Honeymooners Fun Day Out!

At the beginning of every few months, our Honeymooners ABF (Adult Bible Fellowship - our equivalent to Sunday School), and we had planned on doing a couples retreat the last weekend in April. Two couples looked into it, and found that it was going to be WAAAAAY too expensive, so we decided that we would plan on spending all day on Saturday together. So the two couples in charge of planning the retreat planned an entire day of fun (and free!) activities, and they did an awesome job!

We started the day by meeting at the Dart station off of George Bush and 75. Don't you love random shots of people standing around?? :)

 Our first stop was right around Northpark Mall. We got off the Dart train at a big shopping center, and were given 45 minutes to do a kind-of scavenger hunt. There were 7 couples, and we split off into 2 groups of 2 couples and 1 group of 3 couples and our challenge was to find the MOST expensive item, and then the biggest discounted item, take a picture, and report back. Our group thought we would win because we went to Saks 5th Avenue and asked a sales associate to show us the most expensive item in the store (it turned out to be this ridiculously gaudy/ugly ring) priced at almost $12,000!!!

This was my team (Michel, Joel and Carissa Howard) looking for the biggest bargain in Saks Fifth Ave. We didn't find a good bargain there :(

Unfortunately, we were beaten by another team who found loft apartments for lease/rent for $120,000/YEAR! We had a good time, though :)

We all loaded back on the Dart to go further downtown to the Angelica theater. There, our challenge (our challenges always related to the stop that we were at) was a charades game of just movies, some with specific scenes that we had to act out. 

Sitting outside of the Angelica watching the magnificent performances of our fellow Honeymooners!

 Michel gave a very moving performance/portrayal of "Toy Story" which was quite fitting since our niece just LOVES "Toy Story" (or as she calls it, "Woody Buzz"!)

After the Angelica, we walked across Highway 75 to get some ice cream cookie sandwiches from a place called Pokey-O's! They have homemade cookies of all varieties and your choice of Blue Bell ice cream to put in between. I got chocolate chip cookies with chocolate ice cream....it was delicious!!

Mmmmm....cookies and ice cream! 

Michel liked it so much he was licking the paper clean!

We did so much walking that we definitely earned our yummy treat! Plus, it was really hot and muggy, so some cool, creamy ice cream really hit the spot. After we ate, we jumped back on the Dart to go further downtown to the Sculpture museum. The challenge here was supposed to be going in and finding the sculpture that you could make up the best story for. Unfortunately, the museum wasn't free, but there was one sculpture outside of the museum so we all made up a story for it and had to present it to the rest of the groups.

Michel came up with the story for our group (surprise, surprise, he was excited to come up with a story that's ridiculous and off the wall!), but it was something about Edgar the rhino who ended up in a gay pride parade. I don't know if I should claim that story came from my husband or not :) To Michel's disappointment, he did not have the most unique, creative story about the sculpture so we did not win, but he still had fun making up the story!

Since we couldn't spend as much time in the sculpture museum as originally planned, we just walked around and ended up in front of the opera house. In front of the opera house is a big pool of shallow water (about 2 inches deep, maybe) and we were so happy to kick off our shoes and soak our feet in it. The water was just the right temperature and it felt so good! I didn't take many pictures of this, but one of my favorites is a pose that the guys did:

The four guys on the left are really into it, but the three on the right: not so much

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We had so much fun, but definitely started getting tired!

However, since we still had time to kill before our 6:30 dinner reservations (where we were meeting more friends whose schedules didn't coordinate with the all-day outing) and we were still in front of the opera house the two couples decided that we needed to reenact our engagement story in opera. It was HILARIOUS!!! I recorded each one of them (sadly, Michel's and my performance was not captured on video...at least not to my knowledge). I would have loaded them on here, but it was taking way too long and I just didn't have patience for that. So if anybody wants to see them, let me know and I'll e-mail the video clips. After the opera house we loaded up and went to dinner, but I don't have any more pictures. It was a great day and Michel and I are so blessed to be a part of a church where we have such great friends!!! Thanks Davises and Hoopers for planning such a fun day for us!!!