We {heart} food cart cities!

Ok.  I admit it.  The Big Guy Lowe and I absolutely LOVE food!

We love finding good food in all different places.  At home, Restaurants and recently from food carts!

We had been looking for a restaurant that made Arepas, a Venezuela and Colombian sandwhich (kind of) and we found them at a food cart called Fuego de Lotus!  We actually found it by accident too, which makes it all that much more fun!

We decided to take our parents out to one of our favorite restaurants; Pok Pok.  If you live anywhere near Portland and like good food, you really need to try it.  When driving up to the restaurant, we noticed that the empty lot across the street had been turned into a food cart city!  YAHOO!!  Usually there is a HUGE wait to get seated at Pok Pok, but because of a recent change in their hours of opperation,we were told we would be seated in about 10 minutes.  That gave The Big Guy Lowe and I a chance to run across the street to check things out.  We were quickly called back to Pok Pok, but not until we had determined we would be back to Fuego de Lotus, and it would be soon.  :)

So is it crazy that it was just a day later?  We couldn't wait!  We love going on food adventures and our boys are starting to get used to it.  We loaded everyone up in the car and headed out!

After arriving and placing our orders, the boys and I sat in the covered/heated seating area and waited for the goodness to cook.

While waiting for our arepas to be made, The Big Guy Lowe bought some pies and cookies from another cart--The Pie Hole.   Mmmmmm.

Somehow I forgot to take pictures of the arepas...could it be that I needed to eat as soon as they came?  Yep, pretty much!  They were wonderful!  While we ordered one of each of them, we had our favorites--the pork belly arepa and the chicken arepa.  Oh so good.  We'll be back.

A new taste to follow

We love food.

I don't think anyone would argue, and with the boys getting a bit older, they are starting to enjoy more kinds of food too.  The Big Guy Lowe and I simply love that!

We are always looking for new kinds of food and great restaurants to explore. 

Today we found one; a new frontier.  Yes, we found food carts! 

We invited Grammie Lowe and Aunt Christina to join us on our adventure, and we were all satisfied!  

Our favorite cart was "Wicked Waffles"--SO GOOD! 

And imagine, the boys all loved the cinnamon sugar waffles.  They were delicious!

 Grammie Lowe enjoyed her biscuits and soup

and Aunt Christina tried a few different options--all looking good!

This location was great because in the middle of all the carts there was covered seating...as it has been known to rain a bit out here.  ;)

We had a great day and will most definitely be back for more in the near future.  Oh, and watch out food carts...we're on to you!

Hawaii Five-Lowe Part III

The Big Guy Lowe and I take vacations very seriously.

Really, we do.

We seriously believe that vacations are there to be enjoyed and not over-scheduled.  We recognize that there are many things that can be done...things that are great and talked about by lots of people,  We just have no desire to try and race around checking things off of a list.  We kept reassuring grandparents that all we were really planning on doing was playing at the beach and the pool.  We wanted to do one or two other things, but we weren't planning on venturing out much past that.  We did let them know that we had no problem if they wanted to go and do things without us though.  Everyone has their idea of how they want to spend vacations, and we say "more power to you!"  ENJOY!!

With that being explained, the grandparents decided to drive into Honolulu Thursday to do some shopping.  While they were shopping, we had a great day at the pool with the boys.  It was very low-key.  The boys took much needed naps and The Big Guy Lowe and I even had some quiet time--who would've known that could happen on a family vacation!

Later in the day, a few puzzles were brought out.  What better place than a beautiful lanai to work on a puzzle?  The first was completed by D and grandpa.

Success!

I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the other puzzle.  It took a few days and was pretty tricky.  I'll see if someone else has a picture.  Why did we do puzzles?  You can't spend every minute in the water--or can you?  Hmmm.  Seems that the boys were ready to get back in!!

Love these boys!

Eating outside in Hawaii really is the perfect way to eat.  We had so much fun cooking all the foods that we liked. The house was so well appointed with everything you would need.  It made cooking a lot of fun.  Never before has watermelon, pineapple or "candy apple" bananas tasted so good!  Hmmm, maybe I should also add Filet Mignon, Chinese noodles, Eggs Benedict, Marinated Flank Steak, Hamburgers, Grilled Chicken...the list goes on.  Good food always makes vacations better! 

After dinner it was time to play once again!

Another wonderful day in paradise!

Happy 4th Birthday D!!

Today D turns 4 years old!!  Yahoo!  If you ask him how old he is, he will answer by saying "I'm one, two, three, four!"  I can't believe it's been four years since he has been in our home!

Four years ago, I was a happy new mom of our second boy!  What a happy day!

Our little D was such a mellow, good natured baby.  What a little joy!

His older brother, G, was so excited to be a big brother. 

His daddy was so excited to have another son to love.

And today he is 4 years old!

Happy birthday D!!

To start off his day, we had a breakfast of a cereal of his choice.

He was pretty happy with his choice before he started eating them.

But he didn't finish them after a few bites.  Only J liked them, the other two boys didn't.  I couldn't help but be kind of happy about that.  Good bye Fruity Pebbles.

After breakfast, we headed out to church as this birthday landed on a Sunday.  We would be celebrating at dinner time.

Every time I would ask D what kind of a birthday he wanted, he would give me a different answer.  It seems he is at an age where he is very easily influenced by his older brother!  He finally decided on a Star Wars/space theme.  His cake reflected that with a StarWars ship flying by a few planets.

We had Lahp for dinner and invited all our family and Gary and Sue over to celebrate.

It took two tries, but he got the candles blown out!

He was a pretty happy 4-year-old.

We divided the cake by what color planet the kids wanted to eat.

I made a few blackberry crisps for the adults to eat.  We used the blackberries that the boys and I picked a few days earlier!!  Mmmmm.

Presents started out with a strange gift from Grammie and Grandpa HB.

It was a vase of flowers...until the flowers were taken off the top and a beautiful fish was revealed!

We added the new fish to our aquarium.

A beautiful Beta fish.  We had researched what fish are compatible with this fighting fish, and luckily all of ours were.  The only questionable tank-mate is the aquatic frog.  I couldn't find any info on that combination!  We'll see how they do!

Then it was on to the rest of the presents!  MANY LEGOS!!!

Transformers from Gary and Sue!

And fun all around!

Then the kids were able to go outside and play with some squirt guns.

We love you D!  Happy 4th Birthday!!

A hankering for Cuban

I love that The Big Guy Lowe and I love to try new foods.  Sometimes that means we are cooking up tasty things in our kitchen and other times it means we are hunting down good restaurants.  Recently we've been in the mood for some good Cuban food; a good Cuban sandwich,  Arroz con Pollo, empanadas and other possibilities.  We found one that we wanted to try, so we took the whole family!  Now, a little side note, our boys are not very adventurous when it comes to food.  No, that doesn't quite capture what I'm trying to get at...our boys don't like to try new foods.  To our chagrin, our boys are still at the stage where they want to know exactly what everything is in the food and if they haven't already decided it's okay to let it pass through their lips, it just doesn't go.  Nope.  Not happening.

But that doesn't stop The Big Guy Lowe and I on our adventures!!  Today it was to try Pambiche!  We were pretty excited about it.  It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and our cute little family was all happy just being together!  Yea!!  They didn't have seating large enough for us to be outside, so we waited a bit until they could get us our indoor table. 

G pointing to the menu.  For a minute you might think that he was planning on trying something.  Nope...at least not at this point.

Big D loved all the fish and fun things all over the restaurant.  He asked if he could take a picture.  Not too shabby!

We were all doing pretty well.  Our food came out and The Big Guy Lowe and I were pretty happy.  We enjoyed a classic cuban sandwich, some empanadas and some croquetas. 

The boys surpirsed us and ate quite a few Tostones, or friend green plantains.

We even got another order for them to eat, and then we all enjoyed the desserts!  We're looking forward to trying some of their other dishes in the future, but thought it was a great sucess for our first family attempt at enjoying Cuban food together!

Our family's first movie in a theater!!

Toy Story III was out in the theaters. 

We heard it was really good.  We wondered if all our boys could handle sitting through a movie in a theater...well, a theater outside of our home.  The Big Guy Lowe and I wondered if we could handle sitting through a movie in a theater outside of our home.  We decided it was time to try!

Everyone was very excited!!  Our two younger boys really weren't sure what to expect!  They were in for a treat!

You thought I was just talking about the movie, didn't you?  Nope.  Right after this picture was taken, The Big Guy Lowe headed to concessions and loaded up on popcorn, soda, and multiple candies!  Holy cow!  That never happened when I was a kid!!

We chose our seats and got ready for the movie to begin!!

The next few pictures were taken with my camera phone mid-movie.  I'm not sure how great they'll turn out here, but they were priceless to see.  If you look closely, you'll be albe to see how The Big Guy Lowe has his arm around D.

This photo captured all the boys enthralled by the movie!

Overall, everyone did GREAT!!  G loved the movie, D was a bit nervous in the "tense" portions of the movie but did okay when his daddy put his arm around him, and J ate more than I can possibly describe!  I know he watched a lot of the movie, but I think it was more of an eating-fest for him!

Happy Day!

Love all the boys and the man in my life!

Cookies for Spring!

This spring has been horribly wet. 

I'm not kidding.  More consecutive rainy, cloudy days than I ever remember occuring in any past memory.

Rain. Mud. Cloudy. Dark. All this makes for unpleasant playing outside, because in addition to all the rain, it's been cold!  Argh!

So, when life gives a lot of rain, we try to picture the flowers that should already be here, but aren't because of the lack of SUN, and we make flower cookies.

These were yummy!

Bring on the rain!

(not really)