The girls and I had an ambitious summer planned. We were going to fly west from KL through Dubai to Virginia, spend time with my family. Then, we would fly to Japan to meet Jeff for vacation, and then finally fly back to KL, completing our trip around the world. Before we left though, we needed to celebrate Father's Day with Jeff. This year he asked to try out the brunch at a place called Havana Club on our favorite restaurant row.
The family favorite was their custom made "bocadillo" (the letter L was pronounced). Whatever you wanted to call it, it was delicious.
That weekend, I also took Jeff to try out the club level at Mandarin Oriental. The view was great, but the best surprise was the club level afternoon tea with legit scones, clotted cream, and strawberry jam, yum!
Sunday afternoon the girls and I headed to the airport to begin our odyssey. They did pretty well on the first flight and arrived at Dubai in good spirits.
It was the middle of the night, but all the restaurants were open (thank you Dubai!), and I found a nice Italian one where the girls could fill up on pasta and pizza. They devoured their food and then collapsed.
That would have been okay, except Elena did NOT want to wake up and proceeded to have a meltdown all the way through security and onto the plane. This wouldn't have been too big a deal, except that she kept complaining that she had to fly economy, and there just wasn't enough space to sleep comfortably in economy. It was a bit much.
Once she got on the plane though, she fell asleep, which meant that Vivian and I could fall asleep, so that by the time we got to Virginia, everyone was more or less rested and ready to enjoy family time.
The new house is beautiful, and we had a lot of fun seeing old familiar things in new places. The best part though was spending time with family, especially the twins who completely stole the show any time they were in the room.
We tried to get a picture with all four of the kids together, but it was quite a challenge. This was the closest we came.
Maybe next time we can get all the kids to look at the camera and smile at the same time, but for now, it's just an occasional lucky catch.
The Goerss grandparents were able to stop by one afternoon on their way north, and the girls gave a little demonstration of their budding skills. Vivian sang, and Elena showed off her karate moves.
We also got a chance to drive up to Maryland and visit with our D&D friends. Elena loved their garden and their dogs.
She really wanted to stay up and watch the game, and our kind DM even let her sit on his side of the table.
But our games go pretty late, and she started to fade. It got the point where everyone was more focused on whether or not she was going to fall out of the chair than on the game, so we decided to take a break and put her to bed.
She did a little better at our other late night outing. My sister got us all tickets to go see Tori Amos. Vivian is already a veteran concert goer at this point, but it was Elena's first one.
She was really into it, right up until she wasn't, at which point she demanded to be taken home. Mom offered to take her and Vivian (who was also worn out) home, so that Judy and I could stay and enjoy the rest of the concert. It was great to be able to have that sister time for us, and hopefully Elena will do better at her next concert.
We worked down our list of restaurants, and even made it to IHOP twice. We didn't get to Carlyle, but we went to one of the restaurants that was part of the same group, and they had our favorite bread.
We did get to Shirlington for some Robeks and Thai food, because my family still hasn't found good Thai out where they are now.
But most of our best meals were at home. My mom made all the girls' requests, and my dad grilled us up a 4th of July feast,
followed by an early birthday cake for Vivian.
The time flew by too fast, and we are looking forward to seeing them all again as soon as possible.
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