Nothin' like Celebrating in the TX 'burbs

Well, the weekend all started off quite innocently enough. Mom drove down from Dallas Thursday night to spend some q.t. with her princess (ie: me!).

And boy, did we ever have fun... we started off by hitting Sonic for a sundae right before midnight to close out the evening on Thursday - and then we were right back at 'em Friday morning for our large drinks (mine diet, hers regular. I haven't brought her over to the dark side yet!)

Friday was our "ladies of leisure" day - mani/pedis, shopping, fancy lunch and then more shopping. Great fun. I usually don't last shopping an entire day like that but it had been so long since Mom and I had been able to hang out out, so I was eating up every minute! (Thanks, mommy for all my goodies and great finds!)

Finally, we got back home and of course had the obligatory fashion show for Matt, "Oh, let us show you all the good deals we got!". I'm sure he was very impressed. Well, not so much.

The 3 of us went out to dinner Friday night. We were all set to take Mom to Pappas Steakhouse thinking that would be a nice treat, but no, the woman was dead set on going somewhere with crab, lots and lots of crab. She is convinced that Houston is a mecca for all things seafood, seeing as how we are pretty close to the coast. However, while we do have great seafood & some decent places to get it -- it's not like Louisiana where there is "the best" dive seafood restaurant on every corner. A lot of our seafood is in larger restaurants or even (gasp!) chains. I know. And I sure as hell wasn't taking her to Pappadeaux, where she can go any ole time in the Big-D.

Anyway, we after mucho "googling", we found a restaurant called "Jimmy Wilson's" down by the Galleria area. Oh yummy! It was amazing! Mom got her much-craved crab in the form of a massive pile of lump crabmeat swimming in butter, not to mention oysters topped with crabmeat for apps. I'm pretty sure if they had offered to put crab skewer in her scotch & water she probably would have taken them up on it.

Friday ended up being a late night - we still had to hit the grocery store to buy the makings for my American flag cake & a couple of other things for Saturday's party. Somehow Eugenie convinced us that we needed a gigantic USA balloon for decoration - I will say it has been $10 bucks well spent - that thing is still flying high this morning. This was my attempt at the flag cake. I was not impressed. Neither was Martha Stewart. Or Ina Gartner. But I heard it tasted ok, so I guess looks are secondary. Lucky for me.

Saturday we got up early to get ready for our slammin' suburbia party. I must say I was a little nervous about it. It had been a long time since I had entertained more than say, 6 people for dinner. Plus, we had friends coming from Houston all the way out to Richmond (Basically they left the "hip" part of town to party down in our incredibly cool planned subdivisions with 4 trees, 2.3 kids and 1 dog.)

I need not have worried. It worked out really well. Good food, great people, my bro & sis-in-law made it, --and then we broke out Rock Band. I know, we know how to do it up right in the 'burbs.

The coolest part of the afternoon?

I went to go just "rest my eyes" for a second and ended up falling asleep for over an hour - at my own flippin' party!!! Nice move. What can I say? Friday was a late night.

Everyone had pretty much left by 7:30ish - we were all exhausted after 4 straight hours of Rock Band - and not wanting to dig into the the leftover ham & brisket just yet - we ended up eating a late night dinner at Chili's watching the Houston firework show on live television. Don't be jealous.

So, here's my question. Relatively tame party, no clothing changes, nobody incredibly inebriated from one too many 4th of July margaritas that I could tell, everyone engrossed in Rock Band - then where the heck did these come from and how did they end up in my laundry?

Hope everyone had a fabulous 4th of July!