One Lucky Day

March 16th 2011 8:00 pm Wednesday night...Mitch taught English class to the Spanish speaking ward that we "teach together" on Wednesday nights. Really I just sit there and watch him teach, make some comments once in a while, and repeat everything he has the Spanish speakers say like I'm learning English too. It's so fun! I really do love the people and the sister missionaries that come.

We start out the class by learning some new vocabulary words that usually go along with the current season, holiday, time of year, or if we run out of those options, just something useful. So last week, we chose St. Patrick's Day words. Words like lucky, rainbow, pot of gold, leprechaun, four-leaf-clover, Irish, green, pinch, you know, all those really useful words that they're going to need in their everyday conversation. ha ha. I was surprised and sad to learn that not many of them knew much about St. Patrick's Day. It was always a fun holiday for me growing up. Mitch told the class about some traditions like if you catch a leprechaun on St. Patrick's Day, you will have good luck and he will hopefully show you to his pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, and if you don't wear green, you will get pinched. The class was pretty wierded out and I realized that it was kind of a different holiday. That's what's so fun about it! You turn food green and you hide a pot of gold and you pinch people. I was determined to not let St. Patrick's Day go by without being noticed in our house so we had some green crepes for breakfast. Later that day...

March 17, 2011 3:00 pm Thursday afternoon, Mitch came home and found a clue on the door that led to a treasure! We had to go search for it. Mitch took forever to find it and he says it's because I wrote a bad clue, but really he just wasn't searching hard enough.

                                                I guess it was hidden pretty well...

                                We were so lucky we found it...after I gave Mitch some hints.

 

Now that I'm looking at it, our pot of gold looks pretty small. We must be in medical school. Happy St. Patrick's Day!  

Rodeo Houston

Last Thursday, we went to the rodeo here in Houston. I am in love with rodeos! And Mitch in a cowboy hat. Growing up, we went to our family ranch in Wyoming a lot, so I love stuff like this.  It was so hard to decide which night to go on because there were so many good performers like Tim Mcgraw, Sugarland, Lady Antebellum, Martina McBride, the Zac Brown Band, and more. We decided to go the night that Rascal Flatts was playing. (Notice how Mitch is trying to look super tough in front of the kid's pony ride. ha ha)

Before the rodeo and concert, we went to see the livestock show. They had a ton of animals in one place and you could smell it a mile away. But it was fun to see all the different animals, especially the cute baby ones.

This is a Texas Longhorn and it was huge! Pretty cool.

Bull riding was my definitely my favorite event in the rodeo. I love when the bulls are really crazy! Another cool event that I had never seen was the Chariot racing.

They asked Mitch to be a judge of a few of the events after they saw his legit cowboy hat. He judged mostly on style. He was only a little biased toward the cowboys from Utah. If you look close at his chin, you can see a little red mark/bruise from when he got kicked in the face at his last basketball game. So tough.

The concert was so good! Rascal Flatts was way entertaining and so talented. I am also in love with country music.

 

We walked around the carnival after the concert and it was packed! The whole place smelled like fried everything. They had fried cheese, fried pickles, fried oreos, fried snickers, fried m&m's, fried twinkies; you could probably fry your whole dinner if you took it to them. 

We just had to try the fried snickers after hearing so much about it. And yes I did straighten my hair, it just looks wavy because it's Houston and I still haven't figured out how to do my hair here. I just can't wait till the real humidity gets here.

The fried snickers was super yummy. I'm sure it wasn't too good for ya, but it's a once in a lifetime experience. (Maybe three or four times in your life experience.)

When it rains it pours...at least when we're camping

After our last two camping experiences of getting soaked, you think we'd listen to the weather before we pack up enough camping equipment for a whole scout troop and head to the beach. We heard that there was a slight chance of rain but what does the weather man know? Last time he predicted severe winter weather and school got canceled for nothin. So we packed up the coolers, the sleeping bags, the tarps, the tent, the camp chairs, the firewood, the cooking utinsels, the lantern, our clothes- pretty much half the stuff we own minus one very important detail, pillows! And I thought that would be the worst of our troubles.

We drove down to Crystal Beach which is about 2 hours from our house. We got to take a free car ferry ride to get to the beach which was a fun surprise.

It was dark by the time we got to the beach so we set up the campsite in the dark. Our cars got stuck a couple of times in the soft sand which was just the beginning of our adventures on Crystal Beach. Once we got everything set up, we were feeling pretty good. The stars were beautiful, the waves were crashing just a few feet away and it was perfect weather for camping on the beach. We busted out the bratwursts, s'mores, and banana boats and had a tasty dinner.

We started noticing how humid it was. Everything that was out was wet in a few minutes. Even the graham crackers were getting soggy. We were thinking this is so weird, why is it so humid? Well duh, a tropical storm was on it's way in and we didn't even know it. And we were right there sitting on our little camping chairs on the edge of the ocean like we were just asking for it.

We went to bed and fell asleep, even without pillows. (Mitch had spent about 5 minutes trying to get a blanket to work for a pillow, the poor guy.) About two hours later, we woke up to some rain on the roof of our tent. I don't remember being surprised at all because I am so used to being rained on in our tent. And speaking of tents, I think they are very decieving. I don't know why I feel so safe sleeping in a bunch of fabric and poles when I have to double bolt the door to our house. Back to the rain. Soon after the rain came extreme wind, blinding lightining, and earth shaking thunder. I woke up with the other side of the tent (it's a pretty big tent) a few inches away from my face. I panicked and went to wake up Mitch and he was already awake just staring up at the other side of the tent and looked like he had been up for a while. I said Mitch look at the tent it's going to fall over! He was like where have you been for the last three hours? Asleep I guess. I asked him what have you been doing? "For the past 3 hours I have been calculating how many miles away the lightning is and thinking that every car's headlights was a car about to run into our tent and kill us." I wonder if it was the lack of a pillow, the tent pole digging into his leg, the rain dripping on his face, or the blinding lightning that kept him from sleeping.

 I woke up a few more times to ask Mitch what time it was, each time hoping he would say time to pack up.  The sun finally came up, but the rain didn't stop, it got worse. Right when we started taking down the tent and trying to put everything in the cars, it started raining harder than I have ever seen before. It was amazing! In just a few seconds, I was as wet as if I had just jumped in the ocean. Our campsite which was dry the night before was a river! Mariah and Brad were practically floating on their air mattress. We shoved everything into our car and just had to laugh at what a crazy night we had just had.

    Everything was a mess and it took all of Saturday just to get everything dried, washed, and swept off. We had brought stuff with us to make breakfast, but we decided to just head home and make it somewhere with a roof. We had some good laughs about the night and after Mitch told everyone that each time he saw car lights he thought, "this is it, we're done," Jerrick, who was sleeping closest to the tent door, said that he had tied to the zippers together cause he started thinking about how easy it would be for some creep to stick his hands through the door and strangle him. I guess your mind starts thinking pretty crazy stuff when you're up all night counting lightning and thunder.

I'm so grateful for a dry and now clean house! I still love camping, but next time, I'm listening to the weather man.