Lola

Last week Chris was out of town on business from Monday to Friday and I was stuck here by myself. :( Chris went to Southern California to an Army base near Barstow. I missed him so much while he was gone, but I did have a little companion - a little Yorkie named Lola. All of the nintey something students that are in the program had to go on the trip so I watched one of our friends dogs for her. She is so cute. Here are some pictures of my little companion.




She was sure fun to have around and kept me occupied. I gave her a bath and did her hair. :)She sure didn't like it when I had to work though. Sometimes, I would have to stick her out on the balcony because she was whining and barking at me for me to play with her. The first day I could trick her into going to do things, but then she got too smart and was at my heels every second. She did sleep with me and she kept me company, but I must say I was glad once Chris came back home and I was back to my original bed partner.

Date Night

Chris and I had a date night on Friday and we had so much fun. Chris always gets off at noon on Friday's so I took a half day so we could get started on our weekend early! :) We went to see a movie called Fireproof, it was very good! Then after the movie we went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Neither of us had ever eaten there and we decided it was about time to give it a try. It was pretty good, although we think we liked this other place up here called SaltGrass a little bit better. But we will definitely go back I am sure. The only thing that was horrible is when we were waiting to have our number be lit up so we could be seated at our table, we were sitting next to a family who was letting their little girl go through the bucket of peanuts and suck on the shells or bite into them and then spit the shells back into the bucket. We were getting so disgusted and annoyed with the family for allowing her to do that, but whatever! Common sense says perfect strangers do not want your kids germs. Needless to say, we were not eating out of that bucket!

Pumpkin Carving

Chris and I decided to carve a pumpkin this year, something we have never done together. I think it turned out pretty good considering I have never carved a pumpkin and it has been quite a few years since Chris had. Either way, we had fun doing it and we definitely enjoyed the pumpkin seeds I cooked.

Here are some pictures of us getting started with the cleaning of the pumpkin.





For the fun part...Chris begins the carving while I get the seeds cleaned, seasoned, and toasted.




Now my turn to get in on the carving action.



And the final product...


OK, so we kind of messed up the head, but I think we did pretty good. I hope it is noticeable what it is, but if not, it is an American flag with an eagle. Now if you couldn't tell what it was before, at least hopefully you can see it now that you know what you are looking for. :)

Picnic

Yesterday afternoon was such a beautiful day and the weather was so perfect so Chris and I decided to go to the park and have a picnic. It was kind of a last minute thing so we just picked up some Subway after church and grabbed a blanket and drove to the park. It was so relaxing and just nice to be outside. We would have never thought of having a picnic in Utah this time of year. The park is right next to a lake and we walked out onto a little docking deck. The water was not so pretty...it was pretty much all brown - it's mainly just a little fishing lake that is known to have had alligators in it...we didn't get too close! Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures, but it was just a wonderful, relaxing day together.

Stacy's Chips

So my sister and brother-in-law, Michelle and Josh, went to Wyoming for their anniversary and they saw this bag of chips and thought it was so crazy with the brand and the name of them, they took a picture of the chips and sent it to me - they are so funny! I miss them so much! So, check it out.

Stacy's Texarkana Hot, crazy right?


I have actually had these Stacy's pita chips before...but have never seen this flavor. A while back, when the chips first came out they sent a free box with all different kinds of chips apparently to every Stacy they could track down addresses for. I am not advertising for them though because personally Chris and I did not think they were tasty at all. But it is cool that these have my name and city. If I can track this flavor down, I might give these ones a try. :)

Crazy Weather

OK, so the weather here is officially crazy, but I absolutely love it! It can be perfectly sunny and then just start pouring down rain. It is still such nice, warm weather, though. Today was pretty gloomy all day, but dry - no rain. Then around 3:00it started thundering and lightning - but still no rain. By the way, I love the thunder and it does it a lot here! :) So anyway, right around 4:00 it just started putting down the rain and within 5 minutes no joke, looking out the back of our apartment from our balcony, we had like 4 separate floods going on in the field behind us. Here are some pictures so you can see just how crazy things can change within 5 minutes.






You can see towards the end of the pictures it isn't as dark and the rain is letting up a little bit. These pictures were taken a little after 3:00 so it should not be that dark outside, but the sky is just so dark and grey. The rain changes about every 5 minutes going from just a light drizzle of a rain to pouring down rain. I love it!!! And this is why everything is so green here.

Going Home For Christmas

Well, I know it is a little early to be thinking about Christmas, but Chris and I booked our flights home for Christmas and we are so excited! For anyone who knows me, I always seem to book flights at the most horrible time...flights always go down right after I book. This time though, we feel like we got an amazing deal. We had been watching flights on and off for a few weeks and they were a pretty good price when we first started looking, but then they sky rocketed and stayed steady for the next little bit. Then one night we got on and they were back down again and the flight times were perfect so we decided it was time to book them. The very next day the cost of the flights would have cost us almost $200 more and they have continued to go up. I am so glad we finally seemed to book at the right time. We are so excited to come home and spend time with all of our family and friends. Can't wait to see all of you!

Tropical Storm

This weekend, Chris and I had plans to go to the demolition derby at the fairgrounds for the fair, but unfortunately, with Hurricane Ike going on in Houston, our plans got changed. We were not directly affected by the storm, but we did get some of the effects. We survived our first tropical storm. We were without power for most of the afternoon/evening on Saturday and then it came back on, but kept going back off on Sunday. It rained all day on Saturday. We got so much rain and some very high winds. We tried to take some pictures while it was happening, but we couldn't really ever get any could picturew where you could see the rain coming down. This morning, when we went out, we did see a little bit of damage. At our apartment, there were shrubs and tree branches all over the road and one tree that is totally leaning that used to stand up straight. Across the street from our apartments, there is a tree that fell over on top of a local business. All around the city, there were fences down and many trees that had limbs that had fallen on the ground and other trees that fell over completely. It is crazy. I can't imagine how it looks in Houston. I did get a little worried last night because they were saying it was possible for Texarkana to get some tornadoes, but it ended up being all clear, luckily!!! I don't particularly want to go through one of those. It is so crazy when it rains here, it really comes down. Below are just a couple of pictures we took this morning. Looking at the blue skies, you would never know we had a huge storm yesterday.


This is a picture of the tree that used to stand perfectly straight.


Some leftover debris on the road even after some clean up had already been done.

Weekend in Dallas

Chris and I went to Dallas Friday afternoon and spent the night and came back home Saturday evening. We had so much fun. Friday aternoon when we arrived, we stopped and checked in at our hotel and then went shopping at the mall and to dinner. The mall's there are insane. They are crazy big and the mall we went to had an ice skating rink in it. Saturday morning, we woke up and went to breakfast and then went to Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum as well as the Palace of Wax Museum. They were both so fun and interesting. Later that afternoon, we went to a Medieval Times Dinner/Show. We got to watch the knights put on a show full of jousting and sword fighting and we had dinner. We had to eat with our hands, (you are not given any eating utensils). It was so different, but so much fun. We got soup, garlic bread, chicken, ribs, a baked potato, and a pastry dessert. Here are just some of the many pictures we took. Hope you enjoy them.


Chris and I taking off to Dallas


The Museums (Palace of Wax and Ripley's Believe it or Not)


Wax replica of President Bush


Me with Johnny Depp, isn't it crazy how much it looks like him?


Chris and Jay Leno


Wizard of Ozz wax statues


Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King


The Last Supper with Jesus and His twelve disciples


Walt Disney




Check out this picture with the guy with the horn in his head and look real close at the other guy, he has two pupils in his eyes. Gross!


This guy just has some crazy bug eyes!


Me walking across a bed of coals :)


Chris going through a supposed earthquake, it felt just like one


The Medieval Times Castle (above). Below are a bunch of pictures of the show...when you arrive at the show, you are assigned a knight to cheer for; Chris and I cheered for the black and white knight. I was lucky enough to be thrown a flower by him during the show. Chris gave me a bad time about it. :)













Okay, Chris wants me to tell the story of why he gave me a bad time about the flower, so here it goes. The knight through a few flowers to girls that would cheer real loud for him when he would come by. He was coming by with the flowers in his hand and Chris said, "You have to yell real loud for him so he will throw you one"...just then, he came to our section and I smiled at him and he threw the flower right to me and then rode off. Chris said, "Okay, I guess that will work, you can just smile at him and he will throw you a flower." It was kind of funny since it seriously wasn't even a second from the time he said to yell loud from the time I got a flower. :)

And last, but not least, here are some pictures of the cool buildings in Dallas that we took on our way back home.