Saturday, July 23, 2011

The Texas Friends Shout-out Blog

Texas, our Texas, all hail the mighty state.
Texas, our Texas, so wonderful so great.

We leave for India tomorrow, but I wanted to get one final blog in before we leave the good 'ol US of A.

The last two and a half weeks were spent in the great state of Texas.  The 2011 Tour de Texas took us to Austin and Houston.  Our schedule was full of family and friends.

I started the Texas Summer off right by heading over to Sauced Wings to meet with college roomies Adam and Phillip, and (non-roommate but friend and new dad) Jordan.














Adam is the owner of Sauced.  If you live in Plano and haven't made it there, you are really missing out.  Easily the best wings in DFW.  My second favorite part of eating there is the roommate discount (favorite part is the boneless wings).  Phillip made a seven hour round trip just to see us, and Jordan left his uber-pregnant wife for a few minutes.  She gave birth to a Larkin Brazeal a few days later.  I would post a picture, but all babies look the same to me...is that racist?

Becky arrived a few days after me (from a wedding in Michigan).  For the second year, we stayed in the Chateau de Adam y Kimber.  (If you are counting, that is second and third different language word used in this blog...uber, chateau and y).

Becky and Kimber.
No trip to Texas would be complete without taking in some American League champion Texas Rangers baseball.  Thanks to Justin Strickland for the use of his season tickets. If you are a blog follower, you might have noticed that we used Justin's Yankee season tickets as well.  Conflict of interests...absolutely.

My brother Joel is living in College Station while going to school, but he made the drive to DFW to see us.


 Becky celebrated her first ever 'over 100' game!  I celebrated victory with three games in the 140's.  Mostly, we had a great time with Joel and my mom.


     











No time for rest when you are only in the state for two weeks.  We met our friends Tim and Mary Katherine for a delicious home cooked meal and then the next day at Lone Star Park for the last day of live horse racing.

Heck yeah that is a cowboy hat.  This comment was only for non-Texans.
Don Juan's, local Grand Prairie cuisine.
We left right after the races for Austin.  We stayed with our friend Ben and met another friend Kristin downtown to watch her boyfriends band play.

We planned to float the Comal River the next day, but as soon as we got out of the car and sun-screened up, it started to rain.  We made do though and headed to the world famous Salt Lick barbeque restaurant.
Here is Josh (drummer), Kristin, Colin (lead guitar and boyfriend), Me, Becky, and Ben.  Dressed for the river.
Mmmmmm - open pit.
That night, we saw our friends Mike and Erin, who helped me to get involved with overseas teaching.  Sadly, no picture.

After playing disc golf with semi-pro Ben in the morning, we made our way towards Houston to meet up with my Uncle Larry, Aunt Belinda, Cousin Jonathan and his wife Theresa.

We hung out in Houston the next day where we met our friend Aubre for lunch at Pappasito's for some Tex-Mex.

Texas is a big state.  I don't really know much about Houston, so we made our way to the only place I know: the water wall.


Thanks P90x.  This is easily the most 'air' Becky has ever gotten!  The top left picture is here because she loves the way her hair is blowin' in the wind.



We had dinner with some more college friends.  What should we eat?  How bout some more Tex-Mex. Although it is impossible to get a years worth or Tex-Mex and BBQ in a two-week period, it didn't stop us from trying.
Me, Becky, Phil, William, and Lauren.  Lauren is a master toddler interpreter!
My brother Matt and his wife, the other Rebecca Currey, just moved to Arizona (presumably because they love the forward thinking immigration reform policy - read sarcasm).  He is a golf teaching pro and is heading up a center near Phoenix.  They were awesome enough to make a weekend trip to Dallas to hang out.

Me, Becky, Rebecca, Matt, Adam, Mom, Skye (Adam's son/Nephew), and Dad
One of the best parts of the summer was getting to see my bro Adam, his wife Tiffany and their awesome kid, Skye.














Becky and I really got into US Womens soccer this summer with the World Cup, so we made sure to head to a sports bar down.  I took the picture so I could post us celebrating...and then moments later Japan tied things up.  I may have jinxed us. Sorry.

After the devastating penalty kick loss, we headed over to a high school friends house for a mini reunion.  I had my 10 year reunion earlier this year but didn't go since I was in Asia and they selfishly didn't hold it there.
Marcos, Anamaria (and their kids), Becky, Me, Rachel and her husband Craig, Jeff and Blake.  It had been years since seeing these crazy kids.
Our time in Texas was drawing to a close, but we still had people to see.  Our friend Katy drove out to meet us for lunch.

 Melanie White also was awesome enough to drive out to have some lunch.

And we had just a couple of days of overlap on time we were in Texas and our friends the Martinez' were in the State.  They were cool enough to join us about the same time that Melanie needed to leave from lunch. I worked with Todd and Jill at GSIS in Korea.  Todd and I were neighbors and collaborated to keep order on the 4th floor.
Becky, Me, Jill, Helena, Ian and Todd.  Good to see that Todd is teaching Ian how to pose for photos.
We also got to meet up with our friends Jeff and Melissa who got married last year.  Naturally, we went out for BBQ at Hard Eight.  We had a good time hanging out. Becky and Melissa had a booty contest.  No winner was decided, so leave your choice for winner in the comments section please.
 


Once again, don't forget to choose a winner in the comments section.
We made ourselves at home.  Thanks Mel and Jeff.
 Our last night was spent with family.  My mom, dad, brother Adam and nephew Skye met us at El Ranchito for one last Tex-Mex experience.  This is the same restaurant where we had our rehearsal dinner two years ago.

That's it from summer.  We leave tomorrow afternoon.  We are on the Wisconsin/Minnesota border near Minneapolis for Becky's cousin Mandy's wedding.  So party hard tonight and get in the car at 4am in order to make our long flight to New Delhi.

Thanks to all our friends and family for making Summer 2011 a great one.  We hope that many of you will want to come and visit us in India soon.

Love,

iBeck

1 comment:

  1. 1. Since I know that booty, I gotta go Becky but I will say that Melissa has a lovely booty as well. ;)

    2. We are deeply saddened to not be a part of this post, regardless of the fact that it is about Texas friends.

    3. Keep us updated from India (and get us a job!).

    Lots of love to you both!

    ReplyDelete