Archive for February, 2008

I finally have a day off to relax, and by relax, I actually mean do laundry, organize, clean, and of course blog. My dad happened to be going to a conference in Norman, Oklahoma this week and decided to drive the extra 3 hours down to see us last weekend. I managed to trade shifts with a co-worker (thanks Karen!) so I could hang out with them on Saturday. It was nice to spend time with my parents, I miss seeing them on a regular basis. We went shopping, ate a LOT of food, and talked about everything from foreign policies (not much interest to me, but my dad and Andy sure did spend a decent amount of time on this one) to attaching a paint brush to Jabber’s tail and making her paint the kitchen to earn her keep (splendid idea, by the way).

We stopped by Southlake Town Center to shop and eat dinner. Since we were a little early for dinner, and my parents are huge real estate shopping fans, we decided to take a tour of the Southlake Brownstones.  What fun! It’s right off the square, and they were built to be reminiscent of old fashioned New York town homes. Most of them have 3 stories (with elevator), 3 to 5 bedrooms with at least one full sized balcony, a center courtyard, and an extra apartment/entertainment room above the garage. What does it cost to live right by your favorite retail stores and restaurants (and right across the street from a Central Market with a trolley to get you there)? A measley $900,000!! I think it’s a fabulous idea, but our house has more square footage for a much more reasonable cost. Besides, do I really need to be living within walking distance to Ann Taylor and Crate and Barrel? My bank account can breathe a sigh of relief.

For dinner we went to the amazing and very pricey Truluck’s Seafood, Steak, and Crab House. We forgot that it was Saturday night at Southlake, and didn’t make reservations.  Thank goodness we were early enough to get a nice booth seat at the bar area. If we had arrived 30 minutes later, there wouldn’t be any seats left! What a popular place! The food was fantastic, though nothing we could afford normally, that’s for sure!

Mommy Chao had the Miso Glazed Chilean Sea Bass with rice and veggies.

Daddy Chao (MOU) had the Fiery Gulf Texas Snapper (very light and crunchy)

I had the Sesame Tuna with Wasabi Mashed Potatoes (Yum!!)

And Andy had the Grilled Kona Kampachi with wild mushrooms. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of Andy’s meal, I think it’s because he ate it too fast. Which by the way, I really confused the waitress because I kept asking her what the Kampachi Fish tasted like. Turns out the fish is called Kona, and the sauce is Kampachi? Oops! To tell you the truth, I don’t really know what she was talking about, but it was very tasty whatever the fish was called. You may be wondering why I keep taking pictures of my food as of late. Well, I figured if I or someone else has taken the time to make the delicious food and even more so, plate it beautifully, it deserves some recognition. Plus, I want to prove to my mom that no, we don’t have frozen pizzas and a can of green beans every night for dinner. ^_^

I had to work Sunday night, but it worked out well because my parents were heading up to Norman in the afternoon anyhow. After lunch at Central Market, we played several rousing rounds of Wii bowling. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve ever scored over a hundred points in bowling! I was pretty ecstatic! It was so much fun, that even Mommy Chao gave it a shot and ended up beating Daddy’s Chao’s butt with a high score of her own!

It was a nice weekend and I hope we’ll get to do it more often. However, with the summer coming soon, Daddy Chao’s extremely busy work schedule, and my parents’ hatred of the Texas heat, I think the next trip may be much further in the future than I would hope. I have this coming weekend off, thank goodness, and am hoping to be able to properly relax and get some much needed chores accomplished. Here’s the link for more pictures from last weekend. Enjoy!

Ready for another enormously long post? I promise to try and update more often, so these marathon blogs will stop. Last week was a pretty hectic week. First off, I had to work the later set of shifts (2 to 10:30), except for Wednesday. So, of course we celebrated Valentine’s Day early on Wednesday night. Andy was very sweet and offered to cook a nice meal for the evening. His fancy meal consisted of smoked pork chops and oven roasted asparagus with shallots. He even cleaned after all the cooking, what a good man! The true key to love, in my book, is cleanliness! How anyone can possibly relax when there’s a festering cesspool of a mess in one’s home is beyond me. Hm…I can’t believe I just discussed festering cesspools in the same paragraph as Valentine’s Day…ah, the romance of it all!

Andy’s very tasty meal (I discovered the close-up mode on my camera, nifty!)

Andy and Jabber preparing a lovely meal together, rather Andy preparing and Jabber licking the floor like crazy!

Me all dressed up and ready to eat!

Unfortunately, shortly after this very romantic gesture, Andy came down with a horrible sore throat. He had to stay home from work for a couple days. Poor guy gets sick very infrequently, so this cold caught him off guard. Thankfully, he’s feeling much better and was definitely up to the party that we threw last Saturday. Though Chinese New Year was technically the 5th of Feb, we wanted to include our TX friends in the celebration.

I had this fabulous picture in my head of how the party was going to look. I wanted red and gold decorations everywhere. Basically, I was hoping to capture the feeling that we really were celebrating something special. So, I asked my mom for several envelopes of Chinese New Year signs, and I was able to reuse the red lanterns that I bought for our wedding decor.

But what I REALLY wanted to get was a red and gold tablecloth to complete my plan. However, I couldn’t find a single piece that would suit my needs. So, I bought several yards of cheap polyester fabric from Walmart, thinking I could just drape the red fabric over our kitchen table and set a strip of gold down the middle as a runner. Nothing ever turns out that easy. After bringing my cloth purchases home (4 hours prior to the party), I discovered that the red fabric was just a little too short, width wise, to cover the table. After much puzzling over this matter, I decided the best thing to do would be to cut the red fabric down the middle, and then connect the gold runner in between the red pieces.

So, I lugged out my sewing machine and began to sew. Apparently, my seamstress skills are no better now than they were when I was in seventh grade sewing class. Though I didn’t sew my project to my sleeve this time around…I did manage to sew the tablecloth to itself (it had doubled over). Then when I finally ripped that apart, and finished sewing both sides, I discovered that half of the tablecloth was right side out, but the other was oppositely positioned upside down (inside out?). Sigh…just like my seventh grade boxer shorts assignment. So, back to the seam ripper I turned. After finally making sure that both “ugly” sewn sides were on the SAME side, I sewed everything together again, only to discover that the prettier shinier side of the gold fabric was on the “ugly” underneath side. On top of all that, I was too lazy and pressed for time to wind another bobbin full of red thread. So, the top seam is in red and the bottom in green. But by this point, my need for sewing perfection was outweighed by my need to get food on the table for my guests. The fact that the thing was in one piece and looked…okay was enough.

No, I will most definitely NOT be signing up for Project Runway anytime soon. My dreams for becoming a fashion anything have been dashed by this humbling experience. I am not quite as crafty as I had hoped. So in conclusion, 3 sets of ripped seams, 2 needles (yes, I broke the sewing machine’s needle, don’t ask me how), several long debates with my sewing machine’s manual (i.e. “What do you mean by the needle clamp screw? Could your pictures get more vague?”), much exasperated yelling, and 2 hours later, my very cheap tablecloth was finally assembled. It actually doesn’t look too terrible from afar, and nobody could tell any better when there were dishes of tasty food on top, but I would not advise you to look too closely.

Dinner was very tasty, in my opinion, and judging by the surprising lack of leftovers, I’d guess my friends enjoyed the food…or are horrible binge eaters. Who can tell these days?

Dumplings galore (beef, chicken, and pork all accounted for!)

Chicken rolls and Daikon Cake (know what a daikon is? Yup, it’s the funny looking turnip thing in Mario’s world)

In addition to all the new year’s celebrations, my friend Ethan turned 25 last week as well. This resulted in Jaeger shots and very tasty chocolate cake, made by Anni. We also came to the realization that we don’t actually own shot glasses, forcing everyone to take their shots from normal sized glasses. A little odd, but people have gone to stranger lengths to get to their booze. Cheers to Ethan!

Time for cake! A very nice picture, except for the fact that we seem to be framing a bottle of Lysol kitchen cleaner. How about that for product endorsement!  Might I also point out that Kansas totally rocks out over Texas? Look at my bright colorful Kansas t-shirt! It definitely looks better than that old stinky faded Texas t-shirt! After all, Kansas people do their own laundry…

Most of the night was spent playing Rock Band, trying to get David and Ethan to stop discussing receptors, listening to music, playing a little Wii, all followed by more Rock Band madness. It was a lot of fun, and I’m very glad we all got to hang out. This is the weird time of year where everyone seems to be a little busier, and a little less available for parties. (tax season for accountants, exam time for grad students, flu season for pharmacy folk, and deadlines for just about everyone else) Here’s to hoping we’ll all be able to get together again soon! Oh and the link to all our pictures from last week.

Here’s a marathon long run down of what we did in Kansas for 5 days. Since time is precious, this explanation will be mostly in pictures. And it’s STILL going to be a crazy long post. If you have already checked out all the photos from my previous post’s link, this will probably be quite redundant for you. Off we go!

We left the house around 7:30 on Tuesday night (Feb 5th) after work. What is usually a long 8 and 1/2 hour drive, became 10 hours due to the snow/ice storm that hit KS at 2 am. It was definitely nice to be home, though we really just slept most of Wednesday (Feb 6th). We did have a nice Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner with my family that evening (yay Chinese hot pot! And yay Wikipedia for actually having an article to explain Chinese hot pot, you never cease to amaze me!). Plus Jabber got her first traipse in freshly fallen snow, which of course she LOVED.

The next day, Thursday (Feb 7th), we stopped by dad’s office to chat with Grandma Peggy. Like I’ve said before, there is a certain list of people we HAVE to see when we’re in KS, Grandma Peggy is one of those people.

In the evening, I went out to dinner at Houlihan’s with my best friends from high school (Ashley, Cindy, and Robyn). It was great, as always, to catch up on everyone’s lives. We try pretty hard to keep up with each other, but sometimes schedules get so hectic that it’s difficult to stay in touch. Getting to meet up once in awhile is always something I look forward to.

This brings us to…Friday (Feb 8th). We were originally going to the Peppercorn Duck Club in the Crown Center Hyatt, but alas, they’ve decided to close the restaurant for lunches. Sad! No extravagant chocolate dessert bar for us. Instead, mom, Cathy, Andy, and I went to the Plaza for lunch at Houston’s. I love Houston’s, how very tasty! We then shopped along the Plaza for a little bit. I can’t believe all the changes that have been made since we were last in town!

After shopping, we drove up to Liberty, Missouri to visit my friends from college, Sarah and Chris. They have 2 adorable 4 year old twin girls (Kylie and Abigail) and a rambunctious little 2 year old boy (Eric). Sarah made us a delicious home cooked meal of pot roast, baked brussel sprouts, and mashed potatoes. Man, can Sarah cook! Andy and I went home smelling, quite happily, of Sarah’s wonderful pot roast! We spent all evening hanging out with their family, reading books, talking, laughing, trying to hide my cell phone from the twins (which they were experts at finding!), and just enjoying our time together.

Okay, we’re up to Saturday (Feb 9th). Andy had been longing to visit Lawrence, and since I wanted to see Cathy’s (my sister) new apartment, lunch on Sat. seemed like as good a time as any. We got the grand tour of Cathy’s swanky apartment, all one bedroom of it. We then enjoyed a fabulous lunch at Free State Brewery. The food is fantastic, as is the beer, so I’ve been told. Andy missed it so much, he brought home with him a 64 oz jug of their freshly brewed beer (oatmeal stout, for those that are beer fanatics). I, on the other hand, was wow’ed by their amazingly perfect french fries, which I dipped in their even more fantastic cheese ale soup. That is what I’ll be craving from Kansas before our next trip. Cathy and I shopped around Mass. St, which I love. Their stores are unique (for the most part, there are a couple exceptions…but they’re slowly moving out), the merchandise is a little quirky, and shopping is genuinely interesting! You never know what you might find! For instance, my new shades…

Then it was a huge and fantastic Chinese New Year’s meal that my parents set up at Fortune Star for their friends. Anyone that attended our wedding that was not Chinese, was probably astounded, bewildered, and perhaps a little confused by the amount of food that was prepared. For special occasions, this is just what our culture expects! To prove this point, I present 3 of the 10 dishes that was served. (People didn’t seem to understand why I was taking photos of their food before anyone could touch it, so I stopped.)

Crab Dish – messy but tasty, not that I like crab.

Duck Dish – with head included. Despite the head, the duck itself was VERY yummy.

Fish Dish – symbolizing good fortune in the next year

The Diners with Voracious Appetites wish you a Happy Chinese New Year!

This brings us to Sunday (Feb 10th). All done, right? This must be the day we pack up and go home, right? Um…no. There’s still more people we need to visit, starting with Aunt Susan and Cousin Debra, whom we met for brunch at Yahooz. The brunch is quite spectacular, and if you show up early enough (we met at 10 am), you can get the early bird special. Despite the very very bitterly cold weather, and the sniffles everyone seemed to share in common, brunch was fantastic. Though, I did find it peculiar that I can’t quite seem to get away from the Texas theme and decor!!

After brunch, we were FINALLY on our way, well kind of. We packed up my little Yasminda the Yaris, and started on our long drive back to TX. However, we couldn’t go through Emporia, Kansas without saying hi to Andy’s Grandma Rose! She was recently moved to an assisted living facility, and we wanted to stop by and spend a little time with her. Though the facility was a little depressing, as those places tend to be, for they have an air of feeling locked up with no escape, Grandma Rose’s room was reassuringly cheerful. She was surrounded by pictures of those that love her, her books, and a bright and colorful decor. We enjoyed our time with her immensely, we just wish we could have stayed longer.

After another 7 hours, we finally reached home. It was a fantastic trip, though pretty physically and emotionally draining. The schedule tends to be quite rigorous, but I demand that from myself so I can see all the people and places that I miss. So, there you go…our trip to Kansas fully explained. To see all of the photos we took…click here (if you haven’t already) Does that mean I had a nice restful weekend this week? No such luck, but that’s a story for my next post. Maybe tomorrow, since I’m working the early shifts this week. If I haven’t lost you to this point, congratulations, you’re a very devoted reader. You will be rewarded with…the feeling of satisfaction that you’ve stuck it out to the very end of this abominably long post. Gold Star for you! (that you’ve bought with your own hard earned money).

Hi Everyone, just wanted to let you know we got home safe and sound (though tired and completely stuffed with good food that can only be found in Kansas). I don’t have a lot of time to post everything I want to say. However, I did manage to get all our photos uploaded, for those that are interested in taking a sneak peek. I hope to outline last week with stories and photos later on this week. So, stay tuned! Till then, wash your hands often, bundle up, take your vitamins, and DON’T GET SICK!! (this flu season is turning out to be pretty nasty)

Hello from the snowy cold wonderland of Kansas! That’s right, Andy, Jabber, and I are visiting my parents and friends in the great state of KS. So, I apologize for the lack of blogging, but I promise there will be many pictures and updates when we get home. Until then, I fully intend to enjoy myself completely by surrounding myself with the people and places that I love.