While Mom and Dad are away…..

Ice cream cones


Coloring Easter Eggs

Playing Games

 
Making Cookies

 
Picnic

 

 

 
Plenty of play time at the park!

More ice cream…and these are only the pictures with Papa and GG.  Can you imagine how much fun we had for 4 whole days?  Thanks for watching us Papa, GG, Grandma Jo, and Allison!  We are hoping Mom and Dad will leave us to play with you guys again very soon!

Sur La Table

  
While Brandon is at his conference today and I'm checked out of the hotel, I decided to find something fun to do.  I found this place that was offering a class on making cannoli.  I walked in and thought I was in heaven!

Then I found the hot sauce and thought Brandon was missing out, but it's a good thing that we can't take liquids on the airplane, or I probably would have been buying him a whole bunch of different stuff!

This is where the actual cooking class was.  It was a lot of fun and I got to use a pasta roller.  It was great.  I didn't really like the cannoli,  as I thought they would be much sweeter than they actually were.  However, it turns out that is a good thing as I would have had to buy myself some more kitchen toys in order to make them at home.  I really wish Des Moines had a cooking store like this that offered different cooking classes.

King and Queen

While waiting for Joe to go to breakfast, we felt like the King and Queen of the hotel by sitting in these high back chairs.

Fort Worth Segway Tour

We had so much fun over in Dallas, that we decided to head over to Fort Worth and take another Segway Tour.  This is the owner of Cow Town Segway Tours.  He had a great system with microphones, so he didn't have to ride backwards and try and talk to us about the sights.  He was a little ADHD but it made for a great tour.  As we had just done the tours in Dallas and we were the only ones on this tour, he gave us a hybrid of his tours and took our speed limiters off the Segways so we could really truck around town, and boy, did we!

 
I may or may not have stepped (or Brandon might say fell) off my Segway just as he was taking this pictures of us. 

Look at the smile on Brandon's face when he was told that he didn't need to stay on the path and could really go anywhere he wanted, just as long as he tried to stay clear of the mud.

A great picture at a duck pond.

This picture has a great view of Fort Worth in the background.  The tour really did start way over in the middle of all of those tall buildings and this wasn't even the farthest away we went!

I thought this was some really cool art work under the bridge.

 
 
Some of the sights we saw in Fort Worth.  We are so glad we decided to head over here and take this tour.  Now we both want to own Segways!

Dallas Segway Tour

 
Seriously...we are about to get on these things....

Our group after we all made it through training.  We weren't sure that the other lady would make it, but we all passed!

 
On this tour, we stopped at Delaney Plaza and saw where JFK was shot.  It seems that a very widely excepted theory is that there was a second shooter and they even have a spot marked out for where he would have been at to fatally wound JFK.

Most of the time, we were in a single line following.  Our tour guide was able to navigate the downtown streets of Dallas on a Segway going in the direction that we were headed while turned around facing us and taking pictures.  I don't know how she did it, but she was a great tour guide!

 
We were REAL cowboys herding ourselves some long horns.

I didn't realize that cities had flags.  This is the American flag, the Texas flag and the City of Dallas flag.

We road past the Federal Reserve.

 

We even had to navigate down some of the streets on our Segways.  It was great tat we took this tour on a Sunday morning as traffic wasn't too bad.  I can't imagine trying to do this on a Saturday afternoon.  What a great tour!

Bread Winner's Breakfast

 
This was probably the best food we had the entire time we were in Dallas  My food was a Cream Cheese and Raspberry Stuffed French toast and Brandon had Eggs Benedict.  If I ever get back to Dallas, I will certainly be hitting this spot up again!

Sonny Bryan's Texas BBQ

As if we really needed food again today, we found this place by asking at the food tour for a great Texas BBQ joint.  This is a place that if I were to drive by, I would never stop.  However, it was GREAT!  Julia Childs even came to this place once!  Dr. Phil from the food tour even arrived and a great time was had by all!

Uptown Dallas Food Tour

 
Here's our group we went on the food tour with.  It was a great bunch of people.  There were people from Dallas, Memphis, Pennsylvania, Australia, Russia, and of course, Iowa!  It was a great group with a LOT of great food.  These pictures were taken at the Lebanese restaurant. While we were on the tour, we had to have a name of a famous Texan.  I was Jennifer Garner and Brandon was Willie Nelson.  We also enjoyed the tour with Dr. Phil, Anna Nicole Smith, and George W. Bush to drop a few names....

We walked along some of the McKinney Avenue Trolley tracks and happened to see this really old cart come out of the maintenance shop.  They told us that for every gallon of gas it uses, it also uses a quart of oil! 

This art was along our walk.  It's a tribute to the Texas State Fair and corn dogs that they invented.  No one seemed to agree with us that the Iowa State Fair is really the ONLY state fair that a person needs to go to. 

It was a great walk around the area.  It seemed like we walked a long ways, but they told us that it was somewhere around a mile and a half walk.

Another picture of our group walking the city streets.

This coffee house was also a wine bar and we had some refreshing mimosas here.

A final toast, and El Primo Mexican Restaurant. I was very proud of myself for trying everything even the Chicken and Cheese stuffed Jalapeno.  I knew it would be way too spicy, but if you are going to go on a food tour, it seems like you should at least try everything!

Here's a list of some of the food we ate...
BBQ Brisket Nacho topped with a Pineapple Pico de Gallo
Hand stuffed Chicken & Cheese Jalapeno
Chicken filled Enchilada Suizas with a Mild Green Tomatillo Sauce
Authentic Chips & Salsa
Frozen Margarita (Nominated Best Margarita in Dallas)
Moroccan Sweet Tomato Spread with cinnamon & orange water
Vegan Hummus with Tahini & Fresh Garlic
Babaganoush with Jalapenos & Pomegranate
Grilled Lebanese Pita Bread
 Traditional Lahm bil Ajeen with Pine Nuts
BBQ Burger Bites with Smoked Gouda, Bacon, & Barbeque Sauce
Ketchup Mixology with Five House Made Ketchups 
Southern Fried Pickles with Ranch Dressing
Honey and Jack Adult Milkshake
Oh My Ganache Chocolate Cake
Cake Balls

Airplane

It's been 10+ years since we have been on a plane together.  We are off to celebrate our 10 year anniversary for a couple days in Dallas.

18 Months

I am BIG.  I weighed in today at 30.5 lbs (98th percentile) and in 33.5 inches tall (84th percentile).  I am very happy and love to talk.  I am pretty good at saying 3-4 word sentences.  I want to be running around outside, and I can't wait until it gets warm enough to run and play for a long time.

Spin

It's a lot of fun spinning this shovel on this race track.