Congratulations!

Congratulations to Jon and Sabrina for their new addition, Addison!

Plans and More Plans

We have been super busy the past week and a half looking for houses and getting everything officially registered in Texas (with the occasional sea world or game night) and I think finally everything is coming together. We have made a lot of decisions and are ready to get everything started. Nick is excited to finally be a full employee and get all the benefits that USAA has to offer. I am really hoping our housing plans all work. I am even going to start working on a business! More news to come later. Have a good week!!

Graduated and Hired

Nick is now a college graduate and has been officially hired on at USAA. He starts back up on April 27th! (if he passes the drug test) He has been off this week so we have been searching for houses and playing our new card game Killer Bunnies! We are totally addicted to the game now and can't wait to play it with some of our friends!! More info on the house search later!

Mediterranean Grill

This Mediterranean Grill was nummy. We will definitely be going there again!

This little market next to the grill had Nick's favorite apricot crossaints that he used to eat everyday in Italy. They also almost had the right kind of flour for Nick's italian pizza but it was ground up just a little too thin. The search continues! It is amazing to live in a big city where you can find anything you want if you just know where to look. Definitely a few steps up from Rexburg where you couldn't find anything within 800 miles of the place.

More Sea World Pics

Here you go Jen! Some random Sea World pics of the animals.

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!