Have a Lovely Weekend!

Are you doing anything fun this weekend?  I have BIG weekend plans, primarily due to the fact that my parents are coming into town tonight!  They're staying all the way through Monday, which also happens to be my 30th (Golden) Birthday!! Therefore, I'm happily taking Monday off of work to spend more time with them.  Since this is their first trip out to Texas to see me, I've got a fun weekend planned.  We're meeting up with friends of the family at the Kemah Boardwalk on Saturday, which is filled with games, restaurants, and even an aquarium where you can pet stingrays!  Saturday night I'm getting all of my Houston friends together for a big birthday dinner of Italian food, and then Sunday I'm taking the folks out to Galveston island for a ferry ride, touring some crazy awesome old mansions, walking through the old fashioned downtown area, a stroll down the beach, and hopefully some good seafood!  We're finishing up our busy weekend with a tour of Johnson Space Center - which is going to be pretty incredible because JSC allows badged employees to take approved guests on center and into the actual work spaces!  I'm taking my parents into the old Apollo mission control room, to see the ISS mission control room, into the mockup and training facility, to the building where the moon rocks are stored (!), and of course over to the Neutral Bouancy Lab (the giant pool)!

(pictures from here, here, here, and here)