Our New Home

Whohoo! We left Utah over a month ago and we have finally settled down! In the past month we have packed up and left Utah, visited 4 countries, drove to our new home in west Texas, Colby started his new job, we looked for a place to live, found a place and moved in, then had family come and stay with us for almost a week! It was all so busy, but so much fun! However, we were homeless for a month and now it's nice to have a place to relax and call home. 

Here is the quick low down of what has happened within the past month and half:

• Feb. 16th: Movers come to Utah and pack up all of our stuff and take it away!
• If you want to see our last days in Utah click HERE
• Feb. 17th: We drive to Colorado
• Feb. 19th: Celebrate my mom's Birthday
• Feb. 20th:  We drive more than  13 hours to Austin, Texas and visit my sister for a night
• Feb. 21st:  We drive 3 hours to Houston and board a plane for Costa Rica
• Feb. 22nd - Feb. 27th: Arrive in Costa Rica at 2am on the 22nd and have adventures!
• If you want to see pictures of our Costa Rica Trip click HERE 
• Feb. 27th: Leave Costa Rica and fly back to Houston
• Feb. 28th - March 7th: Carribean Cruise to Mexico, Belize and Honduras, from Houston
• If you want to see pictures of our Cruise click HERE
• March 7th: Arrive back in Houston and drive to Austin to celebrate my birthday with my sister
• March 8th: Drive to our new hometown
• March 8th-16th: We live with friends because they are so nice and awesome! 
• March 9th: Colby's first day of work! MyKel goes apartment hunting
• March 10th: Put in application for apartments
• March 11th: Apartment is ours
• March 13th: Sign lease and get apartment
• March 17th: Movers arrive with our stuff and we officially move into our new apartment! 
• March 17th-March 20th: Unpack like crazy and get everything cleaned up!
• March 21st - 26th: Family arrives at 4:00 am on the 21st and we hang out  the whole week! 

Although our home town is not close to anything really outdoors we still have great reasons to be here. We sure do miss the mountains, rivers, lakes, biking/hiking trails, but we have a lot of great people surrounding us. We moved to Texas already knowing 5 wonderful families and friends (all BYU grad geologists and their fam's). It's nice to have friends when you move somewhere new. Here are some recent pictures of the happenings of Texas!

Ignore the dirty windshield, but the sunrises and the big skies here are amazing! 

When my fam came to visit I made these nutella filled brownies! They were delicious! They taste way better than they look. But use caution: stay away if you don't love chocolate! Because it required an entire bottle of Nutella (If you doubled the recipe, which you need to for a large family of 8 people), it was the most expensive dessert I have ever made, but oh so worth it (almost)! You can find the recipe HERE. 

I come from a gaming kind of family! We played lots of Hearts, Settlers of Catan (of course), Telestrations, Battle of the Sexes (which is rigged for only men to win. A man totally invented this game), Banana Grams and the Wii.  

We went to the wildlife preserve and it was nice. Not much to look at right now, but when  the leaves come in and the flowers pop up it will be gorgeous! Right now it just looks like a swamp because we went after it rained. 

This was the prettiest part of our 1.5 mile hike...right next to the parking lot!!

The next day we went to Monahans Sandhills State Park. It's only about 40 minutes away. It was perfect timing. No one was there because of school and it had just rained 2 days before, so it was perfect for sand castles. Also, the weather is not hot yet, but just right! 

Carsten wanted to stay buried all day! He sat here for about 40 minutes. 

Carsten refused to come out of his shelter for the picture!

They started going down backwards!

Next we went to the Museum of the Southwest

I want a puffer fish! He looks like he is smiling and so happy. He wanted to be everyone's friend! 

The museum had  a miniature town set up for the kids! Here the kids are making lunch for mom

Whatever this thing was it was awesome! It made different noises and musical sounds when you touched the different wood pieces. 

And the weather today is sunny and warm! 

"Would you like a drink with that order, sir?" 

The movie theater here is pretty awesome. It has half price Tuesdays, which makes everything a good deal and it has laser tag and a sky walk ropes course. We will definitely be doing some Tuesday date nights!