I managed to YELL the wrong name so everyone could hear. It was fantastic. Kids cried, mom's were horrified and a birthday was ruined. Well maybe it wasn't that intense. Most people pretended like they didn't hear me, but man, I sure did feel bad. Tip to anyone who has boys only a year or two apart. Don't cut their hair the same, style it the same and have them wear the same colored clothes. It might make for one bad birthday. Or them being mistaken as twins.)

After the candles were blown out; Natalie, David and myself made our way to their loft in downtown Ft. Worth. We walked to this bar that was SOOOOO far away (it was located on the first floor of the building they lived in...haha). It was an Irish Pub that had reminiscent qualities of a few Irish Pubs from college (Blarney/Carney).

A couple of David's work friends joined us. Too many shots were taken. I think I was on the losing end of a shuffle board game (it was unclear if we really ever finished, or if my memory is a little fuzzy from all the shots).
We made the far walk home (also a little fuzzy). I do know that I watched David and one of his work buddies play an old school Nintendo football game. No matter how many shots, one can't forget that distinct music!

The next day I had a wonderful (slash hungover as heck) time preparing food for Shannon and Chris' Couples Shower. In fact, I was so slow moving that it took me the same amount of time to prepare guacamole as it took Emily to make pineapple pico de gallo, margaritas from scratch (limes, lemons, simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water- dissolved), water, triple sec and tequila), and icing for the cupcakes! Oh, it was painful.

The shower was a luau theme, and it was really cute! Everyone was getting "leid" at this party (sorry I had to say it).

We ordered all of our decorations from orientaltrading.com. I recommend it if you are ever needing a lot of anything. It's not the best quality, but having so many of anything makes up for it (and made the pictures come out looking great)! We got 100 leis for $25 (as well as several other things for impressively cheap prices)!!!

Here's Emily serving the cupcakes.

One thing about the party was that the girls house we had it at, Emily and I had never met. She is a bridesmaid, and we had been talking to her through email about the shower, but still we showed up having never met her. So given that fact, when we realized the house felt like a sauna, we didn't know what to do. We tried turning the A/C down ourselves, but we couldn't figure it out. We felt bad asking (so we didn't), but dang, it was hot. I think the icing on the cupcakes was even melting.

This is all of our high school crowd that made it to the party. Brian, Emily, Shannon (the bride), me, Brandon and Angie. Good ol' Duncanville crowd!

These are the bridesmaids with the bride. Lindsey (house owner), Emily, Shannon, Emily S., me and Kaylah. I think this picture is so cute and colorful!

The happy couple, Shannon and Chris!

After the party died down considerably, we made talks of leaving and going to the bar (the D-ville crowd that is). Brandon made a pretty funny comment, he said "yeah, lets go to the bar! And I am going to invite my friend AC to meet us there too!" This party was "a little too" to the max. If you don't know what I mean by that, you need to check out Chelsea's blog about what is "a little too."

But we did make it to the bar and met up with our friend AC. I took a picture of Emily with her cousin Brandon.

I took a picture of Emily and the other Brandon from our high school.

Then I asked if I could get a picture with one of the Brandon's, and I got this.

Thanks. Just what I needed after a long night sweating. And no I did not let him get away with that. It's kind-of a long running game he has with doing things like that to me.

I actually ended my weekend in DFW with meeting Monica and Kristin (both friends from high school) out for lunch at Pappadeaux on Sunday. That is about as much fun (as well as eating out) as I can handle in one weekend!