28 Dillard's Later

We went to see a movie on last Friday. It was Safe House {no we did not go see Hunger Games. It was opening day and it was crazyyy}. On our scale of 1-10 {obv. 1=walk out/turn it off within 10 mins and 10=watch every single day, like the HP series} it made a 5. Prob wouldn't see it again, but it was kinda entertaining. But what made it alright was that we went to one of those awesome theaters where you can order legitimate foods and drinks during the movie from waiters. It was our first time to try one of these theaters out. We get there and walk into our theater and... we were the only ones in it! Complete relaxation with the waiter all to ourselves. They usually have this "once the previews start NO MORE TALKING! and write on the card what you want" type of deal {all caps were a must for that because we got there only 1o minutes before it started and we saw a NO TALKING preview about 100 times. They are serious. There was the funniest movie theather commercial about it too. All we remember was that there were dancing food items playing hardcore metal music singing a song that said "we'll kick your ass out if you talk..." so yah, they are serious about the no talking} The food was alright. Layne got a pizza and Kyle got a pulled pork sandwich. But the beer was great. From now on, we are only going to get drinks and a movie instead of paying a lot for food we can find in the freezer section.

So this theater was attached to a mall, so afterwards we walked around the mall to check it out {for Tulsans, we'd compare this mall to Eastland mall}. Now it was 6:15pm when we got out. And it was like a ghost land. We went into Dillards and they closed at 7, so needless to say things seemed a bit off. I mean, closing at 7 pm. On a Friday night. I mean, this place should be hopping with middle-school horn-dogs trying to get their pre-pubescent mack on. But apparently this mall is not a hot spot for normal Friday activities and Dillard's was the same way. Guess they were having some sort of apocalyptic sale because for starters, everything was at least 65% off.

Know what you're thinking. "Awesome--I could spend so much money! I need a new pastel yellow Polo hat for Easter."

We almost thought the same thing. But then we took a gander around and it was ridiculous. There are really no words to describe, but we'll do our best. Imagine a department store from I Am Legend, then fill it with a few workers and some random sketch looking customers. The ambience: dimly lit, unusually muggy for a mall, faint aroma of nursing home. We felt like we should be watching out for zombies coming around the corner. And, it was just a weird feeling. There was a lot of stuff, and it was all on the racks, but things were so...unorganized. Layne was stressin', no doubt.

For instance. On one circular rack there were clothes for a skinny teenage girl to a grandma looking for her cotton nighty. There was no hope to find good stuff for Layne. Kyle then thought, hey maybe we can find some discount men's shoes. Tough luck, homeboy. Unless, that is you are really trying to bring back the Birkenstock clogs from 1998. On sale for like $60, just waiting for you. No rush though, they had like 56 pairs in each size. Hot item, right there. Kyle did try them on to reminisce his old ones and they made his feet look even bigger {possible?}. The toe box is so wide you could make a sandwich on it. For real though, it would have been hard to find anything good. Oh sure, we were up for taking time to check it all out since we had nothing to do, but remember that we were in bizarro Dillard's and we only had 45 minutes. And the first 15 of those 45 were spent trying to get our heads wrapped around this mess of a department store.

We left. Bought nothing. Will not return.

jamba juice is the answer

The Culhane Bed and Breakfast is on a roll. Guests No. 3&4 were successfully entertained.

Morgan and Taylor came down over the weekend and stayed a few days. It was their spring break and since Taylor is moving down here later this year they thought they'd get a head start on looking at apartments. And let us tell ya, they weren't ready for the amount of apartment complexes here. I mean, there are millions of 'em and they all start looking the same -- wood floors, granite counter tops, great amenities, washer & dryer and steep rent that us Tulsan's aren't used too. We ran into the same problem when we came down to look. We had a notebook that after we went through a place we jotted down notes to remind us of the pros and cons. And since we had a dog we had even more things to think about with what the compex offered us aka do they even allow pets, do they have a dog area to let them off their leash and what was the dog weight limit {sometimes we found out that it was 35 lbs for that particular apartment complex and our dog is full grown and 40 lbs.... and they wouldn't take her. Jokes on you suckas since we have pretty much the best dog in the galaxy} So, honestly we pretty much had to choose the apartment we were going to live in by how our dog would like it. Again, usually they have a pet weight limit, but ours is by breed. Which is actually better so you don't have the aggressive ones around. I mean, come on, you can have a 100 lb golden retriever but it's the nicest dog in the world. Why not let it live there?! So once we found a nice complex that was in a decent area with an amazing dog run we threw in the towel and stopped looking at others.

Back to the main point of this post: friends.

It was wonderful having them here. Really makes us excited for when he moves down and she comes to visit him. They came on St. Patty's day and we had planned to go to dinner at a cool irish pub in Rice Village and then afterwards walk to a couple other pubs. We did not plan well. We knew it was going to crowded, but the crowd that we saw was astonishing. The place we had planned to go to dinner was so packed that Layne and Morgan got out of the car to see how long the wait would be, but before they even got in they were going to be charged a 10$ cover. No thanks. Not to just eat and get a beer {it probably woulda taken 2 hours to get our food anyway}. So we started to drive away from the green masses and happened to go by a cute, small Mexican restuarnt that Morgan had eaten at before. No line. No green people. Just good mexican food, margs and beers. Finally after that we decided to drive back into the crowd to go to one of our favorite pubs that had no cover: The Gingerman. {Kyle esp loves it since he is aginger and a man, and we bought him a beer glass with the logo. And now that we're thinking, all redheads should get at least one free beer at that pub. After all it's their pub} When we all went back home, we taught them to play Nertz and Kyle especially demolished the competition. It was a fun night, but finally the girls were tired so we went off to bed. The boys however decided to stay up, catch up and drink a couple, er... a few, old fashioneds.

Next morning came way to soon, esp for those boys. We made some waffles, took naps, ate our favorite pizza, took more naps, went out to city center, ate some Chicken Tikka Masala, went home to watch the Thunder play and then off to bed. Successful Sunday.

While Kyle was at work, Layne, Morgan and Taylor went to look at some apartment complexes for him. We did go through some cool ones and I think they found a front runner that day. For lunch we met up with Kyle and ate at a hamburger joint: Southwells. Layne doesn't usually eat meat. She's not necessarily a vegetarian, but 99% of the time while at a restaurant she'll order a meal with no meat. Randomly though, doesn't happen too often, she gets those cravings for meat. On this day a hamburger sounded good. No, not good. Amazing. And it was gone in like 2 bites. We then whisked them off to Central Market and bought some food for that nights dinner: fish tacos with mango salsa, lime-marinated cabbage, corn on the cob. We also got some white wine to drink with those tasty tacos. Afterwards Layne and Morgan proceeded to open up three more bottles of red wine. It was their fun night.

We have this huge glass vase type thing we got for our wedding {from Layne's awesome cousins Rosana and Anthony - thanks again!} and we decided to fill it up with the wine corks from all the bottles we drink. When we open up a bottle with friends or family we have them sign it and put the date on it. Whenever it's full, we'll empty it and go through it and remember all the fun memories. Morgs and Tay already have a couple corks in there and I'm sure there will be more in the future.

The next day consisted of more "apartment shopping". Before we could function we went to our favorite cafe to get some breakfast and Layne's favorite chai lattes {these are so good they could be a factor for staying in Houston longer than we thought}. That breakfast was awesome, so awesome that we forgot to get hungry for lunch. 3 pm rolled around and the Barca game was about to come on, so what do we do? We headed straight on over to our favorite english pub Richmond Arms and had a late lunch. This was a must do on our list since Taylor is a Liverpool fan and will have the pleasure of watching Liverpool lose to Arsenal at least twice next season.

It was so great to spend time with them and truly catch up. Haven't really done that with them since highschool {or that's what it felt like!}. But honestly we are super excited for another friend to move to our new stomping grounds and to hang out with them more. Oh the memories us four will make.

Once again, no pics with our house guests. We have to be diligent photo takers. No more wishy washy, fake photogs in this family.

here piggy piggy

This past weekend we had our first official visitors! Katy and Devin {Layne's sorority sister and her arm candy} came down from Irving to see us...

Dag yo, it was a blast! First of all, they got in on Friday night and after dropping of their bags at our apartment, we headed out to a little place called the Royal Oak. It's a bar/pub down in Neartown and it was our first trip to the place. It was pretty cool, good ambiance, seemingly non-douchey crowd, diverse drink selection, tasty looking food menu. Except the music was way too loud. Like, way, way too loud. Like, couldn't even talk to our friends that we haven't seen in basically 15 years. But, gotta add that this place allegedly makes a mean old fashioned. Bacon maple rye, only one dash bitters, maple syrup, orange peel. Sounds yummy, gotta go back for one. But back to business, besides the music, we had a great time beginning our catch-up weekend.

Next day we took them on our weekly Memorial Park walk with Char and then just hung out and played Nertz the rest of the day. Other than the fact that Layne kicked the butt out of everyone in Nertz {well, Devin had a small winning streak... at the end} everybody had fun. For dinner we went to Chachos, which is a pretty darn good TexMex place near our apartment open24 hours. Yes, all day, everyday. It's nice to know if we wake up at 3 am one night starving {or when Layne is pregnant and craving breakfast tacos at 11:38 pm} we know of a good place thats a half mile away. Afterwards we decided to take them to our friendly, neighborhood Arsenal pub: The Richmond Arms. Perfect relaxed atmosphere to finish the weekend. Next time, we're gonna be heading up to Irving to check out their neck of the woods. Can't wait!

Interesting aside: contrary to normal female operations, Layne and Katie only took 3 pics together and they were all within 10 seconds of each other. That's it. Two sorority sisters, 40 hours together, 3 pics. And one is blurry. Strange stuff...

In other news, we got a homemade bacon infused rye recipe from Mr. Hulse. Heard it was good, but obviously we don't just trust word of mouth, but rather taste of mouth; therefore, we decided to make it on our own.

And it's amazing.

Process of making it is pretty easy--alls you need is a bit o' bacon fat and some spirits {we chose rye, so the spice and the smoke would meld...hopefully}. We tried a sip neat and then had it with some orange peel, bitters and maple syrup in an old fashioned. Pretty tasty stuff. Also, K commissioned L to create a label for some bottles that we got for the bacon rye, seeing as how she's the resident Picasso. It turned out pretty bad-a, if we do say so ourselves.

Currently watching: Bachelor finale {we're always a day behind on shows bc we do Hulu/Netflix instead of cable}. Courtney is so blah, with her stupid mouth-pucker, side slanty smirk. But Linzi always does this head-down, eyes-up, weird look-y thing. Plus certainly there is a resident Bachelor/ABC hair stylist that travels to these locations and makes sure everything is in order, right? I mean, can we not please just cut Benjamin's hair, please??

Currently craving: donuts. Can someone tell us why donut places aren't open 24/7 like Chacho's?

Stay tuned for the next episode.