With Claire finishing up high school and heading to college next year, the holidays are feeling especially nostalgic. Sure, we’ll see her over the holidays after she goes to college, but it won’t be the same as now. 😭
With that in mind, our first holiday-style foray this season was the classic Creek Show, which feels like a mini pre-Christmas light event downtown and warmup for the madness of Trail of Lights.
Actually, their mom got the tickets but gave them to use since she was sick. Thank you, Kit!
Molly is an unabashed Tex-Mex connoisseur. And funnily enough, and quite understandably, she does not like melted cheese. Some people who are not familiar with Tex-Mex may find that to be a contradiction, but Molly knows better.
Her favorite food of any kind currently is chicken fajitas – pass on the cheese.
We’ve been low-level looking for the best chicken fajitas in town, and at the moment the leader of the pack is El Mercdo on South First. So good to get that steamy plate on a cold, cozy day.
Molly is in 8th grade, but after some walks on the campus of a certain neighborhood college, aka UT Austin, she is pretty sure where she wants to go to college.
“I like the vibe,” is her explanation. And she’s keeping her grades up.
We’ve been going on walks all around UT when we can. We’ll walk from West Campus to the football stadium, from the “Hi, how are you?” sign to Hyde Park. We always stop for pizza. The Dollar Slice Club was our initial go-to spot for pizza near campus, but our favorite new spot is Roppolo’s.
Today we checked out the student union, and came across the perfect activity for her: Swiftie Night! I offered to drop her off, but she, being mature, insisted that it’s for actual UT students and not local middle schoolers. Fine, wait a few years then, you dedicated Swiftie. 😉
Molly was looking at the cover of GQ magazine, which had Chris Evans trying to look deep and/or tough. ”Why do they always try to look like that?” she asked. And then she struck the same pose.
Molly may be the world’s biggest Taylor Swift fan.
This summer, she has tried to live-stream every single show from the Eras Tour, including shows on the West Coast that keep her up til 2am. And this from a girl who values her sleep!
To Molly, everything is a Taylor Swift reference. All too well? TS reference. Style? Cardigan? All TS references.
Molly and I bond over some of the TS catalog, including the 10-minute version of All Too Well, all of Folklore, and my personal favorite, Wildest Dreams. Molly’s favorites change weekly – she describes herself as being in a Red phase or a reputation phase, etc. One time we just sat and listened to Red and talked about the lyrics. 🤩
We got outraged when TS herself apparently said that Folklore is set in Colorado. Colorado? WTF?! It’s definitely Rhode Island.
Anyways, here is Molly about to settle in for TS’s last show of her current Eras Tour leg. She has a really well-honed system at this point, as you can see.
At the beginning of the summer, Molly was feeling pretty nostalgic about Galveston from the past few years and requested a return trip this year. Last summer’s trip to Ireland was going to have to be swapped for something more local this summer anyways, so Galveston was perfect in my book.
Since Galveston was such a major part of my own childhood, it really melted my heart that Molly felt the same way, so off we went for quick summer trip to the sandy island. Claire was excited too.
Here’s the trip in pictures, which do not quite capture the intense heat or the relaxed, good cheer. ☺️
Bahn Mis at the pool cabana from a place called Viet Cajun, the most “real Galveston” restaurant imaginable.This crustacean freaked Molly out a bit – she kept asking if it was real.Our cozy if retro condo rental.
The beach…
The beach where we swam and jumped waves, and where Claire walked and listened to the Cranberries.
Misc
Aboard the USS Stewart. I made the girls watch Greyhound to get a feel for what this board was for in WWII.Keep Galveston weird.Nostalgic trip to the Rainforest Cafe!We had a sunset dinner at Jimmy’s on the Pier.
It’s not that often that I get a “framed” picture of Claire and Molly posing together these days.
But alas, after a fun night of tacos and goofiness at El Chilito with my brother (who is visiting town), his girlfriend’s dog (the dog is visiting, not the girlfriend), and my mom, they were in the mood for a cute picture. 📸
I had long promised to take the kids to New Orleans, one of my favorite cities and a place I thought the girls would really like. With Claire almost off to college, this spring break was one of the last chances to take both girls on a trip, at least as “kids”.
Moly has turned into a bit of a Francophile, learning French in school, so New Orleans should be extra fun for her.
So off we went on a five-day road trip to the glorious crescent city.
We decided to stay in Houston for a night on the way since Molly had wanted to see the Galeria shopping center, which was apparently famed at her middle school. Despite many visits to see my parents in House, we had never set aside time to really “do” the Galleria. So we did it right this time – dinner at La Madeline (to match the French trip theme) next to the skating rink and taking our time to gawk at all the fancy stores. We all agreed it was certainly the most celebrated shopping center in Texas, at least. 🤷🏻♂️
Once in NOLA, we enjoyed some surprisingly cool weather and settled into our AirBnB on Magazine Street in the lovely Lower Garden District. I told Molly that New Orleans had a New York feel to it, and she was happy surprised to see how diverse and cosmopolitan it was.
We caught the swamp tour south of town. Despite the non-swampy, we saw more than a few big gators, who were friendly enough. The tour guide recruited Molly as a “volunteer” to jump into the swamp and find some small gators for everyone to bring home. He promised we’d come back to get her in an hour. 😆 Molly was a good sport about the whole ordeal and calmly stayed in the boat.
We explored the Lower Garden District and are a lot of delicious food, including Korean BBQ, Vietnamese, old-school and pizza in our neighborhood. Somehow we discussed World War 2 during our entire pizza outing. It started with, “Dad, can you tell us about World War 2?” 😆 And of course we hade the long-promised beignets in the French Quarter. The beignets took about an hour, but it was worth the wait.
As we ate at the chef’s counter at St. John, I was sitting between Claire and Molly. Somehow they invented a game where Claire spoke Spanish and Molly spoke French, and I had to translate between the two. Claire kept getting stumped on the phrase “slow metabolism”. 😆
We also enjoyed a crowded streetcar ride down St. Charles to Canal. Claire was drawn to the paranormal on this trip, first hit a voodoo store, which was more of an Apothecary & Botánica store. I almost bough some Tabasco cologne but didn’t quite feel it. Claire got her tarot professionally read in the French Quarter while Molly and I had a coffee and Italian soda across the street. Claire’s results were apparently helpful but not discussed with us. 😉
We left with plenty more to see in New Orleans, but I am so happy to have brought them to this beautiful and unique city just the next state over. Molly added it to her list of possible places to move because she liked the active, urban vibe. 🙂
Molly and I love Blazer Tag but got out of the habit of going during the pandemic. We kept saying, “We’ll back back after the pandemic.” We today, like General MacArthur’s return to the Philippines (well, sort of 🤔), we returned triumphantly to Blazer Tag.
The actual laser tag crowd was sparse but lively – we got our butts kicked by a 10-year-old girl. 🤷🏻♂️
But we had fun doing it! And we did alright at the arcade games. This time, instead of saving up for some big prize that costs 50,000 tickets we got a few handfuls of candy and some cheap bracelets, enough to share with everyone at home.
McG Kids 