We stayed during the summer with my aunt and uncle who live in Pearland, which is about 20 minutes from the medical college near the center of Houston. My uncle actually works at Baylor, and Nate was able to do his internship in his Neuroscience lab studying the neurons and in the eye (since he's thinking he wants to go into ophthalmology). While Nate was busy with his internship this summer, I was working on an independent study class I was taking from BYU as well as studying for and taking the PRAXIS (certification test to graduate and teach). It was great because I was able to spend a lot of time with my cousins and aunt throughout the day and get to know them really well (not to mention I got a really nice tan from going to the pool everyday :). On the weekends Nate and I explored Houston and the surrounding area, and got to see some really neat sights.
The first place we went was Houston's Museum of Natural Science. They have wonderful exhibits there including the largest mineral and jewel collection I've ever seen. The butterfly exhibit was one of my favorites. We got to go inside of a glass preserve where they had thousands of butterflies, and even one really cool orange iguana that Nate loved.
One weekend we went to Brazos Bend state park, which is often called the Alligator park by locals. We saw some baby alligators, but because of the time of day, and season (middle of August) we only got to see one adult alligator. We were told that in spring and fall there are tons of alligators all over. The trees at the park were amazing though. They were enormous and covered with moss! We had a great time, and hope to go back sometime when there are more alligators out and about :)
Baby alligators! (hard to see because they are so small, but they are sitting on logs in the middle of the picture)
For the fourth of July I made Nate a gluten free, dairy free, sugar free cake. It turned out really good! I used coconut oil/milk for the frosting and topped it with shredded coconut and fresh strawberries and blueberries for the patriotic holiday.
One night in Houston, right as we were about to go to bed we found a huge cockroach right above our bed! If any of you know me well, you know that I hate cockroaches, especially freakish gigantic flying ones like this, so I ran out of the room and shut the door and told Nate to kill it by himself haha. I'm not very heroic when it comes to bugs. Nate had to chase it all over the room and so when he finally killed it we had to take a picture to document both his effort and the unusual size of the bug (although this picture doesn't do justice).
At the temple in Houston.It was so beautiful!
Chillin' and playing cards with the cousins on a Sunday.
We had a crazy pillow fight with Anne and Liz one night.
Right before we left Houston after Nate's internship was over, my aunt and uncle took us out to lunch at an amazing restaurant called Goode Company Seafood. There, they introduced us to my new favorite food - Campechana! It's like a mexican/seafood style salsa with crab, shrimp and avacado (sounds gross but it's to die for!).
