Texas

Texas!!

Howdy Folks, Weall in Texas now! What a horribly busy week we’ve had. And this is our first official blog update to you Utahns.

Remember though, we expect to be receiving updates from yall too ok? Don’t just read about us without telling us about your lives too ok?

Alrighty, well believe it or not, this is Brad and I’m writing this blog post on Microsoft Word and NOT on the internet. Sadly we have no internet by our house. This means that if we want to update our status or check emails we have to drive 10 whole minutes and considering our budget and the heat outside I’m afraid we won’t be online to tell you about it immediately. It may take a few days ok.

So one week ago we went with Tracy and Valerie to their ward and after sacrament Amy and I said goodbye to our baby and drove off!

There’s a hundred ways Houston is different from Salt Lake City and it was fun to drive there because we got to see all the changes one at a time.

We drove south on I-15 until Spanish fork where we headed off more Westward to Moab. I really wanted to explore Canyonlands and show Amy all those cool Arches (cause she’s never been down there) But we didn’t, due to the fact that my Penske moving truck only got 10 miles per gallon.

Ha ha I remember thinking that it took FOREVER to get to Moab but wow, that was only half of that days drive. We kept on driving and finally got to Monticello. The temple there is kinda small but the Angel Moroni makes it look Templish enough to recognize. We left Salt Lake with gas prices around 3.09 per gallon. In southern Utah we saw gas for up to 3.19!! Once we got into New Mexico I noticed a significant drop in gas to 2.89.

New Mexico was weird. They totally have a way more “native American” culture feel going on there. We drove through Farmington and wowzers…. The 3 hours or so to Albuqueque was the longest 3 hours of my life. There was NOTHING but dirt and bushes the whole time. We stayed in Albuqueque over night. It was still a dry climate and that day the weather was pretty much identical to Salt Lake.

The next day we only had to drive 8 hours! (Except we lost an hour by moving into the Texan Time Zone) We drove through southern New Mexico past tons of Indian Reservations, and lots of “don’t drive drunk” billboards. There were lots of hitchhikers during this stretch. The Utah and Colorado mountains disappeared and turned into plateaus and mesas which eventually just turned into rolling boring hills. We drove though a couple towns looking for lunch in New Mexico but the towns were all dead and shut down. Right before the Texan border we noticed 2 new restaurants!!!! Church’s Chicken, and Long John Silver! I convinced Amy to eat at long John Silvers cause they were combined with an A&W. It was mostly fried fish and not that good. After that we crossed the border…

Texas was noticeably different because the towns along the road were not dead! All the restaurants were open and the gas stations in service. Oh and guess what? Gas went down again! This time the average price was 2.69 cents. As we kept driving through texas the prices kept going down! It started raining really bad and both Amy and I were looking around for tornados cause that’s what the drive was like…just like the movie twister! Most was flat flat flat! And you know what happens? The sky looks ten times bigger out here without the mountains and hills getting in the way. The first big Texan city we passed through was Lubbock. Amy and I got separated here though. She turned and I didn’t see her. About 10 minutes later I used our precious emergency phone and called her. We decided to just meet at the hotel and drive through Texas all alone rather than try to backtrack and find each other.

After about an hour the rainstorm stopped and I noticed Amy driving in front of a bunch of Semi’s up ahead. She was so happy to see my big yellow moving truck when I finally caught up to her! We drove many more hours and guess what was cool? The windmill fields!! There were these windmills that were HUGE. Their propellers were ginormous! All spinning slowly in the wind, wow, it reminded me of Mission Impossible 3 where those helicopters totally get taken down by the windmills. Anyways imagine like 500 of those huge windmill and what a sight!! As far as the eye can see! I loved seeing those the most. We pulled into our hotel in Abilene Texas that night.

The next day we only had to drive like 5 hours! YAY. We were pretty sick of driving. To be honest I don’t remember anything about this drive. Except for the gas prices went down to 2.46 !!!! Go Houston yay! On this last drive we had to deal with more “house closing” problems yuck but it was all eventually taken care of.

I think we pulled into our Hotel around 6pm. We ate some Wendy’s and fell asleep pretty fast, but yay, our driving was over and we had made it to HOUSTON!!

The next day we went to Close on our house at 2pm. It lasted until after 5pm. Blah blah blah, lots of signing work. Right after, we headed into our brand new house and started unloading the truck. Luckily 6 strong men from the ward came to help us and the truck was emptied in under 30 minutes. That was awesome of them! We knew we got a good ward. There was however one casualty. Amy bought a beautiful bedroom set when she was like 2 years old and we had decided to transport it… Her lovely perfect dresser got a humungous scratch dent right on the top! OH NO! oh well though, we kinda gambled on that decision to bring precious cargo. We’ll just put something over it to hide it now!

We pretty much had everything just thrown into our living room that day. That night I stayed up late and set up Amy’s big fancy bed and we had some place to sleep. The house however had 2 problems. The house smelled like stinky smoke and the garage smelled like stinky death.

The next day we dedicated to 4 things. Find a washer and Dryer, get electricity turned on, get water turned on, and find a lawn mower. After a long and hard day we did it ALL!!!!!

The next day we works our tushies off unloading boxes, filling up cupboards, yadda yadda yadda and wow what a bunch of crap we sure had! At about 8pm that night we had some very special visitors… Isaac and his Grandparents!!! They had driven to Vegas, flown to Long Beach, and then flown to Austin. Then they drove to Houston and boy let me tell you Isaac was happy to see Amy and me. He was also happy to get out of that car!!!

The next day was Saturday and Tracy took me to a home depot to shop for stuff to fix the house and Valerie took Amy to the grocery store to fill our cupboards up with the right food for Isaac and us. By noon Tracy and Valerie had to go. They were the last ones to say goodbye to us. We’re happy that Isaac likes the house. He LOVES his room. All those toys of his that we had packed away were suddenly back! His crib was back! His high chair was back! And his parents were back! And of course we let him watch his “Little Einsteins” addiction here too.

Isaac has slept very good here, he wears shorts and a light T shirt instead of wool outfits with footsies. It’s hot. This morning we woke up and went to church. It was fun meeting our ward. Our ward is about 15 minutes away. We go to the “Spring Branch Ward” in the “Cyprus Stake.” The ward’s very different from our last. Here there’s no elder’s quorum!!! So me and about 5 elders met with the 5 high priests. I’m a “group” member ha ha. There were 6 young men doing the sacrament, so that’s cook having them in the ward, and I think there was about 3-5 young women. It’s a very well rounded ward. There were about 3 babies Isaac’s age. Over all it’s just about 2/3 the size of the wards that we grew up in. Except the ward boundaries are HUGE. Even in Honduras I was never in a ward this big ha ha.

The bishop pulled us into his office and we explained how busy I was and how much time Amy has on her hands and how Amy plays the harp and stuff, so hopefully he gives me a calling in the primary and Amy becomes the boss of everything. We really like our ward. It’s small but very simple :-D. Tonight we’re going to have dinner with a couple who invited us to hamburgers!!! They’re so nice!

So yeah, we went to dinner and it was fun and YUMMY. There were 4 couples who all showed up with their kids. Isaac is so weird, he doesn't do well with children. He's an adult baby. So he freaks out when he sees kids sitting on top of each other, and if he gets run over, it's pretty much the end of the world. Isaac really entertains adults way better with his kisses and faces he pulls and such but he goes blank around other kids. But yeah the next day after playing in a room full of kids guess what? Isaac got a runny nose! Figures. He still has it today too!

Oh and I guess I learned why our ward is so oddly shaped. It turns out that the bulk of the ward is very transient, and has developed a reputation for not producing any leadership. So they have extended our neighborhood into being members of this ward so that we can keep it alive. So when the bishop found out that we lived up north, he automatically thought "leadership!" He's super happy that we're planning on staying here for another 5 years or so. (he he, did I forget to mention that I may do a residency???)

So yeah, we went to Orientation on Monday and I became the most popular kid in my class. I'm the one with the baby! Isaac blew about 20 kisses and was the attention of the meetings and speeches with his giggles and cries.

I got my optometry equipment and a bunch of other stuff today. I know my schedule now too. (Thursday is my Short Day).

But yeah. I'm scared of school, it's gonna hurt! 23 credit hours this semester of HARD HARD classes is not so cool. So pray for me k?

Another funny new thing is that last night and tonight the school is sponsoring a social activity... ha ha they had a party at a bar downtown and the school set up a bar tab. Drinks are free!!! They really want you to socialize and that's how it's done around here! One of the Administrators gave a speech today and said that ya gotta balance out all the hard work with fun! "Optometry and Beer are synonomous" she said ha ha.

Anyways it's a crazy "non-internet" week. please give us a call ok? Love yall
-Amy and Brad