A Week in Review

I am a little behind on my blogging so here are the updates!

Last Saturday I went to our stake women's conference and it was really good! It focused on James Ferrell's book, "The Holy Secret", and how to get more out of the scriptures, attending the temple and sacrament meeting. I am going to buy the book soon and read more because I really liked it! There was a luncheon afterwards that was all fancy and I enjoyed spending time with a friend and meeting others in our ward.

Saturday afternoon Nick and I went to San Marcos with our friends and shopped at the Prime Outlets. (Sorry, no pictures. We were too busy looking for good deals!) I am almost glad that they are an hour away because I could see myself spending way too much time and money there if it were any closer! You could spend an entire day there and not get through all of the stores. I got a few summery things, since that seems to be the only season here, and we had a lot of fun! (How could it not have been fun with shopping involved?!)

Sunday we had some couples over after church to hang out. It was fun to see the movie the guys have been working on and I am really excited to see the final version!! Unfortunately the absolutely hilarious movie might not be available for others to watch because it was filmed on USAA property.

Thursday I recieved a postcard in the mail saying that my package could not be delivered by UPS because my address was incorrect. The address was actually correct, which would explain why I recieved the postcard. When I called to complain about #1 not getting my package in the time that I paid for, #2 refusing to drive forty minutes to pick it up, and #3 the fact that they could send a postcard to an address that "didn't exist", all they did was say they would have it redelivered on monday and could not answer any of my other questions because they were not the driver who originally tried to deliver it. I am now going to stick to USPS when having packages sent to me since they are apparently the only ones who know where we live. I know that googlemaps and most GPS systems do get our address confused but really it is not that difficult to find it if you look at the street numbers or the handy signs that tell you which way the numbers are going.

Friday it was back to Sea World!! Yes this is my fifth time in two weeks. I have been every other day (minus sunday) that they have been open. I am very proud of myself. Nick and his friend Glenn got off work early so we decided to head over to Sea World and get good use out of our season passes. We fed the dolphins because we felt bad for teasing them (and they blocked off the feeding area so you couldn't even get close to a dolphin without a fish in your hand). We then got brave and sat in the "Soak Zone" for the Shamu show Believe. They were great seats, row two, and we made it through the show without a single splash. We were pretty proud of ourselves as we got up to leave and then out of nowhere comes a huge wall of water!! My camera was open and I was mid sentence so I got a mouthfull of salty water and my camera was soaked! I was in shock as we were hit two more times with dirty shamu water. We were a little upset that we didn't see the water coming but I guess we were asking for it by sitting in the splash zone. Here are some fun pics from the day!

This is before he soaked us- see how close we were! I couldn't even zoom out enough! If you make the picture larger you can even see that he is looking right at me. Probably planning his attack.

This video is of the crowd next to us getting splashed. I think we only got splashed by one orca but it pretty much had the same effect. Enjoy!

This is right after we got soaked- notice the dripping wet hair and water/salt spots on the lens of my camera.

Yes Nick, you are still really wet. This is after he wrung out his shirt and had a nice cool walk across the park. There is so much salt in the water that our hair turned crusty and I had visible lines of salt dried down my legs. Good times!

Saturday Nick had the opportunity to play paintball with Nexus, a group of new hires and interns from work. After he came home and showed me all the welts and then we went to eat at Chris Madrids. Chris Madrids is a hamburger place that has been voted by a lot of people to be the best hamburger in Texas. I was a little shocked when we arrived at an old trailer in the middle of a place that you would expect a trailer to be. The hamburger was good but I don't really understand the hype. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I get mine plain and dry?? At least we can say that we have been there!

After Chris Madrids we went to Outdoor World to wait for our movie time. It was pretty creepy inside because there are hundreds of dead animals all stuffed and posed. Here are a few pics of Nick and his new friends.

There seriously was a dead animal on every single rack. It is a huge store with mostly stuff I don't like. The weird thing is that no matter where we go I can probably find something to buy! I decided I need a new backpack!! Nick wants a kayak and a new tent!

After Outdoor World it was time for our movie, "Knowing" at the Palladium. Worst movie ever. The ending was not only awful but I found it kind of offensive. I usually don't really care when a movie portrays what is going to happen at the end of the world but this movie tried really hard to be religious at the very end and they got it wrong, very wrong.

Sunday, we are having sweet pork burritos tonight (made with my favorite, dr. pepper!) so I will let you know how they are. Hopefully next Saturday we will be going to the Natural Bridge Caverns and post some pics. Also, tomorrow is the day we find out what USAA has to offer, hopefully it is a full time position!! Have a good week everyone!!

Kisses from Luna

Since we got our season passes to Sea World last Saturday we have been going a lot. In fact we went every other day last week.

Monday we went with another couple and Nick had fun going on the "Steel Eel". I waited patiently on the side lines because I did not feel like getting sick that day. We also observed the dolphins ignoring everyone at the cove. It was a lot different than when we went on Saturday because there were a million more people since the weather was nice. The animals seemed tired and didn't want to interact anymore.

Wednesday Nick and I went by ourselves and spent time watching over the sea lions and trying to interact with the dolphins. We had the chance to chat with one of the ladies who works there and also has a degree in psychology. She said she would like to become a trainer and gave us some info about the fat sea lion that had been rescued by Sea World from the people who were going to have him killed. Turns out he was one of the Sea Lions that was eating all the salmon at the Bonneville dam. I had heard about them from my family since they live close to the dam. She said there were about ninety that they identified that were killing off the salmon so they were removed. Only nineteen were rescued though. So sad.

(You can see the fat guys head above the rock here. I will have to get a better picture next time we go because this does not do him justice- he is like three times the size of all the others! The lady said he is on a diet now because he only gets healthy lean fish instead of fatty Salmon)

The best day was Friday! Friday Nick was given part of the day off so we went again. We were able to go with two other couples and see all the shows again. It was great to see the shows because last Saturday when we went the shows were not that great. It was cold so they didn't do a lot of the water stuff and there were not very many people there so the trainers weren't able to get the crowd into it. Almost every show I saw was ten times better and they all did more flips and tricks for the audience. After "Viva" we went backstage to greet one of the dolphin trainers who is in our ward. It was so nice of her to show us around and answer all of our questions. She then offered to let us get a kiss from Luna the Beluga Whale.

These pacific white sided dolphins are also in the Viva show but they were on their break time so we didn't interact with them. They were really cute though and they know who the trainers are because they are always trying to splash them when they are by the pools. They are very playful and want lots of attention.

She was trying to get us to play with her and was watching us the entire time we were by her pool. She would splash and twist and turn in the water to get us to watch!

St Patty's Day

For St Patty's day I made Nick a green lunch. It was really fun to get it all together and have a surprise for him. He didn't have a lunch box so I bought him a lunch box and filled it with a sandwich made from the homemade green bread, green "mother goose popcorn", green grapes, sour cream and onion chips, spinach, sprite and a few 3 Musketeers Mint. The bread and popcorn that I made turned out pretty well. I really like our recipe for Vienna bread so I used that and dropped in a lot of green food coloring in many of the different stages so that it would be as green as possible! After Nick got home from work we had dinner and watched Pinnochio!

Here are some pics of the bread and popcorn, unfortunately i forgot to take pics of his lunch before he left. I really like the recipe for the popcorn because it is so easy and can be made any color for any occasion. It is quite sugary though so you can't eat too much of it! The bread is a little greener than what shows in the pic.

SEA WORLD!

We got to explore Sea World today!! Nick was so excited this morning to go to Sea World. He has never been before! I was excited too of course but I have been to the San Diego Sea World a couple of times and knew what to expect. One thing that is not expected is the cold weather though. Here is the first picture of the day freezing in the thirty degrees and rain. (Ok it was 39 degrees and sprinkling but it was still really cold!!) All these photo people were trying to get you to take your picture by the fountain. We didn't think the fountain was very cool but we took pics anyways;)

Yeah!! Dolphins!! My favorite part of Sea World is petting the dolphins! And the best part of Sea World San Antonio is NO SEAGULLS!! At San Diego they steal your fish and pester you when you are trying to pet dolphins. There was the cutest little baby dolphin in the tank that was fun to play with because he didn't care that I had no food. Maybe some pics of him next time. Below is a clip of one of Nick's encounters with the dolphins.

Here we have a cute pic of a Sea Lion! He is my current screen saver. Then there is a pic of Nick and some of them "sun bathing" on a rock. Then there is a video of them for you! They looked like they were having tons of fun in their habitat.

Last but not least we cannot forget what Sea World is all about. SHAMU! (or one of his many look alikes). Enjoy some pics of the BELIEVE show!

All in all we had a pretty awesome day! We have season passes so expect more pics and videos to come. We still haven't explored any of the rides and the water park is not yet open so there is still more adventures to be had.

Date Night

Friday night, dinner and a 3D movie!

We saw Coraline at the AMC just down the road from our house. I was excited to go because it was 3D! I was expecting it to be a little more 3D-ish though. The movie just looked like a regular movie with depth instead of the 3D in your face stuff I am used to from Disney attractions. The movie was kinda cute though so it worked out okay.

The glasses are so attractive we kept them! I read an article from Disney about a year ago that said 3D is the next big thing in film and Disney will be releasing at least one 3D film per year for the next few years. If you google it you can see a list of all the Disney and Disney/Pixar movies that are planned for the next little while. I thought there were quite a few that looked fun! Even the non 3D movies looked promising. There is a hand drawn movie coming out soon that has a new princess and she is african american. I can't wait to see it!

We also went to this restaurant. It had really good food, the steak was delicious! Overall it was a fun night! I even had fun with my friends during the day. We broke out my sister's old DDR game and danced the day away and of course we snuck in a chick flick and snacks!

Whataburger!

So our friends have been encouraging us to try Whataburger for a while now and we finally went! It was pretty good. It reminded me how much I miss Burgerville because it was almost like their burgers. I have to admit it was pretty good! It looks a little ghetto but it was voted a Texas Favorite so I am glad we tried it. Next we really need to try Chris Madrids. I guess it is voted best hamburger in Texas!

We haven't gotten around to doing much else photo worthy this week but hopefully this weekend we will be going to Sea World! We will see how the weather goes though. Last night the thunder and lightining was so loud it was making all the car alarms go off constantly!! I didn't get any sleep because I hadn't fallen asleep yet. Everyone knows that I am the heaviest sleeper but that only counts if I am already asleep when the noise happens. More adventures to come!

USAA Kickball

I went to Nick's kickball game on the USAA campus on Friday afternoon. He was on the Intern team and they won their first game against the Manager Team but lost the second game against the employees. It was fun to get out and see more of the campus. Here is a pic of us girls + Nico watching the game. Christy's husband is an intern with Nick and Lauren's husband is a new hire. We are all in the same ward! We were missing another girl but she wasn't able to make it today. Maybe next time!

Here are the boys in between games. I wasn't able to take any more pictures because for one you are not really allowed to take pictures on campus and for two I forgot that it is a little difficult to take pictures because of the fences they have up at the softball fields. Take a look at the weather!!! I can't believe it is still snowy and nasty in Vancouver and Rexburg. I am very glad that I live here for now. We will see how I feel in the summer though!

After the guys got showered we had everyone over for snacks and a movie. We watched Frequency. We also decided that next time we should split up the girls and the guys because it would be a lot easier to choose a movie! Hopefully next week the girls will be able to get together and watch some chick flicks! Also, I am hoping to go to Sea World this weekend! We will see how everything works out. Until then.... have a good week!

Riverwalk and Movie Making Fun

Last night we went down to the Alamo and the Riverwalk so that Nick and Glenn could get some shots for the movie they are making for work. We got a few tourists to participate in the fun! I can't wait to see the final video! From the clothes that Nick has borrowed and the overheard conversations about the scenes it will definitely be very interesting!! After they filmed we were able to walk around and explore more of the Riverwalk. We found La Villita which was a cute "little village" right off the riverwalk. We then ate at County Line which was recommended by some of our friends and it was pretty good BBQ. We were sitting right outside and I took this picture from my chair! There were a few people pictures but they didn't turn out so well.

Then of course for dessert we had BEN & JERRY'S! It was super good and we got to eat outside and enjoy the cool breeze. The other couple we were with has also been going to school in Rexburg so we were all amazed that it is March and the weather is so nice!

If you look at the door you can see a painting of "The Alamoo" and of course a Texas flag. One of these days I will take more pics of the actual Riverwalk but as I explained before it is hard to take a picture and walk at the same time because the sidewalks are narrow, there are lots of people and I am afraid of falling into the nasty water!

Today is the kickball match between the interns and the managers. I am excited to get out into the sun and work on my tan while hanging with friends! Hopefully I will take some good pics to put up. Until then, have a good weekend!

Goodbye February

I try to get out of the house and explore San Antonio with friends at least once a week and last week we decided to explore the Spanish Missions. They are Catholic Missions that were built in the 1700's. The Alamo was the first of the five but we did not visit it because we had all been there before. We did see the Mission San Jose, Mission Espada, Mission Concepcion, and Mission San Juan. They were pretty cool looking and it was nice to get out in the sun and walk around. I forgot to take my camera so I don't have pictures but I will get pictures next time I go. I am sure I will see them again because I know that Nick wanted to go and explore as well.

Another place I am excited to explore is Sea World! It opened yesterday so Nick and I are going to save up and maybe get a season pass. There is one lady in our ward who is a dolphin trainer there and Nick is her home teacher so she said we should come and visit her. It would be really fun. I am sure that when my mom and sister come to visit we will have to do some type of backstage thing with the dolphins because my sister has been waiting her whole life for it! Everytime our family would get the chance to be with dolphins Jen somehow managed to miss it! Maybe this summer jen!! I also found some more historical places to tour but first I really need to register my car somewhere since my tags are expired. I will try to remember to bring my camera and take pictures of our next adventure!

I am excited for March to come because that means lots of birthdays! 5 birthdays in just over four weeks! Happy early birthday Lee, Grandma, Grandma, Mom and Dad! For some reason my family likes to squish birthdays together. It should be a fun month!