Weekend in San Antonio

Hello again! So I'm pretty slow at this blogging thing...but it's better than I've been doing at my journal lately, which says A LOT about how often I write in my journal :)  I'm still trying to catch up on our summer adventures, but hopefully will get up to date soon so I can start adding our fun fall activities we've been up to!

Anyways, while staying in Houston this summer for Nate's internship with Baylor, we decided to take a weekend trip to San Antonio (about three hours away from where we were staying).  We left on friday afternoon, and took a small detour to go to supposedly Texas's best BBQ restaurant - Kreuz Market.  It was quite the experience.  It was supper hot in the room where they have huge bbq pits to cook the meat, and I felt so bad for the employees that worked there (although they probably are used to it).  We got our bbq on butcher paper and got to eat with our hands (yay!) haha.  It was pretty good, but I think Nate and I are big fans of bbq sauce (which they didn't have) so we weren't as sold as the rest of Texas's population.  But it was a fun adventure.

In San Antonio that night we walked along the river walk with Nate's cousin and her family.  It was so fun and beautiful but really crowded.  We agreed that if we ever went back we'd go in the spring or fall because San Antonio, even at night, is still extremely hot outside! We were sweating buckets by the end of the "river walk".  We stopped and saw the Alamo along the way, and I MADE Nate stop so I could get ice cream cause I was dying of heat and the only solution I could see was a big scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream :) lol.

Saturday Nate and I went to Sea World!  We had so much fun! My favorite part was seeing the dolphins when they were being fed because one came up close to the edge where I was standing and I got to touch it!!! Yeah, I know you're jealous.  We took a break for lunch/dinner and left the park to go to the Olive Garden because, as anyone who's ever been to Texas knows, it is WAY to hot outside between the hours of 4-6 to walk around in the sun at Sea World.  That night we went back again with Nate's cousins family (they were so nice and let us stay with them for the weekend) to see the Shamu Rocks show.  We had a blast even though it was still extremely hot outside, and we and went home with sore feet and ready for a 12 hour nights rest, which we did not get because we left early the next morning to drive back to Houston.  It was a great weekend, and we took a couple photo's to document it, which I'll share below.  Enjoy!

Summer Adventures in Houston!

This summer Nate and I went to Houston, TX where he participated in an internship called the SMART program with Baylor Medical College. The internship went from the beginning of June to the end of August, and since I was still taking Spring term at BYU, I stayed in Provo to finish my classes while Nate went by himself to Houston for the first three weeks of his internship.  These three weeks seemed like the entire summer to me! It was the first time Nate and I had been apart for more than a day or two since we were married the previous winter, and so it seemed like eternity! We (or at least I) was so happy when those weeks were over and I was able to join Nate in Houston. 

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!).

Becoming Mrs. Law

So I thought I would start out by giving a quick update on how I became Mrs. Law.  If you read the side posts, you'll hear about how Nate and I meet and our first date, so I'll just pick up with our engagement. 

Nate proposed to me on Sat August 7, 2010.  I was working a double that day at work (I worked at Sizzler at the time) and he came to pick me up from work when I got off as usual (it was around 8pm).  We drove back to my apartment and then just as we got inside, Nate said he forgot something in the car, and told me to go ahead and change out of my work clothes and he'd be right back.  When I came out from my bedroom after changing, the living room was covered with rose petals and these small honey candies I liked.  In the center of the room there was a vase of roses on a table with more rose petals and candy, and then Nate was standing next to it.  He gracefully swept over to my side (with Nate flare if you know what I mean;) knelt down and proposed.  It was really cute cause he got all red and flustered.  I said yes, and five months later we were happily married in the Las Vegas Temple!  Our engagement was fun and very busy with school, wedding plans (my mom did the majority and did an AMAZING job), engagement pictures and bridal showers. 

I had three showers. The first was hosted by my mother in law in Kaysville with Nate's sisters, aunt, grandma, and friends. The second shower was thrown by my college friends at BYU at our apartment, and the third was back in Vegas with some friends from the ward and from growing up.  They were all really fun and it was great to be able to celebrate the upcoming wedding with all of my friends and family.

Our engagement photo shoot went really well.  Nate and I were a little worried at first because we aren't necessarily "picture" people.  Anyone who really knows me well attest to my eye's being closed in 99.9% of pictures I take, which can really make getting a good one frustrating, but our photographer succeeded!

The day before our wedding I went through the temple for the first time to receive my endowments.  Nate's family and mine all went through with me, and then we had a dinner afterwards with friends and family.  My parents and Nate's spoke at the dinner, and then all of my cousins sang a song that my Aunt LaRae wrote for Nate and I.  It was really specially and I have the music and words that she gave me afterwards.

The next day was seriously a blur and I regret so much that I didn't write down any of my thoughts, feelings or even events in my journal afterwards.  The morning started out with getting all dressed up and pretty for the day (one of my favorite parts:)  My older sister Kayla did my hair while I did my make-up.  I had done her hair for her wedding so it was kinda fun continuing the tradition.  She did a fabulous job that day, although unfortunately my vale covered up most of her masterpiece during the day.  Nate picked me up around ten and we went to the temple to take pictures with our photographer before the wedding.  Then, the sealing was around 1pm, and we had an hour break after finishing pictures with family before the reception started.  The reception was absolutely beautiful! It was really fun because I had an idea in my head of what it was going to look like, but I hadn't really seen any of the decorations before that night.  The cultural room of the church I grew up attending was transformed into a ballroom thanks to my mother and her team of workers.  It was a wonderful night, filled with friends, family, dancing, eating, and shoving cake in Nate's face:)  (Although he got me much worse).  That day was wonderful, filled with all the people I love, and was just the start to how wonderful our life has been together ever since. 

I thought I would share some of my favorite engagement pictures and pictures from the wedding, so feel free to view them below!

To the First of Many

Here's to my first blog as Mrs. Law! ( That still makes me giddy every time I hear it :) Today I decided to start a blog about our families future adventures together.  I'm not the best writer, and I'm definitely a slacker at scrapbooking and writing in my journal, so I thought I'd start a blog and see if that works better for me in documenting my life. I love to take pictures and thought that they might give me more to say about my experiences, so here it goes!