To Texas and Back

We're back from the first of our two Texas trips of the summer. On June 5, we headed to my parents' house near Houston before going on to Baytown the next day. When we visit Baytown, there are two things I can't wait to do:

1) See Lois, my best Baytown girlfriend,
2) and eat some decent Tex-Mex, which we have yet to find in the otherwise lovely state of Arkansas.

So we usually manage to combine the Lois/Mexican food thing into one glorious outing. There are three El Toro locations in Baytown, and this is the one on Garth Road. It's the one where Jennifer Garner lunched with family when she was in town for the funeral of her grandmother, a long-time Baytown resident, several months ago. So if Baytown has a celebrity hotspot, I guess this El Toro would be it.

Later we met up with Lois and her dashing husband Bill at the Baytown Target. (Lois is one of my sisters in Targethood.) We also ran into Jason, one of our former youth groupers, with his mom Karen and niece Aurora. (Aurora's mom Michelle is also one of our former youth groupers. Possibly the coolest youth group member we've ever had.)


Jenna and Aurora were instant best friends and ran off to shop the One Spot.

The next day was the wedding of Amber and Brant at our old church. It was great seeing former youth group members get married, and we also got to see so many people who were so special to us during the six years we were there. (Some trivia about Brant: he and some accomplices, including Aurora's mom Michelle, once wrapped our house with 96 rolls of toilet paper. It took me ten minutes just to unwrap our mailbox.)

On Monday, we got to spend some time with Chad's dad, who lives with his wife about an hour from my parents' house. Here are the girls very much enjoying having a grandpa with his own pool.





Julia had spent the night with Meagan, her Baytown BFF, and left her DS case at Meagan's house. So what better excuse did we need to meet Meagan and her mom Toni (they visited us in Arkansas over Christmas break) at the Houston Children's Museum? Here are Julia and Meagan battling with fake bread sticks from the museum's pretend grocery store.

Living in a land-locked state, we naturally had to get our beach fix.

















My cute parents. That day was their 45th anniversary!

















The girls in the shark cage at Moody Gardens. I actually had some peace there for a second!