visit to Ruston.

We went to Ruston this weekend for a quick visit...we got there Friday night, hung out for the morning on Saturday, drove to Prescott, Arkansas, for Ashley DeWoody's wedding, came back that night, went to Temple Sunday morning, and drove back to Fort Worth for a meeting we had to be at for Daniel to teach some Turkish language lessons. Whew...full weekend, and good.

One of my best friends, Molly, is about 5 months pregnant. She happened to be in town this weekend for her little sister's high school graduation and came to visit Friday night. I haven't seen her since January and won't see her again until after she has her little girl probably, so it was good to see her, even if it was a quick visit.

And..since Jenny was in the wedding, Meredith stayed with mom and dad for the weekend and I got to play "mom" for the day on Saturday. Very fun, but don't think we're ready for that quite yet - making bottles, packing up several outfits and diapers for a 9 hour day trip, getting food prepared for the 3 times she'd eat cereal or veges or take a bottle during the trip ... whew! I'm tired just writing it all now. ;-) But, isn't she a cutie?!?!?!?!

Birthday Camping Trip

We have tried to go camping a few times, but something has always come up. So, when I asked Daniel what he wanted to do for his birthday, he mentioned camping. And nothing could interfere!!! Josh and Elizabeth suprised him and came down for the day with us on Saturday. We went to Colorado Bend State part, about 3 1/2 hours south of Fort Worth. It was mine and Daniel's first camping trip together ... and the last time I camped out was when I was a counselor at Kanakuk in 1999. And even at that, there were guys there who were in charge of the campsite and had the tents set up and food was already there, waiting for us to cook, etc. So, as far as packing up our own food, setting up our own tent, etc. it was a first for me altogether. It was nice to have Josh and Elizabeth help us get set up! We arrived around 11:45 and got set up and headed out for a hike around 12:45 or 1:00. We had much fun - Josh pretended to push Daniel in the cacti!! :-) We stopped for lunch - fruit and veges, chips and salsa, and trail mix! Tasty, huh?!!?! We made a big circle around the land basically and were awed by our Creator's artistry! In our 8.6 mile hike we saw God's beauty in waterfalls, brilliant-colored wildflowers, cacti with pink and yellow blossoms, various sounds of birds, sounds of water falling into the pool below, sights of wild mountain goats coming down the mountain, lots and lots of shades of green on trees, grasses, leaves of flowers, cacti, a bright sun shining down over us - just to name a few!

Photo Collage by Dundoo
Saturday morning we woke up, layed around in the tent, enjoying the coolness of the morning and the sounds of God's creation around us - the gently flowing Colorado River, birds chirping, bugs making their bug noises ... and then we packed up the tent, packed everything in the car and went on one last adventure. Do you know about Geocaches? Well, basically, it's just a random adventure - all over the world! But, you can find nearby coordinates online, and using a GPS and clues that the "hider" leaves on the website, you search for something that the "hider" has hidden. And you either leave something in a box and take something from the box, or sign a log of people who have come before you. Anyhow, we found one near the River using Daniel's GPS. Here's Daniel signing our names to the log!!!

SURPRISE!!!

Well, I planned a surprise party for Daniel Friday night...and in his words, he was 100% surprised! Brent and Rebecca helped me make the evening smooth, so he'd have no suspicions. We went to dinner and the plan was to have them over for dessert afterwards - that way, Daniel wouldn't be suspicious of the cake that was at the house! The plan went off WELL! And when we got home and he walked in the door, 8 of our friends awaited him, blowing those blower things and saying, "Surprise!" Another couple drove up right as we were walking, and a couple of our other friends came later in the evening.

The festivities consisted of German chocolate cake (Daniel's dessert request) and his mom's homemade apple pie! We sang the "Happy Birthday" song and he blew out his 3-0 candles. And the fun...we played "Pin the 'Audi' on the Daniel" - We blindfolded our friends and they had to put an 'outie' belly button on a 30x40 picture of Daniel. Rebecca was the winner!! See the video below and watch Amy Nobles try to pin the 'outie' on Daniel!!

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8 day countdown to 30

Daniel will be the big 3-0 on Friday (the 11th). So, we started celebrating this past Friday, the 4th, with opening a gift each day until the big day.

5/4. day one. The World As I Remember It: Through the Eyes of a Ragamuffin by Rich Mullins.


5/5. day two. Perry Ellis kakhi slacks with super thin white stripes, on sale 50% off and 30% off of the 50%!!! (I'm a bargain shopper. Found this great bargain at Dillards!)

5/6. day three. pathchwork plaid shorts!! very cool. very "in"

5/7. day four. Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God by Gordon Fee.


5/8. day five. Bookmark - machine woven in Istanbul, Turkey.


5/9. day six. Another pair of Perry Ellis kakhi slacks at another GREAT price...from Dillards!


5/10. day seven. The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, vol. II


5/11. day eight. Coupon Book for my honey from his honey....

and EGGS BENEDICT! Daniel requested it for breakfast. Call me backwoods, but I'd never even heard of it! ;) So, I got a recipe from the internet and waa-laah! Check it out. He said it tasted good!!! Score!

tornados. tea. theater and tires.

tornados.
So, last Wednesday there were crazy TORNADIC winds, up to 80 mph in some places, and on Thursday there were over 200,000 people without electricity in the DFW area. Guess who were part of the 200,000? You got it - the Audis of Fort Worth. Most of our friends in the area got their electricity back by mid-evening Thursday night. But us? Our power was out around 6:30 Wednesday night and 48+ hours later we got our power back Friday night about 9:00. WOW! Learned a lesson in thankfulness for lights, refrigerators, electric outlets to run the vacuum and washing machine/dryer and microwave!!! good times!

tea.
Saturday night we ate chicken couscous and beef tagine at the Kasbah Grill in Irving. Authentic Moroccan food - delicious!! We would highly recommend the restaurant to bloggers in and blogging visitors to the DFW area. After dinner we had hot mint tea....mmmmm.......

theater.
Daniel's former roommate, Chris, played the lead male role in the musical, Oklahoma, this weekend. Curly Chris - has a nice ring to it, huh?

tires.
There was a funky sound coming from our car this afternoon as we were driving home on I-20. We pulled over to discover a tear in the back left tire. My strong, protective, handy-man husband dug the jack out of the trunk along with the spare tire and changed the tire while cars sped past us at 60+ mph. Isn't he a stud!!!??!!?!

crawfish - take two. (snap)

Yes, we did it! Two sittings of crawfish in one week!!! Michael and Meg called this week to invite us to their home for a crawfish boil. Michael's dad brought 60 lbs. of crawfish all the way from Louisiana on Saturday. 20 of us celebrated crawfish season together with crawfish, potatoes, corn, and onions - all boiled together in great cajun seasonings! Probably about half of us are native to Louisiana, the other half are married in to Louisi-anians or friends of the Louisiana crowd!! Like I said in my last post, crawfish eating is no fast-food event. No, it's a good fellowship food, as it takes much time to peel and eat. The initial batch of the boil was the veges. Then, 2 pots full of crawfish followed. And we peeled, and peeled, and peeled.

A lesson in crawfish boiling:


Begin with LIVE crawfish...we let Sawyer, our friends' one year old, be the tester of the crawfish's "live-ness" as he was inticed by the squirming claws of the crawfish.


Boil the crawfish. When finished boiling, pour crawfish onto a newspaper-covered table.


Make SURE the crawfish are no longer squirming - they're good and dead and cooked! And check to see that the tail is curved, not straight. A straight tail means that the crawfish was dead before it got into the boiler, and this is not good!


And snap the crawfish at the joint between the body and tail. Twist the tail apart from the body. Then snap the very end of the tail off as well. The meat is inside the main part of the tail. Peel the scales away from the meat, and finally, as Ashley is so nicely demonstrating, pull the strip of ???!?!?! from the meat, and enjoy!!!

game night - guess who.

Do you remember the childhood game "Guess Who"? I played it a lot when my sister and I would visit my grandparents in Ruston on the weekends when we were little girls. We played a lot of games with Mamaw. Well, this past week, a package came in the mail. I was surprised to see my mamaw's handwriting on the package. I mean, she sends cards for holidays and birthdays, but I don't ever remember getting a package in the mail from her...at least while here in the States. I was intrigued to say the least. I opened it to find this note taped to the game box: If you can't read her hand-writing, it says, "You see the ages on this game, we played it for yrs. I thought you might want this. Love you, Mamaw". I teared up when I read her note. There's something about a random act of kindness from a super special mamaw that really touched my heart!

We broke the game open tonight and yes, all the practice with mamaw paid off! Score: Kim, 10; Daniel, 5. (We played the best 2 sets of 5: 5-2:Kim & 5-3:Kim)

crawfish with Ashley and Austin.

So, Tuesday night I'm baking salmon, making a salad, and JUST ABOUT to put spaghetti noodles in the pot to boil when my phone rings. It's Ashley and Austin, inviting us to go to Papadeaux's for their crawfish, 2lbs. for $5.95 special! Well, I was in the middle of making dinner, and we weren't sure that salmon would save...but, the temptation for crawfish and their company and the good deal was just too strong, so we decided to take a chance on the salmon saving and go out for dinner with them. And fun it was!

If you've never eaten crawfish, there's something that you need to know: peeling the shells is work. And if you're in a rush, crawfish is not the meal to have. I think we were at the restaurant for a good hour and a half if not two hours - a great time with Ashley and Austin!

I have a confession to make - I'm from Louisiana, and granted, I SHOULD have eaten crawfish more than 2 times in my life, but I haven't. So, Austin and Ashley had to give me and Daniel a little lesson. We're quick learners and took out 2lbs. each of crawfish. We were the dorks of the group and wore plastic bibs, comple-ments of Papadeux's. Funny thing that happened: Mine fell off in the middle of the meal, but I wasn't willing to sacrifice my shirt to the oil, etc. that could have splashed onto it, so I asked Daniel if he'd mind me asking our waiter to retie my bib. Strange request, I'm sure. Hope Daniel left him a nice tip!

the return of the newlyweds!

Josh and Elizabeth are back from their honey-moon, where they spent a week in Oregon and Washing-ton! We had them over for dinner Monday night - so fun for them to be back in town! We're definitely spoiled to have them so close by. We love it!

first time for everything.

This is our front yard. Yes, it looks like we've had a hard snow, doesn't it? Well, it's mid-April, and you can probably guess that we haven't. And you've guessed correctly. What we have had is wind blowing the tree in our front yard. We were warned of this tree before we moved in, but had no clue to what extent it would be a pain this spring and probably summer. It's a cottonwood tree and grows pods that fall from the tree and release cotton.

So, today I (Kim) helped mow our front yard. I've never done it before. It was actually kind of fun, but I didn't last long. Daniel is actually still outside mowing, and I just came in to post on the blog to say that I had actually mowed. I did mow for more than just the picture, and I'll probably help again, but hey, I wanted to let the blogging world know of my accomplishment, and what better time to take a break than now! ;-)