Peacocks!

Ever since moving to Central Texas, I've wanted to go to this park in the city that has free-roaming peacocks. Today we had some errands near the park, and since we are moving next week, we thought it was the perfect time to visit. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done! We were able to get extremely close to the peacocks. I am sad we waited so long to visit. The park would have become a favourite place for us to go.

Peacock crossing!

The poor, ugly female peacock


Peacock in a tree


Okay, so I know you can't really see the peacock behind me, but I look super cute in this picture, so I had to post it!

Their feathers are beautiful

A peacock waterfall


This one was hanging out by the parking lot and greeted us as we arrived.


Husband and the peacocks.


The grounds had beautiful ponds, with turtles, fish and flowers. Look at the itty-bitty turtle!


Big turtle

Spur of the moment hockey game

Yesterday, I received a phone call from a friend from church. Her husband had a few free tickets to the Texas Stars playoff game, and she wanted to know if we wanted them? Heck yes! So, with barely enough time to pick up the tickets, grab a bite to eat and drive to the game before the puck dropped we headed out. The Stars played the Milwaukee Admirals (the Admirals are affiliated with the Nashville Predators). The game was pretty good, with a few good goals, a small fight, and a goal with 20.6 seconds left in the third to tie up the score. The Stars won in overtime, much to our disappointment (We don't cheer for the Stars because of the way the fans yell the word "Stars" when it comes up during the national anthem. Call us crazy, but we feel that the national anthem should be about honouring and respecting your country, not about cheering for your hockey team). The best moment of the night, however, had nothing to do with the Stars game. Right before the third period started, I notice a TV in one of the suite boxes two sections away from us was showing the Blackhawks v. Canucks game. No matter what we tried, we could not get close enough to see the score. So I pulled out my camera, which has an amazing zoom capacity, and snapped a picture. The picture, which looked blurry on my screen, came out crystal clear, and we were able to see the score. My camera is amazing!

Here are some of my favourite pictures from the game:

Our seats were behind the goal, which were actually pretty good seats. We could see the whole ice and every play (as long as the fans in front of us weren't standing up!)

No AHL game is complete without a game of human bowling during intermission. I totally want to try this! It looks so much fun!

How sweet is that? She said yes, of course!

Things were a bit heated at this point, and I had my camera ready for fight. No such luck this time.

My amazing picture taking skills in action. This screen was a good 75-100 feet away from our seats. By the way, we were both SHOCKED to see the Hawks up by 6 goals!

To the moon

Friday was my last day of work. I have been nannying for a family here in the city for almost two years. In honour of my last day, the five year old made me a card. She came up with the design herself. Cards like this make it hard to leave!

North Carolina Botanical Gardens

Last week Husband and I headed to Virgina to find a place to live. Virgina is beautiful! Lots of trees and hills. After looking and looking and looking, and being told we couldn't rent at one place because we didn't have 6 months of employment in the city (What the heck?!?), we finally signed a lease on a two bedroom, 1.5 bath townhouse. My favourite part about the townhouse: The red door! Husband's favourite part: The 4 minute walk to Wendy's!

After securing a place to live, we headed to North Carolina to spend some time sightseeing. We have a goal to visit every State, but we can only count the State if we actually do something there; no driving through allowed. Since we flew in and out of Raleigh, it made sense to try and cross North Carolina off our list. We decided to visit the North Carolina Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill. We were a couple weeks too early to see everything in bloom, but the Gardens were very pretty, and educational. They have a whole section on poisonous plants; poison ivy and stinging nettle anyone?

I fell in love with this plant, the Mayapple. I don't know why. I just thought they were pretty.

Through this gate grows plants that your mother, father, scout leader,and camp counsellor warned you to stay away from.

We decided that Dr. Seuss looked to nature to get ideas for the illustrations in his books.

Pretty sure I've seen something similar to this in "Horton hears a Who"

He said he was a lion?

In front of the pretty, pretty azaleas. (Note to self: Hands in pockets make you look fat!)

A very creative way to display a birdhouse.

I can't remember what these were called...

The flower of spring: the daffodil

I may be crazy...

We are moving in a month, the weekend after Easter to be exact. We are busy purging, organising and packing. And yet, I couldn't resist putting out some Easter decorations. Husband thinks I'm crazy. After all, we are moving! He joked that the decorations will be the only things left unpacked. We had some friends over yesterday and they commented that, of course, even though we are moving, I've decorated for Easter! I can't help it! I love decorating for holidays. And I can easily justify it: The decorations already have their own box. All I have to do it swoop them up and drop them in the box. It will take two minutes! Besides I think they make the place look more homey and distract from the boxes and general mess that comes with preparing to move.

The next step

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. I know I left everyone wondering what our next step would be now that Husband is no longer going to be a police officer. It took us a couple weeks to get everything in order, but we finally have a plan. As mentioned the last post, we are indeed heading to Virginia so Husband can get another Masters degree. His current Masters is a 36 hour degree. We are thinking that he will become a military chaplain, and the requirement for that is a 90 hour Masters degree. So, he has two years of schooling ahead of him. Our move date is set for April 30. Yikes! It is amazing to me how fast everything has fallen into place as we prepare to take our next step. Things that have needed to happen have happened, and they have happened quickly. We both feel as if God is ordering our steps. There are a few big things left to do, like find a place to live in Virginia and pack up our apartment. But there is still time to get everything done (I hope!).



Thank you to everyone for all your words of support. They help more than you know. We look forward to sharing our Virginia adventures with you.

P.S. Since Husband is no longer going to be a police officer, I don't see a need to keep this blog private.

Proverbs 3:5-6

I am sure you are all wondering how Husband is doing in the Police Academy. Well, Monday he came home very tired, stinky, and sore. Tuesday he came home and quit. Yep, you read that right. He withdrew from the Police Academy. On Tuesday morning, the training instructors were going over what the cadets would be learning for the next 32 weeks, and Husband realized that he wasn't interested in learning that stuff. He realized that his heart wasn't in it. He realized that he didn't want to be a police officer. He came home and we talked and prayed about it and decided that this was an answer from God that he is not supposed to be a cop. As some of you may be aware, we have struggled with this decision for about 18 months or so (ever since we deferred going to the first academy class). We have been praying and praying about this for months and have been asking for God to make the answer clear. Well, I don't think you can get much clearer than complete disinterest in the job you are about to do. The commander and instructors at the academy were very kind and supportive when Husband called and told them his decision. The other cadets sent very encouraging emails and have called to offer support. We are a little disappointed, as we have been talking about and planning this for the last 3.5 years, but ultimately, we have to do what we feel is the right thing.

We are still working out the next step, but we are pretty sure we are headed to Virginia so Husband can go back to school to prepare for the ministry. We aren't certain where we will end up after school, but he has always been interested and drawn to military chaplaincy, so that might be our answer. I wish we could move from Texas BEFORE the summer heat sets in, but there are only about 3 more weeks before that happens, and there is no way we will be ready by then! Just kidding! We aren't planning on moving that quickly anyway. Stayed tuned for more on this new adventure.