All good things must come to an end

Our week of fun has come to an end. My sister and her family left for Dallas on Sunday to spend the week there getting some medical stuff taken care of. I miss them, it's too quiet around here! I didn't realize how adding just 4 extra people would increase our overall consumption of...everything. In the 8 days they were here we went through 4 half gallons of ice cream and 14 rolls of toilet paper. Not that the two are related.

I forgot to tell about our trip to Cedar Deli on Friday. Shamayn and I had been out shopping and were starving and just happened to be in the neighborhood of Cedar Deli. It was after the lunch crowd so we pretty much had the place to ourselves except for these 2 middle eastern guys who appeared to be friends of the owner. After we placed our order, the owner introduced one of the guys, an Egyptian, to us and said he's some kind of awesome singer. The Egyptian guy began serenading us with what I'm sure is the latest hit from Arabic Idol. He reminded us of our grandfather, who was Lebanese and was known to carry a tune now and then. We then impressed our new Egyptian friend with our small vocabulary of Arabic words that we'd learned from our grandfather. They're all curse words but we were just trying to be polite and speak to him in his own language. Apparently, he was so impressed that he was speechless and couldn't even sing anymore after that.

I had the pita with tabbouleh in it and Mayn had a falael pita. We decided it was a Cajun falafel because there was a hint of Tony's in it. Mayn bought some halva to munch on and we couldn't resist the fresh baklava on the counter. I wasn't going to get any at first because I'm usually disappointed in commercial baklava. It just doesn't even come close to my Sita's. But...I didn't want to be rude so I got a piece for the road. We made it as far as the car before we both inhaled our desserts. All I can say is Oh My Gosh! That was the BEST baklava I've ever had, including my Sita's, God rest her soul. We couldn't pinpoint exactly what made it so good but I could have eaten a dozen more pieces. We figured it was laced with meth. The nuts were ground finer than any I'd ever had before. They were almost powdery but not dry at all. And it tasted like there was either halva or tahina in it. All I know is I need another fix.

Saturday afternoon we all went over to Chad & Jamie's house for a crawfish boil. Kaelei was fascinated and ate her fair share. Presley ate one then refused any more after that. Mike and Mayn both got schooled on how to behead their supper and did quite well.


Kaelei climbed up to the famous Thibodeaux Tree House and discovered that getting up there was a lot easier than getting down. But she did it! While Presley was watching the kids jump on the trampoline, his little legs were bouncing and his arms were swinging up and down like he was up there with them. Mayn finally gave in and let him jump. He went back and forth between elation and terror. He would jump a little and be laughing hysterically, then he'd look at his mama, hold his arms out and say, "hold you?" The Thibodeaux and Lanier kids were very kind to both Kaelei and Presley. Emily and Kaelei had extensive crawfish discussions and the kids settled down on the trampoline and made room for Presley while he jumped.

When we got there, the womenfolk were in the kitchen peeling about a million cloves of garlic. I sat down to help and join in the conversation. I'm not sure how the conversation ended up where it did but I'm relatively certain I was not completely responsible. All I know is, there was extensive discussion about various personal ailments as well as a debate over the most acceptable (and hilarious) term to use when referring to a specific body part. In the end, we agreed to disagree but we all left with some new vocabulary words we can be proud of.

All in all, it was the perfect ending to our week!