A Fabulous Four-Day Weekend

It was the weekend before my first trip to Europe. Sharayah came in Thursday evening... always a highlight in my life. Mark had joined us for lunch on Friday at Pei Wei's... a family tradition. Then while he went off to work, and Marty went off to an ArtLoveMagic exhibit, Sharayah and I enjoyed Olive Garden (always a fav girls' nite out place) and Public Enemies. While waiting for the movie to open, we walked the parking lot in the dark teaching each other phrases in German, French, Russian, and Hindi. Language is such an interesting study.

And then on Saturday, the Canadians arrived... icing on the cake! Josh "Whitewolf" Alexander and Nate "Dawg" Clow became part of our family for a fabulous 4-day weekend, though they were only here for 3 days of it.

I gave them the GameStop Grande Tour and then we all went out for dinner Brazilian-style at Boi Na Braza. We enjoyed all the cuts of meat brought by skewer to our table. We had pineapple drinks, cheese bread puffs, and fried bananas to top it off, as well as the cheesecake, creme brulee and Italian ice cream for dessert. Back at our apt, we played a wild game of Mow (doubt that is spelled correctly), a version of Uno played with regular cards. Marty's short term memory challenge was the hilarious highlight of the game.

Sunday we started with the traditional Starbucks visit and then worship at our favorite Rock Pointe Church. Josh & Nate seemed to like it. That was followed by lunch at Red, Hot, and Blue and then an afternoon at Six Flags. It was so crowded that we could only squeeze in the Batman and Titan rollercoaster rides. At a discount ticket price of $25, I'd say each of those rides were still worth $12.50 each. Woohoo!! We had dinner at Wendy's followed by a deep space adventure via Star Trek at the dollar theater. For anyone reading this who hasn't seen it yet, or maybe even if you have... Capt. Kirk is the image of my son Mark... the smirking grin, the smartass remarks, the adorable good-looks... yeah, that's my son on screen. I love it.

Monday we took the Canadian boys for some California Pizza Kitchen goodness and then hung out at the house watching Big Bang Theory, talking about the One who Created it all... via some kind of "Big Bang" (reference Louie Giglio's Indescribable talk)... and played a little Wii Resort. Then it was off to the airport and sadness at the thought of not getting to see my "second" son (Josh, aka WW) for a long time.

We hit up Grandy's to satisfy Sharayah's craving for those yummy rolls and visited my parents once again before we were all flying out... Sharayah to Denver Tuesday morning and me to Germany Tuesday afternoon. Marty had to stay behind. I missed him as soon as I walked on the plane... but considering what his friend Estevan was facing, it was a God-thing that he was there to see him through.