Weekend Recap

Friday night

Friday for Family Movie Night, we broke our habit of getting our pizza from Boston's North End Pizza across the street and drove over to Pearl Ridge Mall to get pizza from CPK instead. We had a Santa Fe Chicken pizza that was really good.

Our movie selection for the evening was The Princess Bride. We had been talking about watching it for a couple of days, and I was pretty excited. Before we watched the movie, I kept saying things to ES like, "My name is Inego Montoya. You keeled my fadder. Prepare to die." and "Incontheivable!" ES thought I was crazy, looked at me like I had three heads and said, "What?!?!" The boys really enjoyed the movie, and now ES has been going around saying, "You keeled my fadder. Prepare to die." and "Incontheivable!"

I think given how well ES took to this movie and memorizing one-liner sound-bites from the movie, I may have to break out Monty Python and the Holy Grail next. Man, if I get ES quoting Monty Python, LW will go absolutely NUTS. :-)

Lazy Saturday

Saturday for me was one of those lazy days you need once in a while to just sit around and do nothing. In the morning, we happened upon Mr. Bean's Holiday on TV and got sucked into it. The boys and I really enjoyed it. None of us had watched any of Mr. Bean's stuff before. There wasn't a lot of dialog - just a lot of slapstick, physical type of comedy.

Then we watched the new episode of Battle 360 on the DVR. In case you haven't seen Battle 360 yet, here's a segment on YouTube:



We also played a good amount of LIJ.

LW was actually much more productive with her day, to include sneaking a car load of stuff off to Good Will (she has to do it in stealth mode so the boys won't throw a fit over the toys she takes).

Both our neighbors' husbands across the street were out of town and didn't feel like cooking, so we invited them to join us for dinner on the lanai. LW made up some awesome mini-cheesesteak sandwiches for dinner, some sort of frozen margarita concoction to drink, plus some downright sinful pots-de-creme from this PW recipe.

Mmmmm... Pots de creme
(We forgot the whipped cream though)

Sunday

My favorite song on the radio right now is Song of Hope by Robbie Seay Band (click the song title to give it a listen). I'm sad though, because it has been elevated it to that ultimately popular status where they play it like once an hour and I know I'm going to be sick of hearing it by the end of the day. As much as I love KLOVE, I wish they wouldn't do that (play good songs so repetitively that they run them into the ground and make you sick of them).

When we went to church, they started off with one of those songs that in all reality is a pretty good song, but the radio stations have overplayed it so much that it's just like scraping finger nails across a chalk board to me (Heaven by Salvador). Luckily, they made up for it though and played one of my favorite and NOT overplayed songs after the sermon - I Can Only Imagine by MercyMe.

El Mariachi Mexican restaurant

For lunch, we made our third attempt to find the Mexican restaurant in Kaneohe that one of my JO's recommended (oops, sorry, I mean DO's - we're not supposed to call them JO's anymore). The first two times, we tried to find it just by using the address in the GPS receiver and had no luck. Today we actually called the place and asked for directions. The lady on the phone explained to us that they were tucked back behind the Aloha Gas Station on Kam Highway, across the street from the bank. If you happen to go looking for this place, that's an important point to remember because there are two Aloha Gas Stations right across the street from each other, so you need to go behind the one ACROSS the street from the bank.

El Mariachi Mexican restaurant is a very nondescript little hole in the wall. The fact that all the tables were full in a place so hard to find is a pretty good sign their food is good though, eh?

Atmosphere: Once you get inside, you'll find about 8 tables crammed into a small place with some Mexican music playing softly in the background. Most hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurants share the same decor - paintings of Mexican countryside scenery, a Mexican flag, etc. This place had some of those typical wall-hangings you would expect, but added a coat of textured red paint and some faux-brick wainscoting for a nicer appearance. Plus, it was cleaner than your average hole-in-the-wall type of place.

Food: Although they didn't have my favorite mole poblano on the menu, they did have a good variety of other Mexican dishes that I love like carnitas, chili verde, and carne asada. LW had the carne asada burrito - I tried a bite and it was excellent. I had the carnitas and it was also superb. The meat was tender, flaking apart, and flavorful. The guacamole was the smooth consistency of the processed stuff you get at other Tex-Mex chain restaurants (i.e. not made from fresh avocados), but it was alright. The drinks are served from a fountain (as opposed to selling you cans of soda). While it wasn't the BEST Mexican food I've had on the island, it was certainly a very tasty meal that I enjoyed very much.

Service: When we got there, all the tables were full, but we only had to wait like 5 minutes for someone to finish and leave for them to clear off the table for us to sit. Have you ever played that addicting game Diner Dash on the internet? I felt like I was in a real live version of that game. There was one waitress serving all 8 tables, but I thought she did an excellent job. Given how small the place is, she was never far away from any of us and easy to get her attention. She was working her butt off, but she did a great job.

Lego Sculptures at the Mall

After lunch, LW went to get a pedicure with the neighbor ladies from across the street. I had wanted to take the boys for a hike, but it was drizzling rain off and on with some heavy black clouds looming overhead. I didn't want to get a mile out and have the heavens open up, dumping buckets on us and turning the trail to mud (not like that's ever happened to us before).

Instead, I took the boys to see the lego sculptures display at the mall.

The boys check-out the hanging-man.
That gray tower he's hanging from is
all made out of legos, too.

ES and J check out the Parthenon.

Man! How do I sign up for THAT job?!?! I wish someone would pay ME to sit around and make sculptures out of legos all day. I couldn't do what he does with the curves of human forms, but I could totally do the parthenon and the other balanced shapes. Maybe when the Navy is done with me we can retire to Legoland!

This afternoon, I tried to be at least a little bit productive. When we moved the furniture around last week (when we thought we were staying in Hawaii for shore duty), I took down all the pictures hanging on my "me wall" because we wanted to put the entertainment center along that wall. Now that we're NOT staying in Hawaii and we have company coming at the end of this week, LW made up a new honey-do list for me, and the first item was to rehang the pictures. Normally, I wouldn't mind so much, but the aluminum frames in these houses make hanging pictures a pain in the arse. At least I got that item crossed off the honey-do list.

I started to write about wine-tasting tonight, but I'm going to save that for another post. This one has gone on long enough. If you've actually made it this far and read all of my rambling above, then please leave a comment - I'd love to know WHY??? :-)