Remember, Remember the Month of November

Last month we had the pleasure of having the Nunez family in for two weekends.  The first was for the Run for the Water race, where Keller Williams is the main sponsor of a race to help raise money to bring water wells to Burundi.  So my parents, Daniel, and I ran in the 5K. This was my mom's very first race and I have to say, as happy as I am to run with my dad and my hubby, I was jumping for joy as my mom ran across the finish line. She stopped a couple of times to walk but all in all, she ran the longest she ever has and finished 2nd in her age group! Yea Momma! Daniel of course finished first, and my dad finished not too far in front of me. After high-fiving all of my KW friends, we treated my parents to brunch at Moonshine. We had some brunch cocktails to warm us up by the fire on the patio and then enjoyed a delicious spread, although my dad was very sad at the lack of bacon on the display. We promise more pig next time!

The following weekend we had a great time playing The Beatles: Rock Band for Thad Williams's birthday. Our game is getting quite a lot of mileage! Courtney is a really great friend of mine that I met at my first Austin job. She put together quite a great birthday party with some really fun people and we got to catch up with them and play a little (pretend) music, too.

Then in mid November my Mom and my Memaw (my Mom's sister and my Dad's stepmother) came to Austin to attend the Junior League Christmas Bazaar with my friends Anna and Tabriah. We had such a good weekend together. My Memaw is creative and active, she is 80 and just a few years ago began making jewelry, and she never met a project she didn't like. She is light-hearted, she knows how to not take herself too seriously in most any situation, even when it comes to getting older. And she is a believer. She is praying for us as we work to build our marriage, build our family, and live our lives in Christ.

Our visit was wonderful and we finished off the month of family with Thanksgiving. We made our Tour of Texas with a strong start with the Lauves. We played more Rockband, talked politics and ate some great gravy at Daniel's parent's first Thanksgiving in their new home. Then we headed to Jasper where we started our gumbo streak. We also enjoyed a lovely bottle of Pinot Noir that Daniel bought me on our anniversary trip to California wine country. We had Friday and most of Saturday with my parents and my brother.

Then we headed to Angela & Aidan Shori's wedding reception in Fannet, Texas. We knew all along that celebrating their recent nuptials in Fiji would be part of our Thanksgiving plans. We had a great time catching up with some old friends and wishing the Shoris the best in their future adventures, wherever they may be.

Lastly, we went to the Comeauxs on Saturday night and most of Sunday. While Jed and the girls were exhausted from hunting, they were still warm hosts and stayed up to greet us. Amber and I both got up early so we could have our own time to catch up on our lives since we don't get to see each other too often. She always has the best Christian music playing in the background for our talks, and she made yummy breakfast casserole for us before church! We spent the afternoon playing games with Kaylin and Madison and then seeing a reallly good soccer scrimage with Kaylin's playoff-bound team.

We are so thankful for such a wonderful month of friends and family!

Did you write the book of Lauve…and other great tales from H-Town

http://pictures.thelauves.com/houston0803.html

Well I must be on a roll if I'm posting two blogs in one week! This past weekend we went to Houston to spend the weekend with my old friends from college. There are 3 of the old group in Houston: Steven, Julie, Jill and her fiance Sergei, 6 of us left in Austin: Keith, Ginny, Laura, Chris, me and Daniel, Angela and Aidan live in Dallas and Lisa and Ryan, who weren't able to come, live in San Antonio. Matt & Heather were also unable to join us since they moved to Virginia last summer--we missed you guys! We all decided to have our reunion in Houston this time around. Our Houston friends managed to put us all up in their homes---Jill and Sergei graciously offered up their spare room to us.

We left for Houston on Friday night and made it in town to enjoy Jill and Sergei's favorite Thai restaurant, Thai Gourmet, which really was some of the best Thai food I've ever eaten. It even disproved Daniel's theory that the extremely spicy at Thai restaurants is some sort of conspiracy theory...I'll let him explain that one....we met up with the rest of the crew at Steven's and hashed out American Idol, the Beatles edition part I until we decided to call it a night and meet up the next day for some grilling at Jill and Sergei's.



The next morning, Daniel and I braved the hills with Sergei, who is a personal trainer by profession, and his sporty spice hottie, one of my best friends, Jill. It was a little tough but fun in the end and made me feel I deserved the naughty breakfast tacos we ate soon after. Laura, Chris and Steven did all of the grocery shopping (thanks guys!) while we all got ready to have some fun in the sun. It was a GORGEOUS day that took place at really swank pool setting. The built-in gas grill and pavillion were perfect---take a look at the pictures that prove it.

Even my cousin Teresa and her daughter Yenny came out to play with us at the pool making it a near perfect day for me. I can't think of anything better than being surrounded by so many loved ones. Blue Moon beer with orange slices was the choice drink of the day and my Simple, Summer Strawberry Salad was a hit! Ginny gave me the great idea to include the recipe in my blog:

Simple Summer Strawberry Salad

Salad:
1 lb San Juan Spring Mix
1 pint fresh strawberries (cut)
1 cup (4 oz) shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or toasted pecans
1 bunch green onions chopped

Dressing:
1/2 cup oil
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced

Combine ingredients for dressing in large jar. Shake
well and pour over salad before serving.

After lots of catching up and some hot tub relaxation, we all decided to get ready and go out for a few drinks! We ended up at Sherlock's Bakers Street Pub. It was not too loud and even though many of us were tired from all the sun during the day, I think the good company perked us all up again and we got our second wind. Steven came up with the great idea to go to Michael's Outpost, a dive piano bar that our spirited crew soon took over, mostly due to our cruise director with amazing vocals!! Steven Knott wooed the whole bar (all the guys in the back really were wooed) and made singing by a piano in front of strangers so much fun.

It has to be said that one of my favorite parts of the night was when my husband, Daniel Lauve, decided he was ready to sing and brought down the house and brought up the lights (it was the last song of the night) with American Pie. He sang it so well and I know this sounds weird but was just another reason that I'm sooo incredibly proud to be his wife!! I love that he still has tricks up his sleeve...



We ended a great weekend with a trip to Cafe Malay for a tour of Malaysian food with Aidan and Angela. Aidan taught us a few things and it was yet another great adventure with our friends. Thanks to all of you for recharging my friendship batteries---I love each of you so much and I can't wait to start planning our get together in June!

Where Have You Gone, Number Fifty-One?

"You'll look around for Willie McGee one day, and he won't be around."
---Willie McGee

The prognostication that Willie McGee made late in his career about a quiet disappearance from baseball ended up not quite coming true.  But eight years later, the same unfortunately cannot be said about his charitable foundation.

The 1999 season was Willie's last with the St. Louis Cardinals, and he was sent out with a standing ovation every time he came to the plate.  Five years later, he founded a charitable organization that helped gave scholarships and other financial support to students in the Oakland, California area.

My first exposure to the Willie McGee Foundation was in 2004, when Jarvis Brown, McGee's best friend and the president of the organization, gave me a call.  Their website was just about to launch, and Jarvis, who had seen some pictures on the WillieMcGee site I developed, called to see if I had any more.  The most surreal part of the call came when Jarvis told me about the group's kickoff event, which was to include VIPs from the San Francisco area and from the baseball world.  "City councilman so-and-so is coming, and mayor whatshisname, and, oh yeah, Ozzie's coming."  Just like that, as casually as you might mention that Uncle Steve is joining us for cards this weekend, he mentioned the anticipated arrival of the most exciting baseball player I've ever seen.

I considered donating to the Willie McGee Foundation a few times in the years after that phone conversation.  I checked in on the website fairly regularly, proud to see that Willie was still giving back to some promising students and athletes in his home area.  But a few weeks ago, when I pulled up the site, it wasn't there anymore.  I can't even find a mention of what happened to the foundation or why it disappeared.

This is just a reminder that there's never a bad time to give money to a charity that you care about.  There are always plenty of worthy and needy organizations, especially at this time of year, but that shouldn't be an impediment to giving to the ones you feel are most deserving.

Welcome to our new blog!

This is the first post of what will hopefully be many posts by Brandi and me. You may notice the presence of several older posts already on here--those are from my old SportsHistory blog. I want to make it clear to the two readers of the SportsHistory blog that the semi-regular entries you have grown to love will not be going away; they will just be supplemented by the occasional travel journal, some pictures, and whatever Brandi would like to post about, presumably her frustration with trying to go clothes shopping with Daniel. (In my defense, I missed all of the Texas game and half the A&M game, so I think that justifies a little orneriness.)

In setting up this blog, I've had to migrate everything over to WordPress from Movable Type, so expect there to be some growing pains, and I should customize things a little better once I get used to the new digs. For those of you thinking the header image is a bad Photoshop job, you're wrong, only because I didn't use Photoshop at all. I used Paint, which I wouldn't recommend. The image of the two of us is taken from a very nice image from our sunset cruise in St. Thomas--a great picture, but unfortunately not good for a banner image. So I did my best to find a similar ocean sunset. We both do actually have faces, but we'll keep you in suspense for just a little bit longer.