Tea for Two: May 2019

I am proud to say that for the entire month of April, we both stayed in Texas! With that said, we still had plenty of adventures up and down this wonderful state.

April started off with a star party for my Astronomy class. We were able to see Mars, the Orin nebula, and a globular cluster. Since it was for school, Jonathan wasn't able to come with me. Boo!

Our newest sister, Morghan, was in Dallas to do some training for her job. When I told her we wanted to come up to see her and grab dinner she thought we were kind of crazy since it's over three hours away. We are kind of crazy, but we've also been wanting to get up to the Dallas area for a few months now and this was a surefire way to get us there!

Along the way, we saw lots and lots of wild flowers. I love Texas in the spring! We visited the George W. Bush Presidential Library. It is a beautiful building on a gorgeous campus.

It was really powerful seeing the artifacts from September 11th. Just off to the side of the twisted steel beams from one of the towers was a video playing with the aftermath of the towers collapsing. The most powerful part

We were really close to

Then we crossed the river and saw the beautiful skyline.

We met up with Morghan in

We introduced her to our favorite - Velvet Taco. (Warning, if you come and visit us, you will more than likely be taken to Velvet Taco. Again this isn't an ad, but they are just that delicious.)

For General Conference weekend

During the afternoon session, I finally finished off the rest of my hot salsa that I brought home from California in March. I'm really proud of myself that I was able to make it last so long. Back in February, I brought one jar home with me and it was gone in a single week.

We live near restaurants with patios and every so often we hear screams of excitement, especially during football season. For the past few weeks, we had been hearing quiet a bit of cheering so we finally ventured out to see what was going on. I knew March Madness was happening, but we don't follow basketball at any level so we were clueless to the fact that Texas Tech made it to the championship game. We joined the crowd during overtime and watched the end of the game.

We celebrated J's birthday.

(A day late! Sorry babe!)

I found my new favorite breakfast, oatmeal with raspberries. The Little Mermaid spoon that I got for my second birthday from my grandma does kick it up a notch. I've been working on spending more time in my scriptures in the mornings before I get distracted by all the other things I need to get done. I'm not perfect, but I am doing better.

We celebrated E's birthday.

(On the correct day. No, we don't love E more than J.)

I am nearly impossible to shop for because more often than not there's nothing that I really want and when there is I want to make sure it is exactly what I want. I realized for this birthday, I mostly wanted to go on adventures. Jonathan delivered in a big way! Our first adventure was to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center here in Austin.

It took forever to find a parking spot, but it was totally worth it when we got inside. The wild flowers were beautiful!

I love all of the oak trees in this part of Texas.

There were signs talking about the wildlife and we just so happened to find a lizard and a baby rattlesnake.

I've seen pictures of differently colored bluebonnets and we saw pink-bluebonnets!

Along with preserving this part of the city, you can host events here. I wish I had an excuse to throw a party here. As we were leaving there was a group of kids taking prom pictures.

It was an awesome place to start off my birthday week! On my actual birthday, I got some more great ideas for things to do from Ruby. My parents sent me a picture of rainbow they saw as they were on their way to Idaho, but by the end of my birthday week I did the rest!

That night, Jonathan and I went out to dinner at Punch Bowl Social and he had the smallest tacos ever. Luckily, ordered the nachos before our entrees came out.

That is my hand for scale.

After dinner, we played the video games they have there. We totally dominated Mario Kart.

A friend in my Astronomy class invited us to a choir concert she was in. It was really good. It was a combined choir from two different colleges that are too far away from each other to rehearse together. They did a great job!

Like I said earlier, I can be really hard to shop for and just a few days before my birthday I realized that I really wanted a new lens for our camera. Unfortunately, I have no clue about lenses. Fortunately, Jonathan's dad totally does! Jonathan told him what I wanted to do and he knew exactly what lens I should get. It came a few days after my birthday and I immediately loved it!

That night, we FaceTimed with my parents while there were up in Idaho with Chris and his family. We cannot wait to meet baby Eli! Just a few more weeks bud!

Jonathan wanted to take me to the beach for my birthday. We headed down to Corpus Christi on Friday after Jonathan finished with work. Just before we left, I got a sweet birthday message from Charlotte and Jonathan decided to match how she drew him.

It was a beautiful drive.

I don't know if this is a Texas thing or what, but this is the second time since moving here that I've seen a saddled horse in a trailer.

Seriously, I love Texas!

Our Saturday started out at the USS Lexington. We had a great touring the carrier and learning a bit more about the history of it.

We like big guns!

We ate lunch on the carrier and we both found it ironic that there was a bird waiting to be fed right next to the sign telling people to not feed the birds.

While we were leaving, there was an old airplane flying around the carrier.

We made it to our favorite beach for an early dinner and we were happily surprised that the Easter Bunny hid our treats there!

The water was a bit cooler than it was when we were there last year, but soon enough we were in the waves and having a great time.

We left the beach earlier than we usually would because we needed to spend some time with ponies!

We went horseback riding along a nearby beach at sunset. It was AMAZING!!! The company that we went with is Horses on the Beach. They were fantastic especially since this was my first time going horseback riding.

Thank you so much Ruby for suggesting that I spend time with ponies on my birthday! She has a future in party planning. After our ride was done, we were really hungry so we had second dinner at around 9 pm. Way out of the usual for us, but it was needed.

To finish off Ruby's birthday list, I dressed like a princess for Easter Sunday. We had a wonderful church service and even made a few new friends. Our favorite part was when the children in the congregation sang a sweet song about Jesus and how He healed leopards. Kids are the best!

After church, we slowly made our way back to Austin. We took a drive up Mustang Island to finish off our wonderful weekend there.

As we waited for the ferry, we saw dolphins playing in the wake of the ships.

This was Jonathan's first time on a ferry and it was my quickest ferry ride ever. It was just a few minutes long.

On the other side of the water were extra oil platforms and the blades for modern windmills.

Texas is still in bloom!

As we were driving we drove past Presidio La Bahia and we decided to stop off at Mission Espiritu Santo.

It brought back a lot of memories of doing my California mission project in fourth grade. Since Jonathan wasn't living in California in fourth grade, this was his first time visiting and learning about a Spanish mission.