June 01, 2011

hope you had a great memorial weekend

i did!

way back in my past, we used to spend memorial weekend in oklahoma with family and making a trip to the cemetery. i kinda' miss that. it's hard to do, especially now. may is so busy for our family just with mother's day and birthdays.

we celebrated my mother-in-law and father-in-law's birthday saturday night. next year, they will be turning 80 and celebrating their 60th (!) wedding anniversary. we will have to start planning that soon. my dad will be turning 80 in january and so i am going to start looking into some ideas. one of his favorite drinks is beer and there is a local brewery, rahr, which might be a place to start. gotta' decide what to do.

brother john's birthday was memorial day before they changed it to always being on a monday. this year, it actually was on memorial day and we celebrated with him the day before (!) at the mansion on turtle creek. his girlfriend set up the venue:
it was in a suite with a terrace. i must tell you that we do NOT have a lot of money. i feel i need to say that because a lot of the blogs i follow seem to be bloggers wearing louboutin, balanciaga, etc, and i am like, how much money do you have? i am not jealous...okay maybe a little bit, but i don't want anyone out there thinking, whoa! a suite at the mansion on turtlecreek with a terrace?! how much money do you have?! because, it is not like that. my concierge sister-in-law (i call her my sister-in-law instead of my brother's girlfriend, sometimes, because she really is family) has a few perks with her job and that's how we are all enjoying the view and the food:
i got a tuna sandwich with pickled cauliflower and two sauces that i didn't know what to do with them. i tasted what look like tarter sauce...which it may have been, but fancier, but liked the other sauce better and i alternately dipped bits of sandwich, cauliflower and AMAZING truffle french fries into it. yum!

we spent the night and then husband scott and i (i am always trying to get him to take me to the movies in dallas & he said that we are here in dallas, let's got to the movies) went to see 'the beaver' which was really a great movie. i am not liking mel gibson, especially right now... at all. he was not my favorite actor even before he went all 'charley sheen' or did charley sheen go all 'mel gibson'? or what about what's his face.........michael moriarty? anyway, he was so great in this movie. i must give jody foster kudos for making such a terrific film that included mel gibson. i hope that with him in the film, it will not stop it from being seen by many people. it was dark and i think some people in the audience laughed at the wrong things, sometimes, but it was good. it was such tragic, but really a good film. go see it.

after the movie, brother john suggested we meet up to have the best burgers in dallas. how can one say no to that? i LOVE burgers and these were very very delicious. what also made me happy is that sometimes when burgers are d double licious, the fries can be sad, but not these fries...they were really really good (so are the tots! i didn't know that they served them until john got them or i would have ordered them, too) AND they had dublin dr pepper! so where was this place? it's on maple in dallas and it's called maple and motor. i didn't have my camera with me, so sadly, no food photos, but i did pull it out of the trunk of the car, after lunch, to snap this photo:
i didn't take a photo of the whole building, but i hope you can see how cool it is.

one word of advice, if you go...obey the signs, especially the one that says, order first then take a seat. since we got there before john and mary, i thought we could wait at the table. i normally read and obey signs, but not this time and i got called out. so embarrassing.