King Cake, home brew and burlesque, oh my!

This weekend we had house guests for the first time in a while. There were a few months after the wedding when the Winchester Suite (our extra bedroom) was booked almost every weekend, but it tapered off around Halloween/the holidays, so we were excited to get to show my brother, his fiance Jen, and their pups around our town Friday night and Saturday.

My brother Brandon brews beer (hah, say that three times fast... well, it's actually not very hard) so he brought us a lot of his home brew: a pale ale, a Belgian 8 and a Belgian double. (I have no idea what those terms mean but Andrew says the difference between the Belgians is about four percent alcohol.)

We started off the evening with a tasting of all three, and then headed out to get sushi. The restaurant was packed, and dinner took forever, but it was fun to sip drinks and catch up. The giant platter of sushi was delicious as well.

Brandon and Jen also brought us something else, but that if for another post later this week!

Saturday morning I got up and finished the King Cake I baked for Brandon's birthday. The cake itself looks strange because I put too much food coloring in the sugar and it clumped up, but it tasted really good, I swear! I'll do a post on the king cake later this week so you can do what I recommend, not what I did, should anyone out there choose to make their own cake for Mardi Gras.

Izze Bell, Jen's Boston Terrier, judged me for messing up the King Cake sugar.

We went for a jog with Izze and Sawyer that morning, and then went out for breakfast and Bloody Marys, but I forgot my camera. We hung out around the house and town the rest of the day, and then went to a burlesque show Saturday night which was a first for all of us, I think. It was definitely one of the highlights of the weekend, and I would definitely go to another. (I didn't take pics for obvious reasons!)

Sunday morning Jen, Brandon and the dogs had to leave semi-early to make it back for the Superbowl. Nurse A and I spent the rest of the day relaxing, dog walking and eating chicken wings and fries (even though we didn't watch the game). I hope everyone had a great weekend as well! I leave you with this photo of Izze, reflecting on her visit to Mississippi: