Family Friendly Halloween Events in Texas

So you have kids. You wish to celebrate Halloween in Texas giving your family the most fun without the wailing because they got so spooked out of their wits. Where is the best place to go? Theme parks are nice, but there are places even your brave side can’t handle. Here are a few kid-friendly Halloween activities you can share with your kids, and still have fun trick or treating:

Boo at the Zoo – In Texas cities such as Fort Worth or San Antonio, ordinary tourist attractions transform into scary but kid-friendly Halloween venues. Fort Worth, for example, holds its 18th annual Boo at the Zoo with puppet shows, mazes, live animal shows, and musical acts. The zoo promises six fun nights full of Halloween treats. You can purchase their tickets online or by phone when they go on sale on October 2.

Creepshow – The Kettle Art in Dallas holds it own Halloween art gallery exhibit starting October 24 until the 3oth. Admission is free. The Creepshow gallery will showcase Halloween masks and paintings and is located at the Deep Ellum area. You can check out their Halloween events website at http://www.kettleart.com.

Pumpkin Parties and Festivals – No denizen of the Dallas metroplex has lived in this area without having ever seen the freshest collection of produce in the Dallas Farmer’s Market. This Halloween 2009, they will hold the Annual Pumpkin Party on the 18th of October. The Dallas Arboretum is another eager participant for the Halloween season. Their own great Pumpkin Festival will last until mid-November.

For a list of all Halloween theme parks, parties, and haunted houses you can visit in Texas, check out Dallas-Fort Worth Halloween events 2009.

Eagle Quest 2009 at Lake Texoma

Here’s a small trivia. What is the most number of bird species that a person has ever seen? Answer: More than 8,500! But that’s not the real mind-boggler though. That person — the world’s biggest bird-watching buff — is Phoebe Snetsinger, who has a remarkable obsession which led her to “spend her family inheritance travelling to various parts of the world while suffering from a malignant melanoma, surviving an attack and rape in New Guinea before dying in a road accident in Madagascar.”

That is not to say birdwatching is a horrible and extremely dangerous hobby. On the Texas map, there is a special spot for veteran birdwatchers (or first-timers) to espy eagles and birds of various kinds. It’s in Lake Texoma, where Eagle Quest 2009 will be held on January 24-25 2009.

I remember Lake Texoma as our last year’s pick for our Fourth of July celebration venue. I did my tubing and spent hours under the sun riding the scarab with my family. Lake Texoma is in the heart of Gordonville where famous marinas such as the Cedar Mills can be found. It’s very easy to find in the Texas map.

Eagle Quest 2009 involves activities such as workshops and seminars, hot air ballooning, flea market events, stargazing, and birdwatching of course! If you need more information on how to get there, here’s a Texas map I’ve provided for you:

Lake Texoma Easy Access Map

Eagle Quest 2009’s address is at at 198 Cedar Mills Road Gordonville, TX 76245.

Source: Wikipedia and Texomawestend.org

Our Dallas Asian Market has moved again!

Asian Market goodies

We seriously got lost trying to find the Asian market that we always frequent whenever we go to Dallas. Apparently they kept changing locations. This time around, the owner of the Vietnamese restaurant in that same square where the Asian grocery was located said it moved about a mile from their original location. So we drove over to check it.

Although it’s not the same Asian market that we were used to (the original one was bigger), Joe was able to score some huge blue crabs. I got my lumpia wrappers and Mang Tomas lechon sauce. Always, even though there were some old stuff missing, there were some new stuff on the shelves. I took my seasonings, noodles and Mung Bean soup mix. Everything else in the store looked foreign to me.

When we come back, we hope that the Asian market would branch out and occupy the other building next to where they moved now. Who knows what new exotic Asian stuff we may find there!

Dallas Traders Village – Buy, Sell, Socialize

Part of our plan the next morning (Sunday) before heading home was to get some fruits at the Mexican (La Marketa) produce market and some Asian goodies at the Vietnamese market. We unfortunately had to spend an hour driving around the entire Dallas uptown, downtown, and areas around the highway where we could eat some breakfast. There was none in sight. We finally gave up and saw a Krispy Kreme store by the highway. There was an organic market near it with a cafe, so we ate there instead. A two-person band was playing acoustic music while I savored my Mediterranean Chicken Roll-up and bisque soup. Everybody else seemed vegetarian. They even put cucumber slices on the water dispenser. Talk about being green!

We were making “green” jokes about it (pun intended!) until Joe had the idea of bringing me to Traders Village.

My advice is that if you go on a Sunday at Traders Village, expect to crawl through traffic. When we got there, I didn’t realize how massive it was. You couldn’t see the one end of the market to the other. Even if you thought you have walked all over the place and seen everything, consider yourself mistaken. Traders Village is a congregation of mostly Mexican vendors with oodles of Chinese (bootleg?) products. There were some good stuff worth checking out, but I couldn’t find any shoes to buy! I had wanted to get some because I was wearing big leather boots that were unfit for walking, especially at the gigantic Traders Village grounds. How ironic at such a big market there was nothing for me!

I realized Traders Village is a more expensive version of the real Asian/Chinese flea market, except that the vendors were Mexicans (or Indians) and the mostly Hispanic crowd visit the place to socialize with friends and fellow traders.