December 14, 2008

Hey sister, soul sister...

I finally have a fun weekend to write about.

We went to Tyler for Grandmother Sandy's last day at work (she's a reverend at a Unity church...well, until today when she officially retired). We got in yesterday afternoon and just hung out with the family and joking around. We went to dinner at the Jalapeno Tree, a crowded mexican restaurant with the exact thing I always order anyway, except they named it the 'Clint Eastwood': a grilled chicken breast with queso and rice, along with a margarita.

After dinner we wanted to hang out some more, but the old folks (my mom, aunt and uncle) decided they were 'tired' and went up to bed. The younger crowd (me/Bean, my brother, my cousin and his girlfriend) ended up at the hotel bar. Being that we finished eating and were back at the hotel by about 7:30pm, we had at least 2-3 hours to kill before we went to bed.

At first it was kind of boring because there was nobody there, but we noticed a karaoke song binder sitting on the next table, and the waitress told us they did karaoke at 9pm. We figured since we had an hour and a half we could just hang out and have a few beers to calm our stage fright.

Bean and I were the second group to sing, and we did a wonderful rendition of 'Don't know how much' by Aaron Neville and Linda Rondstat. He did the vibrato perfectly and I spent half the time laughing at him, until I came in to our duet perfectly on key and holding the mike far enough away from my mouth that it was hard to hear my voice.

Ben and I tried to relive our band lock-in days by performing Lady Marmalade, but it was a disaster! We didn't know hardly any of the words, and most of it was random singing sounds anyway. I was dancing, and he was imitating my dancing behind me while improvising on all of the words and sounds.

But the highlight of the evening was me and Jessica (cousin's girlfriend) getting nervous about our request to sing Baby Got Back. Not about being able to do it, because I know all the words and could probably sing it without the music or words in front of me, but because just about every song other people wanted to sing was country. We were afraid of how they would react to us trying to rap. But as soon as we started, the entire dance floor filled up and everyone was having a blast!

We were still in bed by 11:30 or so, with plenty of time to get some rest before church this morning. The service was nice, and there was a luncheon afterward which included a cake and gifts for Grandmother Sandy, who was the cutest lady at her church with a sparkly red top and black skirt. And everyone ate all of the christmas cookies I made (the recipe for the secret icing was invented by Grandmother Sandy).

On the way home, we were able to stop and cross several names off of our Christmas list, so that relieved a lot of stress, and now we are working on unpacking more boxes and hanging pictures. It's finally starting to feel like home!
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