Anniversary Weekend, day 1!

March 12, 2005. Eleven years ago we said "I do." and life is still very, very good.

This was Nick's year to plan our anniversary event, and he decided to do it covertly and kept me completely in the dark about what we were doing until just this past week when he informed me that we would be spending the week in Houston, staying at a small apartment near downtown, seeing Mary Poppins the musical at the Hobby Center, and even taking some tours at the Kennedy Space Center! Neither of us has even spent any time in Houston - I've always just driving through it getting to Galveston or somewhere else, so we were excited to go somewhere new for both of us and still within driving distance.

We kicked off the weekend in Fort Worth though because we had symphony tickets at Bass Hall. Byron Stripling was the guest performed for the night of New Orleans jazz. I can't call myself a huge jazz fan, but it was a very good show nonetheless and we enjoyed ourselves. We decided to eat at Taco Diner before since it would be a while before we could eat out again. (Whole30 begins when we get home!)

This morning we got up pretty early to hit the road south. Our Mary Poppins tickets were for the matinee performance today, so we needed to be at the Hobby Center before 2 pm. Although we had tickets in 2009 for Mary Poppins (it was one of the Dallas season shows that year) I didn't get to see it then because I was extremely pregnant with Kate at the time and didn't feel like dealing with the theater. I think Nick took him mom or something. I don't even remember. I loved the musical today! The Houston Hobby Center is also very pretty. I was impressed with the venue.

 Get this! Before the show started, they announced that President George Bush and First Lady Barbara were in he audience with us! They had a little bit better seats than we did, naturally, and they were across the concert hall from them, but they are the little white-haired figures in the center box below. They received a standing ovation from the audience. That was pretty awesome.

 After the show, we headed to our home for the weekend to check in. Nick found us a small apartment to rent on Airbnb.com for the weekend. This is our first experience with Airbnb but I am very impressed! It's certainly better than staying in a hotel - although we are attached to the owner's town home we have complete privacy with our own entrance and a full kitchen. The hostess even brought us some quiche she made and a dozen eggs for us to have for breakfast.

This evening I booked us a murder mystery dinner theater at the Sheraton. Another new experience for both of us, I have heard lots of good things about them from others and always wanted to go to one. We really enjoyed ourselves and had some fun people sitting at our table, which I think helped a lot. The performers were completely cheesy and over the top, but I think that added to the fun. To top things off, Nick won the grand prize by figuring out who did it and got a free t-shirt!