Monday, March 23, 2009

Stacie and Jesse Visit OKC

Had a great 3 day visit over the weekend as my sister Stacie and her husband Jesse flew in for a visit from Seattle. Now my entire immediate family has visited me in OKC.




They flew in on Thursday night just as I was getting off of work as we had a Thunder season ticket holder party over at the Oklahoma History Center. Picked them up shortly after 10pm and headed to Bricktown for some dinner. Our intention was to have dinner at a Mexican Restaurant that I was told served food until 11pm however we found out that was not the case. Asked an employee of the place what other restaurants in Bricktown were still serving food and she knew of only one.........Hooters. The "owl" themed restaurant ended up being their first OKC meal. Sorry that I have no pictures of the glorious event. Stacie had been sick the entire week leading up to the trip and I was told no photos that first night because supposedly all of my photos end up on my blogs :-) We also drove over to the Memorial site as it is important for everyone to see it at night.













Friday morning Jesse and I headed over to Lake Hefner for a 4 mile jog before starting out on the rest of our day. The Thunder had a home game so the three of us had lunch at Toby Keith's I Love This Bar before work. Both of them are huge fans of TK so this was a must for the trip. I then dropped them off at the Memorial and headed to the arena (less than a mile away). They went through the Memorial Museum and then walked around Bricktown before heading over to the Ford Center for a night of basketball (Thunder lost to the Jazz). After the game we headed over to Mickey Mantle's to hang out. Half of the bar was full of Thunder employees so it was fun to introduce the family and the co-workers.










Saturday we all slept in to get ready for a big day and night. I gave them a Visitor's Guide and Stacie wanted to check out Western Avenue and the Paseo Arts District. The Western Avenue trip lasted about 2 minutes as we found that the street billed in the guide as having "an abundance of charm and herritage" just didn't interest us. Paseo was better as the Spanish style village did have some nice shops and galleries. The best part of this trip was that we asked someone at one spot where we should go eat lunch and they recommended the Iron Starr Urban BBQ (http://www.ironstarr.com/) where I had one of the best sandwiches ever. Had the BBQ Club with thick slices of turkey breasts and BBQ aioli on grilled texas toast. I also had corn pudding for the first time which is to die for. AWESOME FOOD!! We then drove around OKC and quickly checked out the location of some other landmarks (State Capitol, History Center, Zoo, Remington Park and Casino, Softball Hall of Fame). Didn't have time to go into any of these places, perhaps some other time.














Stacie was still fighting the tail end of her illness so she wanted to go home for a quick nap before our big night out. Jesse and I decided to head down to a bar right down the street while she slept and played a little shuffleboard. Was kind of disappointed that the bar didn't have the Washington-Purdue basketball game on the TV as they were playing their tournament game at the same time that Oklahoma was playing Michigan. The bar didn't have a satellite so we had to watch the score updates in the corner of the screen. CBS did however switch over and show the last 30 seconds of the game so I did get to see the Huskies season come to an end. GREAT SEASON DAWGS!!












Headed to Bricktown on Saturday night to have a quick drink at the Biting Sow, a bar that is known for having good live Blues music. Jesse is a fan of the country band Big & Rich and wanted to say that he had a drink in the same bar that I spotted John Rich in a few months back so we were able to cross that one off of the list. We then headed over to the Stockyards for a great dinner at Cattlemen's. Jesse is a steak afficionado and said the meal was comparable to Daniel's only at about 1/3 of the price. We then headed over to Club Rodeo to drink while watching dancing and bull riding.









Sunday I got up early for a 6:30 am 20 mile run with the marathon training group. I had my share of drinks on Saturday night and only got 3 hours of sleep but surprisingly I felt good during the run. I did sleep well last night though :-) Stacie and Jesse had just woke up shortly before I returned so I cleaned up and we went over to try another restaurant. They mentioned pizza so I got on the internet and some guy listed his Top 10 pizza places in OKC. #1 was a place I had tried (and wasn't overly impressed with), #2 was a little on the fancy side, #3 was Sophabella's Chicago Grill and is only about 7 miles from where I lived so we headed over there. We arrived at 1pm and Stacie noticed that most of the patrons were eating breakfast items which had all of us debating whether or not we still wanted pizza. Jesse and I decided to have breakfast instead (our decision was helped when we found out that the breakfast items came with homemade cinnamon rolls) and Stacie had a personal veggie pizza. I don't do veggie so I was only able to try the crust. Might have to go back again later and try the pizza and I found out that they do all you can eat pasta there on Monday nights. I will be back. We then went over to Penn Square Mall and walked around for a bit before heading home to relax and watch a movie until it was time to take the visiting couple to the airport.


We had a great time hanging out and the 3 days went by way too quickly. Glad they were able to come experience OKC.

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