What We've Been Up To

Well, it has been a little while since we last posted so I thought I would give a little up date on our happenings. Mostly we have been working, serving at the temple, doing our church callings, and just enjoying life - but there have been some adventures to report.

In February in snowed here - AGAIN! The 4th time in one season - and this time a lot - I think over a foot in some places. Ryan and I both worked from home that day. We took a half hour in the middle of the day to go on a walk and play a little bit - it was fun. I really like snow to visit me once in a while - as long as I can stay home and not drive in it.

And if that wasn't enough - it snowed AGAIN in March. Have I mentioned before that it usually snows 1 time a saeson here, and usually doesn't really stick. It snowed 5 TIMES this year, and stuck. SO CRAZY (or should I say SNOW CRAZY - okay I'm sorry - that was a dumb joke.)

This is our garden - we foolishly thought that since it was almost the end of March it would be safe to plant our garden. Wrong - I think this happened less than a week after we put our tomotoe plants in - so we had to cover everything with boxes to keep it from freezing.

And this is just to exemplify how crazy weather is in Texas - my trees clearly thought it was Spring - but then the snow came.





But Spring did come and it was beautiful - this is what spring looks like at our house - I love it!

Also in March we attended the BYU vs. TCU basketball game with some of our friends. It was fantastic - even though the Cougars started out a bit slow, they ended up winning by 30 points - Go Cougs! (Too bad they couldn't keep up this pace in the tournament.)

And now it is April. April is my favorite month in Texas - not only because it is my birthday, but also because the wildflowers come out and the trees get their leaves. Other than the people I love here, the wildflowers and the trees are my favorite things about Texas -they make me happy.

Over Easter Ryan and I decided to take a little trip. Neither of us had ever been to New Orleans, not even to Louisiana. One of my friends from Las Vegas lives there (actually two of my friends from Las Vegas - they are married - Jake and Shelley Koch). They were super nice and let us stay witht hem and their cute kids, which was fun. We decided to drive there (since it was spring we got to see pretty flowers the whole way). We spent our first night in Shreveport - we had our first Cajun dinner and it was great. The next day we drove to New Orleans. We had two main stops on the way. First we stopped in Baton Rouge. We went to their capitol first. Loisiana has the tallest capitol building in the nation. We often go to capitols on our vacations and we were kind of excited to go up to the viewing area at the top of this one. But we were disappointed to find it was closed for renovations and we were only allowed to see the first floor. It has a lot of marble in it and it is pretty, but we wish we could have gone to the top.

Another thing we like to do on trips is visit temples - we really like to do sessions in temples, but sometimes it isn't possible. Unfortunately this was one of those times. Mini-temples, like the one in Baton Rouge, have limited schedules. On Fridays (the day we were there) they don't open until 5 or 6, we were there around 12. Darn it. It was still fun to see and they had a picnic table on the grounds which we made use of, which was nice because the weather was perfect.

Our other stop was at the Oak Alley Plantation - I can't remember the name of the city where the plantations are - but htey are along the river about 30-60 minutes outside New Orleans. Shelley and Jake and their kids met us there to go on the tour with us, so that was fun.

Shelley made us a fantastic dinner that night and we just relaxed at their house. The next morning we took Jake and went on a swamp tour. The weather was perfect for beign out on the water - it was over cast, a little cool, but very pleasant - no sun burns. The only problem was that aligators don't seem to like that weather as much as we do. At least they don't show themselves unless it is sunny - we didn't see a single gator. But the swamp was still gorgeous and we saw lots of snakes and birds.

After our swamp tour we met Shelley and their kids at the French Quarter. We had a tasty lunch, and then Ryan and I toured around the area for a little bit, plus we went on a walking tour of the Garden District - such pretty houses.

We spent a little while just hanging out with Jake and Shelley when we got back to their house which was really fun. The next morning was Easter - it was fun watching their kids enjoy their baskets. But we didn't get to do too many Easter festivities before we had to say good-bye and embark on our long drive back to Burleson. But it was a great trip and we were so glad to have gotten to see the Kochs again - it had been since before Ryan and I got married that we had last seen them. I am hopeful they will come visit us soon so we can see them again.

All right - I am out of time so I have will have to finish catching up on the rest of our April adventures another day.