Used one of my daily coupons to get a dental appointment. They were really nice, although they said they were absolutely swamped with people using the coupons, which is pretty common. It had a really nice reception area, and everyone was really nice. I got there at 1pm and my appointment was at 2pm. They all take their lunches at 1pm, but they let me just sit in the waiting area with my book and told me to answer the phones if they rang. :)
Gotta love the little freebies.
We went to Cirque du Soleil: Alegria on Wednesday. Tickets are normally pretty expensive, but we found a last-minute online deal that gave us the second-best area for practically the same price as the worst seats.
Saturday we used another coupon for a plane ride. When we signed up, it said we got one free if we had a total of four. So we had two other friends sign up. But then when I called the flight school to schedule the ride, they said we only needed one coupon per flight, not per person, so we called and cancelled two of the coupons. We said that means we shouldn't get the free one, but the employee said there was no way to undo that, so we ended up getting four people rides for the price of one coupon. Lucy and her friend went the week before, and Jenny and I went this time.
Houses around water.
Jenny sat in front and got to fly a bit.
I was in back taking pictures.
610 towards the Galleria.
Downtown.
Downtown a bit later.
Downtown from the south.
We timed the flight to start right around sunset so we'd have a bit of time in the air when it was still light outside and some time when it was dark to see the lights. The sunset was really pretty.
We started northwest of Houston and flew southeast until we reached the San Jacinto monument with the USS Texas in front, circled around that, and then headed back.
Lots of guages and dials.
Refineries.
An empty highway.
Jenny and the instructor.
All of us.
And one last picture of all of us. This was after we landed; didn't want to blind the pilot with a flash while flying around.
Video of the plane ride. If you click on it twice, it will create a new bigger video in YouTube, which allows you to read the comments I made since otherwise you can't really hear anything as we have headsets on.
After that we went up to the Olive Oil restaurant in the Woodlands. We had heard about it from the woman at the Greek Festival who makes the costumes for the dancers, and we only met her because one of Jenny's friends knew one of the dancers. Always good to know people.
And we timed it just right. The music starts and 7pm and the dancers start at 7:30. And we even got a front-row table, how cool.
People threw money and smashed plates as the dancers danced.
Dancing with a glass of wine.
Our appetizer was saganaki, which is cheese with ouzo and lemon the waiter flambés right at your table.
Teaching someone how to smash plates. The employees would just lightly toss them into the air and let gravity do it's work, but people who had never done it before tried to fling them into the floor, which often resulted in the plates just rolling instead.
And now some of the audience gets into the dancing.
I love sampler platters. Especially with more than one person, since whatever I don't like someone else might, and vice versa.
A big group dancing now. You can see Jenny sitting at our table in the middle; she has a pink sweatshirt on.
They swept the money and dish pieces up every once in a while so people wouldn't slip on them.
Then they had a belly dancer.
She went around the audience, dancing close to people and getting tips.
The she even danced on a table. The heads of the guys holding the table where level with her knees and hips, so they had to keep pulling their heads away to keep from getting hit, heh.
Probably decent money for a few minutes work.
Teaching some more people how to smash plates, although they're still throwing them down, not up.
This is one that just rolled across the floor rather than breaking.
Lots of money and plate parts left over.
Video of dancing at the restaurant.
We went to Baby Barnaby's for breakfast. It was pretty cold, so even though we got there a bit later, we didn't have to wait in line because most people wanted to wait for a table inside.
I went with hot chocolate instead of orange juice to keep me warm.
These poor girls were in shorts and were freezing.
Sunday we went to Dewberry Farm.
I like this. Every child should play outdoors.
The general store. The woman commented on how good of a deal we got on the tickets.
Goatel 6, haha.
A novel way of feeding the goats: use bicycle pedals to power a pulley with a cup up to them.
Ooh, a pheasant. Good thing I suppressed my instinct to grab it.
Not-quite-so-baby chicks.
Piglets.
Looks like they're getting a good start on digging themselves out.
Rabbits.
Geese and ducks.
A horse and donkey.
Rubber duck races, where you pump the handle to make more water come out and make your duck go faster.
Pig races.
Pig-racing tip: bet on the biggest pig.
It was nice they had these scattered around.
Robotic singing chickens.
Pony rides, which we didn't do because you had to pay extra for them. Actually, you had to pay extra for a lot of the activities, but we just watched all of those.
You could sift for gemstones.
A big fort.
With lots of slides and such.
Swings.
Jenny going down one of the roller slides. She went a bit faster than the tiny little kids, heh.
A little train pulled by a tractor.
Zip lines.
Pedal carts.
Bouncy tarps.
Corn cannon. Actually, some of these went much farther than I thought they would. We were walking to the left and I was a bit worried we'd get hit, but I don't think they can turn them that far.
And the main reason we went there: Jenny wanted to check out the corn maze.
She was happy to find that there was still some corn left.
Us in the maze.
A woman cheating by just going through the rows. At least you don't have to worry about getting lost and never getting out.
Hmm... which way should we go?
Not sure if going the opposite way of everyone else in the maze is the best idea, but it is a bit more adventurous.
There was a horse you could sit on.
And it had a lasso you could throw at a cow in front of it to try to catch it. Which we didn't realize until we saw someone else do it; we just thought you sat on the horse for a picture.
I'm sure the ropes are strong enough to hold fat kids, right? So they should hold me. Some of the attractions had size and weight restrictions, but others didn't.
Ooh, so many yummy pies.
And so many types of fudge.
We stopped for gas on the way back. I was going to go to the Exxon because they tend to have the cheapest gas, but we decided to check the prices at the Flying J right across the road.
And it was eight cents cheaper. I'm guessing because it was so much bigger and they could buy it cheaper.
Shells are always more expensive, so I generally avoid those. Here it's 16 cents more expensive than the Flying J right across the road, though, and it actually had a lot of customers. So the most and least expensive stations were full, and then middle one was empty. I really have no idea why people would go to the Shell one; even if you have a discount card, I doubt it's gonna be more than 16 cents. And I felt sorry for the smaller Exxon station with no customers.