Wes and Erica's vacation photo album // Carrollton, TX // December 2023

I was so excited when I learned that there is a Meow Wolf exhibit within driving distance!!

We took our annual trip to Carrollton, TX for my birthday a few weeks ago. We sampled as many restaurants as we could, I got my stationary haul from Daiso, and we spent a day at Grapevine Mills Mall (Meow Wolf, baby!! 😍). 

This post will be 90% pictures of the weird trippy Meow Wolf exhibits. 

We got in a little after lunchtime and started at H-Mart. This was our first time on the Korean side of town. (We also saw a strip mall with all East Asian restaurants; that'll be bookmarked for next year's trip.) There is a food court in the grocery store so we had lots to choose from. I decided on a spicy octopus bento box from Noblu Bento Express and Wes got tofu soup from Chan. 🐙I naively thought I'd get a giant serving of stir fried octopus with my rice, but it was chopped up octopus pieces mixed in a ton of onion and kimchi. I was worried at first since I don't really like kimchi (but there was still a generous helping of octopus), and it ended up being really good (I realized that I do like cooked kimchi). We each got portions of banchan with our meals; Wes said the kimchi from my restaurant had more garlic and tasted better than the portion from his restaurant. I don't really like the side dishes so he got all of mine. 

We walked around H-Mart after lunch, and drooled over all of the cuts of meat used for Korean barbeque. I always want to buy so much when we come to Carrollton but it's never feasible since hotel refrigerators are tiny and we have to leave everything in the car. We went to Somisomi for dessert where I got the best ice cream.🍦😋 The fish was filled with red bean paste and sat atop my matcha soft serve, which was topped with Oreo crumbles, sprinkles and a strawberry.🍓 Wes got their house cold brew, which he said was good. 

After a quick rest at the hotel, we headed to Carrollton Town Center for some shopping. It was probably 8pm or later, and the shopping center was hoppin'! I was surprised at how busy all the stores are, I think I notice this every year and still cannot get over how all these people have the energy to be out and about after working all day (I do absolutely nothing on weeknights because I'm a tired old lady👵). Wes always likes to look in the Kinikuniya bookstore. It was completely remodeled from when we came last year. It barely had any books left in it! It's mostly collectables and anime merch now. They've also reduced their tokidoki section😒 still got a super cute Unicorno, though. 

We got the turnip cakes as our appetizer and while they were tasty, I have to say that the ones my mom makes are better. 

We went to Thai Noodle Wave for dinner. The food was average ... neither good nor bad (Wes agreed with my assessment). I got their monthly special, which was a chicken noodle stir fry dish. 🐓It was 95% chicken and 5% noodles; I would have preferred much more noodles. The most notable feature of the restaurant is that they had a Justin Bieber playlist going all night with selections from his entire body of work.

We stopped in 7 Leaves to get some drinks for dessert and headed back to the hotel. I got a mung bean milk tea. It was good but had a lot more mung bean than I was expecting. And thus concludes day 1. Wes said his tofu soup we had for lunch was his favorite meal and I liked my ice cream best.

Day 2 is literally an entire day at the Meow Wolf exhibit. We had tickets for 1:20pm but got an early start (I was very excited) so we hung out at the arcade at Grapevine Mills mall to pass the time. Wes got to play some games that we don't have here - Marvel v. Capcom 2 - and I "learned" traditional Japanese taiko. 🥁 (I actually didn't score that high but all the instructions were in Japanese so I had no idea how to play.😅) 

Before I forget, we had breakfast at Paris Baguette. I felt a tinge of regret abandoning 85℃ Bakery Café, but we go there every year so I wanted to try something new. Luckily, our pastries from Paris Baguette were really good (if they weren't, I would have insisted we return to 85℃ for second breakfast. 😂LOL). I liked my savory one better than my peppermint mochi donut, and Wes preferred his twist to the cherry Danish. 

Alright, back to the mall. We played arcade games and walked around some, but still had about an hour to kill. #bored I ended up calling Meow Wolf and got our ticket time changed from 1:20pm to 12:40pm. (Their booking service is top notch, by the way 👍)

Now for Meow Wolf - when we presented our tickets, our "portal guide," Moon🌜 told us about the strange happenings in the house. The story centered around a pre-teen, Jared. One of his relatives (an uncle, I think) got admitted into the hospital for a bad cough. Jared has an imaginary pet flying axolotl named Happy Gary. Happy Gary told him about a place called the Real Unreal where he can find a cure.  Jared wrote a get well card for his uncle telling him not to worry because he'll be back soon with the cure. Then he ran away from home... supposedly. 

Our job was to investigate the house (touching and opening everything, Moon said) and search for Jared. 🏡We enter the house and look for clues. Jared's notes and drawings are strewn about, and there are various laptops and phone/tablets with short video clues. Wes was much more invested in solving this mystery than I was. I was curious, but mostly wanted to experience the art. Because of this, I lead us astray and we didn't really get to fully explore the house. (and thus missing a lot of clues)

There is a giant refrigerator in the kitchen. Once you open it, it leads to a hallway into the portal aka the art exhibit. 👽I was super pumped to find this and took us inside. We hadn't finished looking through the house, yet, and I kind of took us through the exhibit backwards. There are a ton of different places to explore in the Real Unreal universe. There is a two story garden🌿🌸, a neon room with a stage, an arcade👾, and tons of twisty hallways that lead into other rooms. My favorite room was a vintage looking one with lots of severed hands and heads. Wes liked the goopy black slime monster statue. 

My favorite room.

Wes's favorite and my second favorite character.

After walking through the Real Unreal and not finding out what happened to Jared (I honestly kind of forgot about his disappearance), Wes reminded me that there is an entire section of the house that we didn't even walk through. 🏠So we went back through the second story of the house in search of more clues. The "correct" way to enter the Real Unreal is through the bathroom. There is a weird monster sitting on the toilet and once you walk through the bathroom, you're in the neon art exhibit.

Some people were wearing black light glasses. I didn't know how or where to purchase them or else I would have gotten us each a pair. I asked a guy what they're for and he leant me his for this neon garden. It just enhanced the colors. Wes thinks that there were secret black light clues we missed.

We walked through the ENTIRE house & every single one of it's portals probably 3 or 4 times and were none the wiser about Jared's whereabouts. 😕We found out that time somehow stopped at 7:06pm, Jared walked by the toilet sitting slime monster and his house turned into a psychedelic neon art installation. Tickets were pretty pricy so if there was an end goal, I didn't want to miss it. However, if there is no answer, I can suspend belief and accept that Jared is just enjoying life in another realm... but Wes really wanted to solve it. In the end, we decided that its not meant to be solved and no one knows what happened to Jared or his sick uncle. I went home, did some Googling, and found out that all the Meow Wolfs are connected. They're each a portal to each other so Jared can be anywhere. 

We wanted to do some Christmas shopping when we were roaming the mall before our ticket time, but I know that Meow Wolf has a no bag policy and I didn't want to leave our stuff in the car. So, we walked around the humungous circular mall another 2 or 3 times trying to remember which stores we wanted to get stuff from. 🛍We decided we needed a snack after all that walking so I got some sour cream & onion curly fries from the Potato Corner. (Wes just got Taco Bell.) 

A place that only serves fries!! 🍟😋

We were also thirsty after all that walking so we grabbed some drinks on our way back to the hotel and then I sat my ass down. 😫I think that is the most walking I've done in a while. LOL I got a lychee coconut water with rose from Coconut Paradise. Funny story (okay, not "haha funny" but "humanity sucks" funny)- The man in the picture in the top left walked up to the counter, asked for a free sample, ate it and walked away without a reaction or thank you. The guy working the counter looked so sad & dejected. Wes got a coffee from 85℃ Bakery Café since we missed it in the morning. 

We went to Mad for Chicken for dinner. It served hot, fresh, twice fried Korean chicken wings. 🍗They were SO GOOD, my favorite meal of this trip. We got complimentary chili dusted popcorn, and ordered some dumplings for our appetizer. We got a mix of spicy and regular ones. They were both good. Everything was made-to-order so it came out piping hot. 🔥They had sports & popular tv shows on, but one of the tv's had random trivia about anime, country flags, and movie titles spelled out with emojis. I did terribly but it was still fun to play along. 

The next morning, we got breakfast at 99 Ranch and did our grocery shopping before heading back to Oklahoma. They have the best black preserved egg congee and I can't have a birthday Carrollton trip without it. 🍚One of Wes's coworkers requested strawberry Choco-pies so we grabbed some for him one our way out (they didn't have the Choco-pie brand but we got a comparable substitute).

What I would give to swim in those vats of congee!

We stopped in Buc-ee's for some more groceries and Christmas shopping on our way out of Texas. Nothing too exciting except for that I saw Santa Buc-ee! 🎅

Ironically, I didn't take any pictures of the stuff we got at Buc-ee's. But look at the awesomeness I got from Daiso, Teso, and random other shops!!

And now I am 39 years old. The first few times we took my birthday trip, we just ate and stayed one night. Then we started staying a few days and adding other activities into the mix. Last year we went fabric shopping, and the year before that we went to Rainbow Vomit. It is a similar installation art exhibit where you wander around a building looking for clues. Rainbow Vomit had more unique art and the puzzle was actually solvable (I got a magnet for my prize!) so we both liked it better. I did still really also enjoy Meow Wolf. Now to plan for 2024... what adventures will we have?

Last view from Meow Wolf gardens.

Wes and Erica's vacation photo album // Tulsa, OK // December 2023

We went to one of my friend's weddings in Tulsa. Wes absolutely hates selfies. 

One of my childhood friends got married on December 2nd and we got to celebrate with her. 🎉 The wedding was on a Saturday afternoon in Tulsa (only a 2 hour drive), so we could have just went and came back... but why waste a chance to take a mini vacation and eat out as much as we can??!?

A suitcase Christmas tree... very appropriate for a hotel lobby. We stopped in Barnes & Noble after dinner for my Unicorno. They had the sky mochi series, which I've been wanting! 🦄

My friend, Chinh, and I met as alter-boys (are they called alter-persons now?) at St. Patrick Catholic church in middle school. (She's a bit younger than I am so I think I was in high school and she was in middle school... regardless it was a loooong time ago). I haven't talked to her in ages so I was pretty surprised when I got the wedding invitation from Zola. I was so surprised that I texted my mom to make sure she also got an invitation, and to make sure that it wasn't spam. LOL My mom texted Chinh's mom and confirmed that yes, we are all invited to celebrate this happy day. 👰 

Our first meal in Tulsa was dinner at Zogam Café, a Malaysian restaurant. The restaurant was a tiny spot in a shopping center. It was really hard to find since their sign was unlit and we came when it was already dark. This was my first time having Malaysian food and it was really good. 🥘My favorite part was the runny egg on top of my fried rice. (Wes said he would have preferred his egg fried.) I also liked the bits of anchovy mixed into my rice. The only thing I didn't like too much was that the sweet & sour sauce for the tofu was way too garlicy, but I'm not a huge garlic fan so that's on me and not the restaurant. The restaurant had pictures of Malaysian landscape hung on the walls. One of the pictures showed two men looking off into the mountains, it didn't show their faces but I swear one of the men in the pictures was our waiter. 🌄

We ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant, Daily Grill, the next morning. About the hotel - we stayed at the Hyatt downtown and the valet service was superb. 🚗 Like, seriously the best! The Grinch musical was performing at the BOK center when we arrived, and there was some sort of professional bull riding/rodeo convention going on at the hotel that same night. Regardless of how busy it was, we were still checked in super fast and my car was parked right away. And it was brought right back out as soon as we needed it. We came and went a lot so we got to know both the day and night valet drivers. Both were excellent. 👍 Anyway, back to breakfast. We originally were going to walk to Dily Diner. It was only about a 10 minute walk but it was 37℉, and I only packed a hoodie (silly me forgot my jacket in our haste to leave the house). I got an everything lox bagel and Wes got the steak and eggs. He said the skirt steak was marinated really well. I liked my bagel but I think the restaurant was pricier than the tastiness of the food. 

Notice how there are no pictures from inside the market because it was just a giant slow moving crowd.

We had some time between breakfast and the wedding ceremony so we went to the German Christkindlmarkt. 🎄🎅 It is an annual tradition at the German Association events center. The events center is very small and the market is very large. I've been a vendor at events that try to cram in as many vendors as possible and it is NOT an enjoyable experience. All the shoppers are funneled through like cattle since there is literally no aisle space and you don't really get to interact with anyone. I did not enjoy the Christkindlmarkt at all because there was zero room to browse & shop. I'm sure the building was 5-10 times over capacity and we'd all be in danger if there was a fire or any other sort of emergency. There were a few booths I would have liked to look in but I couldn't get near them because of the crowds. It was awful. Even so, we still managed to support a few local vendors. We bought honey butter, Wes bought a bookmark, and I bought Christmas ornament (pen pal gift). One of the German association members collects nativity figurines which she displayed in a tiny room (probably a broom closet) called Bethlehem village. She had so much stuff!! All the figurines were laid out in a cityscape on a table. 

Now onto the wedding of Chinh & Steve. 💗 This is by far the nicest and most elaborate wedding I have ever attended. Chinh was flanked by 3 photographers and a videographer everywhere she went. She also had a drone circling overhead for the outdoor events. The ceremony was held at Holy Family Cathedral and the Bishop of the Tulsa & northeastern Oklahoma diocese presided. ⛪ It was a traditional Catholic wedding with a full mass. No cell phones were allowed so I didn't get any pictures but it was a beautiful ceremony. We had a sendoff afterward and a 3 hour break before the reception.

We went back to the hotel to grab a snack at Topeca Coffee. I got a strawberry Italian soda (good but I wish it had whipped cream on top) and a salted chocolate chip cookie. 🍪☕Wes got a juniper berry latte which he said had too much berry and not enough juniper. (He got a cold brew from the café previously and said it was good).

Reception time!! 🙌We all gathered in the foyer of the Big 10 Ballroom for a meet & greet with Chinh and Steve. We got a turn to take a picture with them and sign their wedding book. Once the reception officially started, we were ushered in and found our tables. Wes & I weirdly weren't seated with my mom & stepdad. There were a few others from St. Patrick there but none of us were seated together. Wes says it's so we can mingle and meet new people, but I would have preferred sitting with old friends to catch up. The reception started with a traditional Vietnamese lion dance! 🦁

To all of my friends who plan on getting married soon -if your wedding reception doesn't involve a lion dance, I'm not coming. LOL

Then it was time to eat; there was a Vietnamese buffet on one side of the room and an El Salvadorian buffet on the other. 🍴I stood in line on the El Salvadorian side behind one of the groomsmen and got tips from him on what to get. He suggested the mixed pupusa (with pork, beans and cheese) and it was so good!! I ate from both buffets and enjoyed the Salvadorian stuff more. The reception had all the usual dances and speeches, and it was all very nice (and extremely organized!) The other neat thing, besides the lion dance, was a troupe of Salvadorian dancers came out to perform traditional dances. Around 9pm, we had a faux sendoff (drone awaiting) where Chinh & Steven got into a Rolls Royce, drove around the parking lot and came right back in. LOL It was freezing outside. It gave us oldies a chance to go home while the cool kids danced the night away. 

The next morning, we had brunch at Kilkenny's. I've always heard great things about this restaurant but have never been. It got the traditional Irish breakfast and it was SO MUCH FOOD!! I only ate half of it. It was really good but I think I prefer an American breakfast. 😅My favorite part was the grilled tomato - a whole tomato!! 🍅 I only expected a slice or two. 

After breakfast, we stopped in Hey Boba to get drinks for the road. I got a honeydew milk-tea with boba and Wes got a passion fruit oolong tea with boba. Both were standard drinks and pretty good. The owner is what made this café so cool. Aside from being a boba café owner, she teaches Sunday morning square dance lessons at the park and she is a horticulturist. 🌱🌸She grows Chinese plants in her yard and brings them to sell at the café. I bought a Chinese mum and she gave me very thorough instructions on how to take care of it. 🌺🌿She is the sweetest lady; she gave us a piece of oatmilk candy for being her first customers of the day. 

My plant is currently enjoying the weather on the patio. I'll take a post a picture in a few weeks if it survives. 🤞

And that wraps up Tulsa. We have to wait a week at home, and then it's my annual birthday trip to Carrollton, TX to eat at as many restaurants as we can at the Carrollton Town Center! Until then ✌

Saved the best picture for last: delicious wedding food!! 😋