The Texas Trip

I'm going to try blogging every Sunday so I don't go this long between posts in the future. To start with, the Texas trip was great. We got to see Kenny's sister Jeanette and visit her lovely home in Fort Worth. I got to meet her husband, Jeff, at last, too. We look forward to living closer to them in the future.
We also visited Lori, Kevin and my parents. It was great. Let's see... the run-down: first, we got to drive a dark red '07 Ford Mustang while we were there. We paid for renting a dodge neon, but when we got there, we had a very nice cashier who felt bad for us having to pay an extra 10 bucks a day for being under 25. So she gave us a free upgrade to a Ford Mustang. Kenny enjoyed driving it, and we sure felt cool, but I think we'd both be content without ever owning a sports car.
Wednesday night we got to see Kevin and my parents for dinner at their lovely home, then drove to Lori and Sam's, where we stayed. Thursday we took off early for Sea World. Lori gave us some CDs of Harry Potter (books 1-3), so we had something to entertain us while we drove about. Sea World was great fun. We saw a great shark exhibit (Kenny's favorite) and dolphins and penguins and a good dolphin/beluga whale/synchronized swimmer/acrobatics show. Actually,the first thing we did when we got there was hit the water park, since we figured the lines would be better in the morning. We were right- we had virtually no lines the whole time. And just as we hit the last water attraction (the lazy river), a storm broke. Mind you, everyone is in swimsuits, and the rain is hardly cold, but sure enough, every one ran for cover. Kenny and I enjoyed walking in the warm rain.
I stayed in my swimsuit the rest of the day (got to work up a tan/burn somehow) but Kenny got into his dry set of clothes, which backfired when it stormed again in the afternoon. We had actually waited in line for a roller coaster for a half hour or so, and when we were the next to get on the ride, it started pouring and they closed the thing down. Oh well. We caught it later in the day.
So yeah, Sea World was great. After that, we went down the street to Kenny's friends from his mission, the Dahle's. They had a nerdy/cool 6 year old boy (he walked around "force lightning"-ing everyone with his fingers) and an adorable little 4 year old. I had a great time talking to Heather, the mom. It was great.
The next day we drove back to Houston and chilled with Lori. She bought me some birthday clothes (yay) then we went to dinner with the whole Ball gang. Then we when back to Lori's and watched Pan's Labyrinthe.
That's a whole blog post unto itself. The movie came highly recommended from many sources, but we all fervently HATED it. We were expecting a fantasy film- perhaps weird fantasy (Tim Burton style, perhaps), and got a depressing, disturbing war story with some depressing, disturbing horror fantasy on the side. Bleh.
Let's see- Saturday we went to Galveston. The weather wasn't great (apparently we misseda tornado), but the water was warm and it wasn't too crowded. We saw a great school of fish do some acrobatics just a few feet from us in the water. And, of course, I love playing in sand. That evening we visited some of Kenny's high school friends, now engaged and living about a half hour away from my brother Kevin, in a BEAUTIFUL wooded area (appropriately named the Woodlands). We went to Chili's and enjoyed just chilling.
Sunday, we drove to Fort Worth/Dallas to see Kenny's sister. We chilled all of Sunday and got to relax and chat with them, who we hadn't seen since before the wedding. Monday we went to Six Flags. Jeanette has a season pass and managed to get us both in for 25 bucks, total! Of course, when we first entered the park everything was shut down because of a threatening storm, but in the end that was a good thing because there were fewer crowds all day. We had a good time.
Let's see. Tuesday, we went back to Houston. My brother Kevin set us up with one of his ward friends who teaches High School science so we could ask him about teaching in Texas. We got some great info. Then my sister-in-law, Candace, set us up with an appointment with a Realtor so we could check out some houses. He was very helpful and showed us two lovely homes, each fairly new, with 4 bedrooms, beautiful master bathrooms (I'm big on the master bathrooms) and amazing prices- 120,000! We could EASILY afford that. Yay!
Then we flew home. By the way, United airlines sucks. We nearly got to stay the night in Denver. But we did eventually get home and got to see our sweet puppy. It was a great trip!