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Moreland & Arbuckle at Bartlett Arboretum

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Ching under Family, Things to Do.

Last Sunday was a busy day for us. Brian helped his mom and dad sort through what they could take to Oklahoma. They didn’t have room for everything in their car so his mom will take the rest home on her next visit in a few weeks.

I dropped off a Father’s Day present for my dad who lives in Derby. I hung out with my family until it was time to head to my Sunday afternoon Zumba class at Andover YMCA. After Zumba I had to skedaddle. Took a quick shower so we could head to Bartlett Arboretum to celebrate Father’s Day with David and Donna.

We initially planned to taking Bebot but our new cooler was too big to fit in the trunk filled with folding chairs so we ended up taking two vehicles. Brian and his dad were in Bebot. Donna and I were in Alex. I hate driving in general and I hate driving to unfamiliar places even worse. Brian’s GPS decided to go berserk and I was totally stressed out. About an hour later, we miraculously found our way to Bartlett Arboretum safely and unscathed. Thank you, Jesus!

It was a beautiful day for an outdoor concert. Bartlett Arboretum is so magnificent, I couldn’t stay upset. The stress and frustration soon lifted away as we sat enjoying the music. I’d never seen or heard Moreland & Arbuckle before but I really enjoyed their performance. The parts we got to watch anyway, since we arrived at the end of the first set. (In addition to getting lost and taking a long time to get there, we actually misread the web site info. We thought the concert started at 5 PM rather than 4 PM. Oops!)

At least now we know how to get there and we know what to expect. It’s so beautiful there. Brian and I hope to return for another concert or maybe even attend the Winfield Warm Up in September or the Ecofest in October. There’s not any info yet about these two events on the Bartlett Arboretum web site but they’re both listed on the Tree House Concerts page so I’m penciling them in.

If you’ve never been to Bartlett Arboretum, I highly recommend it. It’s so peaceful and beautiful, and it’s not even that far away (about 40 minutes from our place, without getting lost). Here’s a little documentary about the century-old landmark in Belle Plaine. After watching this, I’m positive you’ll want to schedule a visit.

See you at one of the concerts!

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Belated Anniversary Treat for Mom and Dad

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Ching under Family, Food and Drink.

During last weekend’s visit, we treated Donna and David to our favorite steak place — Cy’s Hoof & Horn Supper Club in Sedgwick. It’s a long ways from our home in Southeast Wichita but totally worth the drive. They have the best chicken fried steak I’ve ever had and it’s a huge portion. It’s more than enough for two people to share.

Of course, I ordered the chicken fried steak because it’s my favorite thing on the menu. Donna ordered the same. David had the prime rib special.

Brian wanted to try one of Cy’s legendary burgers but, after he told them to take everything out of it, it wasn’t so impressive. LOL.

He said the onion rings were good, though.

The homemade dessert that night was banana walnut cake with ice cream.

I’m not sure what was going on that night. Maybe they were just super busy. The food was good but not has good as we’ve had it there. The service was slow and my mashed potatoes were on the cold side. Though I wished that it was hotter, I didn’t say anything. I hope that mom and dad enjoyed the dinner despite the service shortcomings.

Belated happy anniversary, Mom and Dad B!

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Celebration Continued at Freddy’s

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Ching under Family.

After my Zumba class last Saturday, I met Brian, David, Donna, and grandma at Freddy’s Frozen Custard. It’s our most favorite burger joint.

They had spent the morning going through grandma’s storage unit.

Brian’s parents don’t get to visit very often so we made the most of this last visit. It was a productive visit. They were able to complete a lot of things on the “to do” list. The only down side that since it also happened to be Brian and grandma’s birthday month, we did a lot of eating out. I feel like I gained 10 pounds over the weekend.

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Grandma and Brian’s Joint Birthday Celebration

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Ching under Family, Food and Drink.

Brian and I are not really huge fans of Olive Garden but we had dinner there last weekend in honor of Brian and grandma’s birthdays. They’ve celebrated their birthdays together since the dawn of time (or really since Brian was born) and have only missed three years. The missed years were when Brian lived in Memphis.

We don’t really care where we eat as long as we are all together. Brian’s mom and dad came up from Oklahoma. Kevin, Kasey, and their kids Kyndra and Andrew were able to join us for dinner as well. Here are some fun photos we took at dinner.

It took some doing but I finally got a good photo of David, Kevin, Andy, and grandma.

Here’s a good one of Andy and grandma.

Brian and I got grandma a gift card to the Nifty Nuthouse, everyone’s favorite candy shop, and she got a bunch of other goodies from Brian’s mom and dad, including these giant chocolate covered strawberries.

These strawberries are the size of apples!

Brian got a couple of Superman prints from his mom and dad, which are now hung in his bathroom in the basement. The placement is a little awkward but to each his own. Besides, we’re have a bathroom decorating contest in the basement and I’m convinced that my bathroom, which has the lithos we got from Julie and Viktor eight years ago, will win (with or without the help of the awkwardly positioned Superman prints).

Brian really loved his prints! Thank you, mom and dad!

Here are some pictures of food.

Brian got his usual.

David got his usual.

Donna and I both got the chicken and shrimp carbonara.

I was disappointed that they no longer put frozen peaches in the peach bellini iced tea but they let grandma order out of the kids’ menu and they gave us a whole basket of Andes mints at the end of our meal so all was forgiven.

We had a great time at dinner (perhaps a little too much in Brian’s case). Thank you so much to everyone for celebrating with us.

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Brian’s Birthday Weekend

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Ching under Events, Family, Food and Drink.

Here’s the long story about this weekend for those who are interested. Last year I took Brian to the Dominican Republic for his 40th birthday. This year I wanted to do something special but not that grand. We were initially going to Kansas City, Missouri or somewhere drivable. Jay and Becca mentioned they were going to be visiting Sandals Whitehouse over Brian’s birthday and, if we wanted to tag along, we could get a really good deal now that Brian is moonlighting as a travel agent.

We’d been to Jamaica a few times already but we’d never been to Sandals Whitehouse so we were kind of excited about it. We were to leave on Brian’s birthday, Saturday, and return on Wednesday so I’d only miss three days of work. Since it was kind of a last minute trip, the hotel was already fully booked on one of the days so we just couldn’t make it work. Lucky for us, we held off purchasing airfare until we could secure our rooms so we weren’t out anything (except for some clothes and shoes I’d bought specifically for the trip but I can wear those this summer).

Because the Jamaica trip fell through, we had absolutely nothing going on. Naturally, I was accepting invites left and right. We got invited to a tasting lunch at Gianni Bacci’s, and then the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Beta Kappa Omega chapter’s 80th anniversary gala on Saturday, and then on Sunday we had a birthday dinner for Brian at Bonefish Grill (Thank you, mom!) and the Down to the Wire: 24 Hour Film Race showcase at the Wichita Orpheum Theatre. Had it not been Brian’s birthday weekend, I probably would have said yes to even more stuff. LOL.

SIDENOTE: It’s not very often that I have this much freedom on weekends because I teach Zumba every Saturday and Sunday at Andover YMCA. I just happened to have subs lined up this past weekend because I thought I was going to be in Jamaica.

Here’s our conversation leading up to the weekend…
BRIAN: You hijacked my entire birthday!
CHING: What do you mean? We had nothing planned.
BRIAN: That’s what I wanted to do.
CHING: Nothing? You wanted to do nothing at all? You are such a bump on a log! You need to live and do stuff.
BRIAN: I’m not a log.
CHING: No, you’re a bump.

I’d normally feel bad about taking the whole weekend over but we’d been celebrating his birthday pretty much all month (last weekend we had Abuelo’s and Redrock Canyon Grill) and we’re going to continue celebrating when his parents visit this weekend. On top of that, the weekend turned out fantastic. Even he will admit that he had a blast.

Anyway, we’ve been together for about 16 years now and we are compatible in every way. I think the only thing that really causes a bit of tension (though nothing serious because we don’t really have serious fights anymore, we make such a great team) between us is that Brian wants to do NOTHING and I want to do EVERYTHING. I suppose that’s how we balance each other out. I would probably die of exhaustion if it weren’t for Brian and he probably wouldn’t experience life as much if it weren’t for me.

This is a picture of us on our way to the tasting lunch at tasting lunch at Gianni Bacci’s. We had to pull over on the way there to roll the top up because it started raining.