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Even though Easter is usually pretty uneventful for us we do keep up the tradition of looking for Easter eggs.

Norah was still here so she joined us in the hunt!

I got out the hard-to-find eggs again and believe me, the girls were much more excited than they look in the picture :)

Happy Easter!

Cheers

Just testing!

 

Crawfish boil

We were invited by some guys from Thijs' work for a crawfish boil in Houston. As you can imagine this involved a lot of crawfish and in this case also a lot of beer, margaritas and Cajun music!

There were about 300 people there and about 1000 pounds of crawfish! You need a big pan for that! I wish I had added something for scale to this picture but the pan is about 1,5 m high and you could easily put half a cow in there.

When I said to the guy who was 'manning' this monster: 'Quite an impressive pan you have there sir' he was quiet for a minute and then answered, 'thank you ma'am, I have never had a pretty girl compliment me on my pan before!' :)

So how do you distribute crawfish to 300 people at the same time?

Well, you line up a few foldable tables, cover it with some plastic tablecloth and put out lots of kitchen roll. Then you take the crawfish from the pan and put them in a wheelbarrow. Two guys then pick up the wheelbarrow and spread the crawfish along the tables. Dig in!

Then after about 10 minutes the table looks like this

 

Papa 65!

This year my dad was turning 65 and he wanted to celebrate that with the whole family. So a few days before the 21st, my mom, dad, Marc, Diana, Norah and Pep flew in from Holland to spent a few weeks with us.

 

Now, what to get my dad for his birthday? We didn't know. When we ask him he answers: 'lieve kinderen' (sweet kids) - he has been giving us this answer for as long as I can remember.

 

So we decided not to buy him a gift but give him a more personal present. In the months before his birthday we had sent an email to pretty much everyone we knew had been part of his live at some point and time asking for a memory they had of my dad. We attached no rules, long, short, funny, serious, pictures, or not, it didn't matter!

 

What a response we had!!! Incredible! So many nice stories, artworks, power points presentations, poems!

 

We got over 65 back. However, by putting some together, we were able to fill 65 envelopes with memories. We gave it to him in the morning and all during the day he took his time reading them. Overwhelmed, surprised, laughing, impressed and humbled are some words that probably come close to describing his feelings.

 

 

Of course we had to have a cake! Diana and I made this one (Not one of my most beautiful achievements but hey....) Great crema catalana filling by Diana though.

We ended the day with a dinner at Lupe Tortilla's Mexican restaurant. A Mexican happy birthday song put the cherry on the cake!

 

Restaurant bill

I have lots to catch up on on the blog but didn't want to keep this one from you.

Today we had dinner with the girls in a seafood restaurant in Katy. Floortje told the waitress that it was mum's birthday.

After some nice Cajun food we asked for the bill and I couldn't help but smile when I saw the notes the waitress had written on them. Very nice!

 

Cowgirl weekend

What to do when you live in Texas?? Spend a weekend at a ranch of course!

 

So that is what 12 Dutch girls in Texas did! Most of us arrived on Friday night when it was very dark. However the two ranch houses were warm and welcoming and a glass of wine was quickly poured.

 

The next morning it was time to saddle our horses (ummm, get on the horse that the cowboys had saddled for us) and take a ride over the prairie. Having never ridden a horse in my life before, this was quite an adventure but luckily these horses have been trained to deal with people like me and it was a pretty smooth ride.

One of the most amazing things of this weekend for me was talking to the cowboys. They don't just do this to entertain the tourists but this is really their way of life. They ride horses like we ride our bike and their idea of a nightmare is taking a trip to Houston or even Katy! In their time off they practice calf roping so they can compete in the local rodeos. They also told me that the horses and bulls in the rodeos 'buck' because they have a leather strap tied tightly around their flank and not around their balls as the story goes!

 

The rest of the weekend was spent having pecan pie for lunch and BBQ for dinner, going on a Kawasaki tour to see the longhorns and buffaloes up close, drinking wine around the campfire and catching up with good friends.

 

Thanks girls, it was a great weekend! Yee haa!