Labor Day Weekend

We enjoyed the long Labor Day weekend.  It's amazing the difference one extra day can make.  The month of August was "Restaurant Weeks" in Houston.  This is basically four weeks that over 150 nice restaurants in Houston offer special value dining and part of the proceeds benefit the Houston Food Bank.  It's an opportunity to eat at really nice restaurants for a great price.  I went to Del Frisco's with Em and some girl friends on Tuesday earlier in the week, and then JW and I had date night at Flemings on Thursday night.

Me and JW at dinner

Saturday we drove out to Montgomery to visit Joe, Angie, Matthew, Macie, and Jenn.  Matthew was home for his first visit from college, so we spent the afternoon with them.  Papa Joe grilled out for lunch, and the girls ran some errands while the boys watched football.  It was a good afternoon.

Sunday we went to church and met Momma Hance for dinner and a movie at Studio Movie Grill.  And then Monday, we went to the Houston zoo for the first time in years.  I didn't remember it at all.  I haven't been since I was a kid.  It was hot, but the zoo was pretty cool.

This momma lemur had a little baby on her back... so cute!

They fed the orangutangs frozen berry popcicles while we were there.

JW liked the snake guy.  I kept my distance.

Pretty jelly fish

Momma and baby elephant

Monday afternoon we were really productive and did things like grocery shopping and cleaning the house getting ready for our first week with both of us working. It was a good weekend!

Welcome to the Workforce

I hope you had a great Labor Day weekend.  We did, and I'll write more on that later.  We had a nice, relaxing weekend before JW starts his new career as an attorney.  That's right... today is Joey's first day of work! 

It's been four months since JW graduated law school.  There was some studying for the bar exam during that time, but he's enjoyed a good break and is ready to put to use all he has learned and join the workforce.  He was worried about being rusty, but I know once he gets into the swing of things it will all come back to him.  I snapped a picture of him this morning before he left, of course.

Isn't he handsome? :) 

Prayers for a smooth first week are welcome.  Nana and Papa are coming over for dinner tonight to celebrate JW's first day with us.  We haven't had them over to see our new place yet, so we are looking forward to having them.

Happy 1st day of work, hubby!  I love you.

Jamaica 2012- the trip home

We left our resort Thursday morning in high spirits.  We had our last big breakfast at the resort and loaded on a shuttle van to head to the airport.

But, then we got to the airport...  We arrived around 11:15 a.m. for our 2:35 flight.  The American Airline attendants that checked us in and checked our bags were rude.  Our bags were over the 50 pound limit, so we had to shift some things around.  No big deal.  Aside from the bad service, we got checked in and made it through security.  JW forgot he had a pocket knife in the backpack we had with us, so that got confiscated, but we didn't get in too much trouble.  The boards were showing our flight on time, so we walked around and looked in some of the stores in the airport.

We made it to our gate with plenty of time to spare.  Then, the bad news started... the flight status boards were now showing our flight to be delayed by two hours.  We were still okay though.  Taking off just before 5 p.m. would still put us in Dallas in time to make our connecting flight to Houston that night.  Other people at our gate were not so lucky and were going to miss their connection due to this delay, and they weren't happy.

With no airline staff at our gate to answer questions, several passengers called American Airlines to find out what was going on.   We started hearing rumblings that there was bad weather where our plane was coming from.  Then, we heard the plane was having mechanical problems... not again!  Well, eventually they did send an attendant to our gate, so Joey got in line.  The news wasn't good.  They were now delaying our flight to leave Jamaica at 8 p.m.  So much for making our connection to Houston... that wasn't going to happen.  So, with what we now knew, our plane was supposed to land in Dallas at 11:35 p.m. and we wouldn't leave for Houston until the following morning.

We didn't activate international calling on our cell phones, so we were off to find a way to get in contact with our parents since Momma Hance was planning to pick us up in Houston that night.  We found a service desk that allowed us to use their phone.  Our moms were happy to hear from us, but had been checking our flight online, so already knew about the delays.  I asked my mom to call Shay or Megan to come get us in Dallas so we could spend the night with them instead of one of the dumpy hotels the airline was going to offer us.

After getting in touch with our parents, we felt better.  We went and bought a deck of cards and headed back to the gate to entertain ourselves for the next six hours.  JW and I had both finished our books on vacation.  We played one round of Spades and made friends with a cute little girl and her parents that were also on our flight.  Then, the attendants at our gate made an announcement.

The customs staff in Dallas was not going to be there when we landed at 11:35 p.m., so they were going to have to route us through Miami to go through customs, and then onto Dallas, landing at 2:30 a.m.  Stupid, right?!  JW got in line to get our dinner voucher they were giving out, and I went to call my mom again so she could get in contact with Shay or Megan and tell them not to worry about coming to get us in the middle of the night.

I had started to not feel well by now and knew I was getting sick.  We killed the next few hours playing go-fish with my new friend and grabbing dinner before the airport restaurants closed at 5 p.m. (yep we almost didn't get to use our $24 dinner voucher which didn't even pay for us to both eat at Quiznos). 

Long story, short... we boarded our flight in Jamaica at 8 p.m., landed in Miami, went through customs, had to claim our bags there and re-check them, then got back on our plane to fly to Dallas.  We landed in Dallas at 2:30 a.m. and were given flight information for our flight to Houston, another dumpy hotel voucher, and instructions to go down to baggage claim to get our bags and catch a shuttle to our hotel.

Well, keeping in theme with our American Airline experience so far this trip- our bags did not come out, the flight information they gave us was different than what they'd given us in Jamaica, and the shuttle for our hotel did not show up for half an hour.  I tried to go back upstairs to talk to an attendant, but we were not allowed back in the airport without going through security.  Well, guess what?  Security is closed at 3 a.m.!  They assured us our bags would be routed to our final destination, so, JW and I, along with a few other unhappy customers spent the night in the lobby of the DFW airport.  Our flight, we now found out, left at 7 a.m., so we needed to be back to the airport by 5 a.m.  It wasn't worth it to try and go to the hotel for less than two hours of sleep without our luggage.  Words cannot describe the bafflement we felt at this point.

Some of the airport staff brought us cots, bottled water, and granola bars.  We set up all of our cots in the security line just to be funny, but actually spent the night on a couch.  It was not a fun couple of hours.

We finally landed in Houston a little after 8 a.m. on Friday and our bags were there.  My mom came to get us since Momma Hance was working, we picked up our pups, and spent most of the afternoon napping.  It was an exhausting trip home and we will never fly American again, but it was a fun vacation that we are so thankful we got to enjoy.

Jamaica 2012- day 6

Day 6 was our last day at the resort in Jamaica, and we were thankful to have it.  We had gotten to go on all the excursions we wanted to and were looking forward to heading back home and seeing family, but one last day on the beach was perfect. 

The resort had snorkel gear we could check out and use, so that's how we spent our morning.  On the west beach near the rocks, the water was only about four feet deep and we found a lot of cool things to look at.  At one point Joey caught my attention and yelled that his wedding ring had just slipped off!  I swam over to the spot he thought he lost it and we began to search.  I spotted it and immediately dove down to get it without thinking about the fact that my snorkel gear would flood my mouth with salty ocean water once submerged.  I came up choking, but got the wedding ring!  Whew! 

Not too much later, we were near a rope that had a buoy attached to it.  The rope had all sorts of things growing on it, and JW brushed up against it and immediately felt like something had stung him.  We got out of the water to check it out.  His arm and back, where it must have touched, welped up and got pretty red.  We don't know what it was, but it wasn't fun!  We ran up to the room to put toothpaste on the area that was burning (I thought I remembered that baking soda helped soothe the pain). 

Ouch!

After that, we had lunch and spent the afternoon reading and relaxing by the beach and pool.

We found a hermit crab near the pool.  JW relocated him so he didn't get found by kids and torchured for the rest of the day, as JW put it. :)

Our final night at the resort, we went back to the nice French restaurant, Maxime's, and snapped a few pictures on our way there.

This was a cool tree that they set up massage tables under to do massages during the day.



Handsome hubs



Rocking on the porch watching the sunset before dinner

We ate inside the restaurant this time.  The service took a long time, but we enjoyed our last night at the resort.

Jamaica 2012- day 5

On Tuesday, we went on a Jeep excursion to Dunn's River Falls, the most popular attraction in Jamaica.  The excursion took a scenic route through town where we learned about local fruits and sampled some Jamaican famous Rum Punch.  It also stopped for a tour of a local coffee plant where we got to purchase fresh coffee for our parents.

We saw people using machetes for yard work quite often in Jamaica, and JW found one laying around at the first place we stopped and took the opportunity to try it out pose for a picture.

Exploring, we found a small ravine at the gardens where we first stopped.

We saw a white peacock,

and a mom peacock with her chick.

Our tour guide stopped at a woman's house in town to teach us about Jamaican's national fruit, the ackee.  I love the sweet baby girl in this picture. :)

This is the coffee plant.  All the coffee berries are hand-picked at this farm, and the guide shared with us that women are typically more productive workers because they are good multi-taskers.  They will chat and pick almost two times as many berries as the men working.  I could have told him that! :)

JW and me at the entrance of Dunn's River Falls.  It was a 600 foot climb in quite refreshingly cold water.  A lot of our hike was done with our group in a hand-holding human chain, and we stopped every so often for a photo opportunity.

This was at the beginning and that water was cold!

We had two guides at the Falls.  One that was in charge of our safety, and one in charge of our group's cameras and taking our picture a few times in the Falls.  Which one do you think got the bigger tip? :)

We made it!

We had dinner on night five at the Japanese restaurant at the resort, Akai.

They cooked for us hibachi style, so it closely resembled Benihana's, but the food didn't come close.  It was a fun evening nevertheless, and now we are craving a trip to the real Benihana's back in the States. 

Jamaica 2012- day 4

On Monday we rode in a shuttle with several other guests from our resort to the town of Ocho Rios to go shopping.  Jamaica's #1 industry is tourism, and we had a great experience as tourists, but thought it would be neat to explore a town and see locals in a normal environment. 

Well, that's not exactly what this day was.  It was a touristy experience to the max!  The "shops" we got to visit were specifically for tourists and had people working them that were there to help you shop... not my thing!  We were dropped in a gated section of the town with about 30 little shops lining either side of the street.  I didn't think to take a picture because we were bombarded at every moment with merchandise and people trying to "wheel and deal" with us. 

We did however, have a successful time gathering souvenirs for our family members watching the dogs for us.  Proud of our bargaining skills, we left our shopping excursion tired and ready to relax on the beach without anyone bothering us. :)

Sporting my new Jamaica hat, we had lunch at the Jamaican restaurant at our resort, One Love.

JW did some exploring and I read on the beach.  I thought he looked cute sitting in the water getting his water shoes on, so I snapped a picture.

That night, the resort had a Beach Party for dinner.

It was really windy, but there was the most beautiful sunset when we were heading down for the party.

There was a steel drum band for live music.

And a man breathing fire as well as some other games for entertainment.

It was a fun night!