Allen 1st ward part deux

Last week Katrina and Aaron Lawyer moved into the Old Settler’s ward. Katrina is the daughter of Bishop Dalton from the first ward.

That makes the number of former Allen First Ward members in Old Settlers now 4! Bryan Van Every, Jason Bell and I were also one time members of the good ole 1st ward.

So if anyone else from Allen wants to move, you know where you need to go! We might even let some 2nd or 3rd ward members join us. (Not so sure about the 4th, 5th and 6th wards though)

Smell of Death

So have any of you smelled death?

I have

Crystal went grocery shopping yesterday and bought some ground beef. Unfortunately the cashier bagged the meat in a separate sack and when Crystal was unloading her car (I was at work, yes some of us work during the summer) she accidentally missed a small sack...

One hot Texas day later and I got to smell death. Of course I only had to smell it while looking for the culprit. Crystal had to smell it for 45 minutes driving from downtown Austin to home.

The meat is now in the garbage and the car had been defumed...But I will not quickly forget the stench of death!

Charity

So a friend of mine just launched a new website that is designed to help charities.

The website is actually a game of trivia questions. Every time you get a question right the website donates money to a charity. The more you play the more they donate.



Give it a try its quite addictive and its for a good cause!

Stung

Yesterday we went to Schlitterbahn water park. While waiting in line for the first ride I decided to rest my arm on the wooden side railing, Unfortunately the scorpion that happened to be resting there did not appreciate it and decided to sting me. We decided to stay at the park and try and have some fun but after about 4 hours, it started raining and the rides closed down. So we headed to pottery barn where we found a crib bumper for $10!!!

Anyway here is the bug bite a day later, the color has gone down a little bit, but it still hurts.

Mexico

So, as soon as school was out, I needed to get out of the country and away from all memories of a few choice students. so, I went to Mexico! My friends Brian and Janine are living there for most of the summer, so I went to live with them in their apartment in Queretaro. They have a super cute 7 month old daughter, Cora, and I'm pretty sure she loves me. She was such a good baby!!! I never saw that baby lose it even though we dragged (drug?) her all around creation, on buses, in crazy taxis, and through all kinds of museums.

My Spanish improved greatly, thanks to having to order, ask for more limes, talk to the cab drivers, etc. I even got some chocolate all by myself on the way home. I had a blast!! Here's some pictures from my journey. I didn't really take these, but it's still the same.




This is the city of Guanajuato, which was my favorite of the 3 towns that I visited while I was in Mexico. It is built in a ravine, so the streets are tiny and twisting, and everything is built right on top of another. We had to climb lots of stairs and then continue up a steep hill to get to our hotel.



There is a silver mine in Guanajuato, and the silver barons, who were rich, built this church. Isn't this ridiculous? The craziest part is that there are two more panels just like this one on either side of this. All the churches in Mexico were really huge and elaborate, but this is the most detailed and extravagant that I saw.




Because of the way the city was set up, roads went through mountains in all these crazy tunnels to get around town. It was kind of scary to drive through them, but we made it.



This is a church in a city called San Miguel de Allende that we went to visit one of my first days in Mexico. It was a pretty little town, but my first day out in the heat all day was exhausting.




These pictures are of the city Queretaro, which was the city that Brian and Janine were living in and where we spent most of our time. The city was really pretty and had some fun museums to go to. Every morning we would go out and do something, come home when it was deathly hot outside to take a nap, and then go wander at night.

I really loved all the plazas in the city. At night everyone goes and hangs out in the plaza. There's music, you can always find some good food, and it's just nice to be outside.

I need to give a shout out to nieve de limon, my favorite treat in Mexico. It's like a lime snow cone, but so much better! I also had some fantastic gorditas and tacos while I was there. I miss the food already. One day for dinner I ate 8 tacos!! They were small... and it was only like $5 for all of them.

Thanks, Brian and Janine and Cora!! I miss you and appreciate everything!