What a Fantastic Long Weekend!

Despite having to work a half day on Friday, it did actually feel like I had a four day weekend.  I guess if I normally wouldn't have woken til noon anyway that time at work was sort of a wash...  We had a lot of fun with our friend K in town and boy were we busy!  We went to an Astros game on Wednesday night (complete with an awesome 4th of July firework display) to celebrate S's friend's bday.

On Thursday we hit up St. Arnolds for their weekday lunch of beer brats, mustard-y macaroni salad, fries and, my personal favorite, root beer floats made with St. Arnold's house made delicious root beer!  We hung out with friends at Beaver's afterwards (it looks like a dive, but they have a really great food and cocktail menu!), and then headed back to S's so I could prepare food for a cook out with S's fam that night.

We had a smorgasbord of grilled meats courtesy of S's brother followed by an evening of fireworks in the street, including my first Roman Candle!  The dog liked the fireworks too - he tried to eat them...

On Friday I, as stated above, worked followed by some tasty Tex-Mex for lunch (K had to get her fill while she was in town!).  S and I headed to another friend's house that evening for our very first whiskey tasting!  R gathered 13 bottles from the many of his whiskey collection, explained the differences to us, let us taste and smell them all and then we compared for differences.  Were they smooth, did they have vanilla undertones, what is a "single malt" and is it really better, etc.  It was a lot of fun! 

We spent the rest of the evening dining with R and his wife and then playing a new game (lots of new/first this weekend!) that they got from France called Dixit - we had a blast!

Saturday we met up with one of K's friends for lunch at Americas, a classy Latin American restaurant in River Oaks.  The interior was AWESOME (designed by a Chicago architect, or course!), the food was excellent and the 88 cent mojitos (their lunch special) were the cherry on top.  We chilled at home for a bit then headed over to my friend R's house for our foodie cookout spectacular.  Our bellies were very full of good food on Saturday...

Sunday was a chill day.  We slept in, I made an easy brunch, K left to go home (boo), we ran some errands, and even found time for a mid-day nap.  It was a perfect relaxing end to an awesome long weekend.