Don't mess... With Texas!

The final stop on my adventure was San Antonio, TX. My sister and brother-in-law were taking their oldest up to my old stompin' grounds, BYU-I. That's right, I have a niece in college!!!! I know it's so weird to me too. Even weirder... She started dating a return missionary not long after she moved in. I don't know if I am ready to handle all this just yet. :/

So while they were on the road I played mom for a week and a half to my sister's 3 younger children. We covered the whole spectrum from High School drama queen, to worry-some Jr. High schooler, to a weather obsessed 8 yr old. We had a good time, getting to and from school, seminary, piano lessons, young womens and scouts. We rented movies and ate ice cream... Apparently they only get one bowl of ice cream a week, and for any of you that know me that's just preposterous, so when I got the ice cream out the 2nd time my niece said, "are we allowed to have ice cream again?" I said, "Amanda, I eat ice cream just about every day, your parents aren't here so if you want some I don't care if you take some." haha (Shhhh don't tell Shannon!) haha Then there's my nephew who has become obsessed with the weather channel and at first it was cute but then after about a couple days or so, and having heard them talk about hurricane Katrina for the 10th time in just a day or so I had about had it. I tried to get him to watch something else like the Discovery channel. Man vs. Wild was on and I said, "Spencer, you should totally watch this, it's so manly! Cool people watch this." it worked for about an hour, he admitted it was a cool show but then went right back to the weather. Baby steps I guess. He's so cute though, he has some of the most sincere comments that just come out so hilarious. He made me laugh numerous times.

My first day there, the kids were all at school and I was looking around for some movies to watch and I bent over to pick up a CD case, my big butt hit the arm rest of the recliner and launched me forward into the china hutch. And that's where this lovely beauty mark came from.

It bled pretty quickly and swelled up a bit.

The kids came home from school and seemed more embarrassed that I was wearing a butterfly bandage than they were concerned for my pain. Spencer came home and said, "Do you notice anything different about me?" I said, "no... but do you notice anything different about me?" He just looked at me weird and said, "uh you have something on your face" haha And then quickly moved on to show me what was different about him. He went into the kitchen and found the heaviest thing he could find and picked it up and said, "now do you notice what's different about me?" I quickly realized he was proud of his strength and that he must have had some fitness test at school that showed he'd gained some muscle since the last test. haha It would have been great if I had caught him flexing in the mirror after that.

It healed pretty nice, got a bit of a black eye, and now I have a nice scar, nothing a little make-up can't cover.

I took the kids out to Jason's Deli one night and my nephew said, "YES! Mandy, you just went up on the coolness meter." That's right. I'm the cool aunt. haha It went up and down throughout the week. He even drew a diagram of the Coolness Meter at one point. Kaitlin (the freshman) had a really good quote, "I want to go to Ireland to get an accent. I have the strawberry blond hair, freckles, and blue eyes I'm a total shoe-in!" I asked, "Shoe-in?" She replied, "Yeah. I use big words." bahahahaha!

On my last day there we decided we wanted to go out with a bang so I took the kids to a movie they'd been wanting to see. We were late leaving, then made some wrong turns thanks to Kaitlin's map reading skills, then we got caught in traffic and it just got to the point we were missing the movie so we decided to go to the next showing. So to kill time we went to dinner at Chik-fil-A, we told Spencer to go be his cute-self and ask if they give out free ice cream cones. He went up and said, "do you sell free ice cream cones?" they thought he was so cute that they gave him two. haha We bought some candy and then went to the movies, of course my phone died before we went to dinner so I was trying to go off of memory from what I saw on the map. We totally went the wrong way and found ourselves at Rudy's The Worst BBQ in Texas (Which is really the BEST BBQ place ever!) and I had to stop and ask for directions. Finally we found the theater and I said, "This movie better be good to make all of this worth it!!" We saw Ramona and Beezus, and we all really enjoyed it so it was totally worth it! And we had fun in the car being loud and annoying, it was fun even though getting lost was frustrating, it just added to the adventure! ha Then heading home we got lost again heading into downtown, definitely the wrong location. We again pulled over to get gas and ask for directions and we finally made it home in one piece. It was a good adventure to end on. After being gone for exactly a month I finally made it back to FL. I had a few days to chill and then I started up a new job. I miss all the free time. :( Oh well you do what ya gotta do! Anyway thanks for the good times in Texas Landen's!