Where We Live

Well, I already wrote a post about leaving Provo... so now I'll write a post about living in Houston! So far, we love living here. The weather has been great, and although the humidity can be a bit much some days and the heat of summer is looming over us, it's been really nice so far. We've gotten to spend lots of time with my family since being here, which has been really fun. (We wish there was a way to live near both of our families at the same time, but haven't figured out how to make that work yet. Any ideas??) I've gotten to introduce Chris to some of the many joys of Houston: the livestock show and rodeo, the beach, traffic, etc. and it's been fun showing him around my hometown. 

We're currently living with my parents, which has it's ups and downs. They've been really great so far at making us feel welcome, accommodating us, letting Mayzie camp out in their back yard, etc. The down side is obviously that we're living with someone else and not in our own space which is never easy, and most of our stuff is in storage, which can be frustrating at times. We also feel a little bad for Mayzie since her backyard area isn't that big. However, Chris found an awesome dog park to take her to so she can get out some energy and play with other dogs.

We went with my family several weeks ago to the race track and saw horse races as well as ostrich and camel races. It was so much fun! We didn't participate in any of the betting, but it was still fun to watch the horses and get excited when the one we "picked' won the race! The ostrich and camel races were really funny, and I'm glad we went for those.

Ever since I've known Chris, I've told him how amazing the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is and how someday I'll take him there. Well, this was the year! We actually went twice and I think he was impressed. We didn't get to do and see everything we wanted to, but it's nice to know it'll be here next year and we can go again. We went just the two of us and saw the Zac Brown Band and they were awesome! That concert was on a week night after work, so we pretty much just went for the rodeo and concert, but that next Saturday, we went with my family to see Brad Paisley and we spent the whole day there. It made for a REALLY long day, but we had a blast. We went to the carnival and watched Kaden ride several rides.

Then we checked out the sheep dog competition for a little bit, looked at some of the cows, and checked out the tractors. By that time, we were all hungry, so we had some delicious bbq for lunch and then watched Kaden compete in the pedal tractor pull. He did great!

We got to walk around and saw some of the farm/animal exhibits and vendor booths. It was super crowded, but I think the fact that it was a Saturday, the last day of Spring Break, and the 2nd to last day of the rodeo brought out lots of people. It made us a little crazy!

 We'll have to go earlier next year so we can see more. We headed in to the rodeo and saw the normal competition, but then before the concert started, they actually had the championships, so we got to see the top 10 cowboys in each category compete, and then the top 4 compete again in the finals. It was awesome! The concert was really great too. Brad Paisley puts on a great live show and Kaden and I had fun singing along and playing our air guitars! :-) After the concert was over, we waited in a ridiculously long line to get the requisite fried treats (fried oreos, fried snickers, and fried brownies are what we tried this year, but they also have fried cookie dough, fried twinkies, fried cheesecake, and fried reeses). The fried oreos are my favorites! We enjoyed the fried goodies and then played some of the carnival games before heading home. I'm so happy I got to go to the rodeo again and this time share it with Chris!