Day 4 Good bye Texas, Hello Arizona!

      On our fourth day in the South, we finished up our time in Texas doing laundry and spending time together at the house. We had gone to an Asian market on Saturday in search of Dragon Fruit...what we did find was Mangosteens...they looked a little different here, less purple and not soft enough to open with your hands. I even had trouble using a knife to cut them open, Kenneth came and finally got them open for me.
       It was fun getting to spend time with the girls before we had to leave and I was working hard to get Rebecca to smile and laugh...I got really close. She smiled later for Dan :) We were flying out at 2:20 so we gave ourselves enough time to get checked in and get lunch before boarding our plane.

Mangosteen's!



Building a tower of blocks

 

Once we arrived in Tucson we got our rental car and began our drive to Bisbee where Matt and Jess live. We stopped to get food as it was dinner time in Texas when we arrived. Arizona is on Mountain Time but they don't observe day light savings, so they are 3 hours behind Indiana and 2 hours behind Texas. We were excited about the drive because I had never been to Arizona before and Dan had never been to this part of Arizona. Here are some pictures from our drive...

Leaving the Airport

 Once we reached Matt and Jess's house we dropped our things off and all went to the Historic downtown Bisbee to have some dinner. We stopped first at the Lavender pit to see how deep it was. It is left over from the strip mining that was taking place in Bisbee.



The pit



We had a great time at dinner and then walked around a little bit before heading back to the house to relax.

Day 3 video

Here is a video from Fossil Rim...Samantha thought this was really funny to watch.

Texas Day 3

For our third day we headed out in the morning to Del Rose, TX to visit Fossil Rim. It is a wildlife park you drive through and can feed the animals from your car. It took just under 2 hours to get there from Karie and Kenneth's and we made a stop for lunch along the way.



Lunch time

  We we arrived Kenneth got us feed for the animals and then we headed into the park.

The animals are use to being fed so it was fun having them so close to the car and getting to feed them right from our hands.



 The animals would stick their heads into the cars and as you can see from above get very close!

 All these animals came right up the car knowing we had food for them...they would follow us as we would drive away as well.

Cooling his jets :)

 Half way through we had a chance to stop and get something to eat and visit the petting zoo. It was fun watching Samantha with the animals and we got to brush the goats.

 For the last half the trip we continued seeing lots of animals and at the very end saw Rhinos in a large pen, but they were being fed and we couldn't get too close.

Perspective on the size of the bird when he stands next to a car (this was the car in front of us)

 When we reached the end we took some time to get out and stretch before heading back to Dallas. We got some pictures with Rebecca before we left.

Texas Day 2

For our second day we headed to church in the morning and I got to see the down town area of McKinney where the church is located. We had a great service and then went for lunch at Jason's Deli, which is one of Dan's favorite places to eat when we visit. After lunch we had a little bit of time to get changed before heading to a Rough Riders Game. The Rough Riders are a minor league baseball team that feeds into the Texas Rangers.

A pool area at the Field

 We had a lot of fun watching the game and even getting to see Texas style hat wearing :)

Cowboy hat or Baseball cap? Why not both?

We weren't able to stay for the whole game and as we were leaving I had to get a picture of this sign...

Wildflowers

 For dinner we went to a BBQ place called Rudy's. They had great food and it was a fun atmosphere as well. Samantha really liked her corn :)

 Before we left I saw this woman staring at me and then realized it was my shirt that caught her eye. I was wearing my I <3 Cambodia shirt and we started talking because she is from Cambodia. She escaped with her family to Thailand in the late 70's and then moved to America in the early 80's. It was fun getting to chat and such a cool meeting.

Here are a few signs from the restaurant...

Texas Day 1

For vacation this year Dan and I decided to split a week between Dallas, to see Dan's family, and Arizona, to see friends of mine. We were flying out of Indy to save money and a friend was willing to hang on to our car for the week and provide us transportation to and from the airport. We fly into Dallas and due to a delay got in a little late. We stopped at Whataburger for dinner and then headed to Karie and Kenneth's.

In the morning we had a chance to spend some time with Samantha and Rebecca. Samantha is really into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and it was fun hearing her say Mickey Mouse when she wanted to watch it. Rebecca is now a little over 2 months old and it was fun holding her and trying to get her to smile for us.

 For lunch we wanted to eat Mexican as it was Cinco de Mayo :) Karie and Kenneth took us to Uncle Julio's and the food was fantastic! We also had fun with the cardboard cut outs...

Dan

Samantha

Yummy Chicken Fajitas!

Chips and Salsa

We had a great time and spent the rest of the day hanging out at home. We had a nice dinner at the house that night and stayed up talking... till I started falling asleep on the couch.

6 months

Neither of us can believe it has been 6 months since our wedding! Here are some fun picture recaps of the last few months.

Our second home

This past weekend Dan and I traveled back to Marion for the weekend to spend time with friends. It was a fun time getting to stay with the couple Dan would always stay with when he would come down while we were dating. It felt good being back and had a ton of fun. We had dinner with our friends Angie and Jason before heading to Sandra and Joel's where we were entertained by Sandra and Joel's 11 month old. Saturday we went to the first showing of The 5 year engagement, which was funny. We grabbed lunch at a local Chinese place before spending some time at Starbucks reading.

Around 3:30 we met my old Student Development friends at Ivanhoe's in Upland and enjoyed good ice cream and conversation. The rest of the night was eating Little Caesar's pizza and bread sticks while watching some Freaks and Geeks before we both fell asleep watching Inception. On Sunday we celebrated 6 months of being married!!! We both have so enjoyed being married and love how much fun we have been having...as well as not having to travel so much just to see each other :)

We wrapped up our time by having lunch with my past mentor and her husband at our favorite Mexican place. We both love how much being in Marion still feels like home. It felt like we were just having a relaxing weekend at our house with friends.