Notes from the Nassars: Jam-packed Weekend!

I love long weekends and I love that long weekends make for short weeks! This past weekend was a nice mix of relaxing on the couch and lots of hanging out with friends. Jonathan spent a good chunk of Friday and Saturday at Comicpalooza. He even had a booth and everything! I, however, sat on the couch and hung out with Colleen while we knit and watched movies. We watched the Newsies which was awesome!!! Plus, it's totally weird to see Christian Bale so young and singing and dancing. The dancing in the movie is so amazing though. We considered trying to learn all the choreography after we watched the movie but that required getting up off the couch lol.

Recognize him? He's so little!

Saturday was also a lazy day for me (mostly a day for doing laundry and things around the house) except for the evening when I went to a friends' birthday cookout. Sunday we woke up (semi) early and headed out to Alvin to pick strawberries! There are a lot of farms in the Houston area where you can go pick your own berries. Last year we went blueberry picking on the 4th of July. As Jonathan will tell you though, strawberries are pretty much the only berry I like eating. I like raspberries and blackberries but I don't like the seeds so I don't really eat them whole. And I just don't like blueberries...I know I'm crazy or something... I do have to say, picking strawberries is a lot more rewarding that picking blueberries. It only took us about 45 minutes before our 5lb buckets were overflowing. Literally, we kept dropping strawberries haha. While after picking blueberries for over an hour and a half we didn't even get to a pound combined. However, both times they have been the best blueberries and strawberries that I have ever tasted. That says a lot since I don't like blueberries.

Strawberries!

Picking! Left to right: Rachel, Colleen, Jonathan.

So many strawberries!

Sunday was jam-packed with stuff to do! Hehe you'll understand the pun in a little bit. Jonathan and I headed out to Chinatown for Dim Sum. We love Chinatown and Dim Sum is usually our first choice for food when we go there! If I even mention Chinese food, Jonathan immediately thinks Dim Sum instead of your normal General Tsao's chicken, Kung Pao, etc. If you don't know what Dim Sum is you're missing out! It's a meal of small plates that you share with everyone while drinking tea. It actually started as just tea and then changed to include food over time. Did you know that Spanish tapas started the same way with wine instead of tea? I'm just full of interesting facts! At some dim sum restaurants they bring everything out on a cart and you just pick out what you want as they roll by. However, most places don't have that, at least not all the time, so they usually have a picture book so you can pick out what you want. Our favorite place is called Dim Sum King and you just order it off the menu. It's delicious and I want to go back already! After stuffing our faces we walked around looking at all the goodies at Vietnamese bakeries and Chinese grocery stores in the area. In my humble opinion, the Vietnamese bakeries in Chinatown have the best cakes and baked goods in Houston. Think about it, they did use to be a French colony... I love just walking around and smelling all the goodies. We only got two small macaroons to share or else I wouldn't have known how to choose something. Strolling through Chinese grocery stores is an old past time for Jonathan and I. It's really fun to see things like dragon fruit, durian, and not to mention an entire aisle of tofu. Our last must-stop place was a store called Japanese dollar store called Fit. Apparently in a Japanese dollar everything is between $2-5 or so. Makes sense right? Well they have tons of random stuff which makes it fun for browsing: kitchen dishes, bathroom stuff, organization things, yarn, office supplies, etc. One of my favorite sections is the gift bags because many of them try to have nice phrases but are directly translated from Japanese and make no sense. Makes for a good laugh though.

This one was all sorts of hilarious but my favorite part is where they instruct you on how to laugh.

I can't tell you how many times I wished I had a hat to keep soap out of my eyes!

Ummm....sure?

This one made actually no sense but I think they're trying to say something about humility.

After all the laughing we headed home so that Jonathan could have a relaxing afternoon playing video games and I could make jam with Colleen!! Get it? Jam-packed! Hehehehe I'm so funny...Anyways, Colleen wanted to make jam with the strawberries she picked and I wanted to watch and learn how easy/difficult it is. Turns out, it's pretty simple! There's lots of cleaning and boiling of things but the jars actually seal if you do it properly! Thanks to Colleen I may possibly, maybe, perchance make my own jam one day! We'll see if I'm brave enough. It looked so pretty when it was done and it was absolutely delicious! We were eating it with a spoon it was so good, and I don't really like jam...I know it sounds like I don't like a lot of things but I really do!