Laura's Sendoff

We took a little time out from tube recovery weekend to send RaRa off on her big trip. She's going to Macedonia for work so we decided to have our traditional Maggiano's and Desert Gallery family dinner. Laura is going to recruit people from Macedonia to help support out troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. She'll be gone for one-two months so please say a little prayer for her safe travel and her safety while she's away.

Emmy also made some Valentine's cookies with GiGi and Pops. Mom swears that she decorated them all herself.

Then she tried on Pop's Aggie hat and got a major case of hat hair...

So she had to do a little curling to fix it up before dinner.

Tube recovery has been interesting. She seemed like it wasn't going to phase her at all for the first day of surgery, and then after that it seems like she's getting more fussy and groggy as the days go by. I keep hoping to wake up and the snot will be gone, but instead we're doing breathing treatments and the snot keeps on coming. On top of it all she's getting another tooth. We haven't seen a tooth in a couple of months and of course it happens right when she's not feeling good at all! Hopefully we'll be turning the corner here soon.

At the Playboy Mansion (No, not that one)

Over a year ago, one of Blake's contractors gave him and his boss, Hugh, a gift certificate for a stay at The Victorian Inn in Galveston. We finally got around to using it and took the trek down with the Payne's this weekend. Of course, it just so happened to be freaking freezing Mr. Bigglesworth. Just what you want when you go to the beach!

The mansion was owned by a concrete baron from the 1900's. It's now owned by a former Playboy Bunny. Yep, we hung out with pictures of Hugh Hefner this weekend. And you just thought YOU were cool! Marcy told us all kinds of stories about being a Bunny, hanging out with Hef, and the commercials and ads that she shot. She lived at the Playboy mansion for 10 years and was on The Girls Next Door if you've ever watched that show. Kind of makes you wonder what on earth she's doing in Galveston now. The house is of course, decorated in bunnies, and there's real live bunnies in the backyard. Here's Blake touching a Playboy Bunny's Bunny. Insert your own comment here.

After getting the tour of the house and hearing about it's history, we headed out to Rudy and Paco's for a yummy dinner.


We headed over to the piano bar at the San Luis. Now I'm thinking, Piano Bar, there's gonna be some Bon Jovi...After being there for a while there was a lot of elevator music and not a lot of rockin so I went and requested Livin on a Prayer. That's right...I brought the party. He had to actually learn the song and played it for me. Awesome!

Since the Hurricane, there's not a lot going on in Gaveston so we woke up a late, ate breakfast twice (you know I don't pass up a bakery) and did some light shopping in the few shops that are open on the Strand. Really, there's like five. We found some good stuff in this shop because what you really want to shop for when it's 25 degrees outside is beachware!

I like this picture because a) becasue there's a sense of irony with conch shells, gloves, and jackets and b) I just like to say the word Conch. Enjoy.

On the way out of town we stopped by the Texas Flight Museum. It's a BIG ol'warehouse full of WWII planes. Blake and Hugh have become big World War II buffs so they were excited about seeing the planes. It was a quick stoll but we had to take a picture for Emmy. She's very into planes right now, so this is Blake making the sign that Emmy invented for airplane. (I'm typing this so when we look at this picture later and go, "what the hell are you doing?" we'll remember.)

We froze our booties off but it was a fun weekend with the Paynes and we got to me a real live Bunny. What more can you ask for really?