State Fair

This last weekend we went up to Dallas for the Texas State Fair and Red River Rivalry football game.  We had such a memorable weekend.  The fair was HUGE... just like Texas! We loved watching the heifer cow competition (imagine watching a dog show, only with cows), the pig races, talking with local honey bee and jersey cow farmers, the cow-milking demonstration, and listening to the Marine brass and drum band.  On Saturday was the big game.  The Cotton Bowl stadium is in the middle of the fair park.  It was so cool to see half the stadium in orange and the other in red.  Texas played poorly, but we stayed for the whole game and in the last 5 seconds Texas made a touchdown! Unfortunately, we don't have pics from the game day.  We charged the camera battery the night before and forgot to put the battery back into the camera the next morning... but we took lots of mental pictures!

 

There is a frying competition every year at the fair. 

We tried to eat most of the food on the list, but we couldn't eat any more, we were so stuffed. 

We ate the following fried foods from left to right:

Fried Corn Dogs

Fried Pork Wing

Fried Pepperoni Pizza

Fried Tres Leches

Fried Bacon Cinnamon Roll

Fried Jambalaya

The fried jambalaya was voted #1 this year.  It was our favorite along with the tres leches cake.  We also enjoyed freshly made lemonade, Dr. Pepper jerky and a Dole Whip.

We can't wait to go again!

Texas Fight!

We have had so much fun attending the University of Texas football games.  The stadium is huge, the marching band is huge, the flags they wave around are huge... basically everything is bigger in Texas! We love donning the orange school colors and yelling the school fight song:

 

Texas Fight, Texas Fight, And it's goodbye to A&M.
Texas Fight, Texas Fight, And we'll put over one more win.
Texas Fight, Texas Fight, For it's Texas that we love best.
Hail, Hail, The gang's all here, And it's good-bye to all the rest!
Yea Orange! Yea White!
Yea Longhorns! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Texas Fight! Texas Fight, Yea Texas Fight!
Texas Fight! Texas Fight, Yea Texas Fight

You Can Smell Their Pits a Mile Away

We love Texas BBQ! Especially the barbeque at The Salt Lick.  It is about a 30 minute drive out of the city, but their restaurant slogan really is true: you can smell their smoke pits from a mile away.  The restaurant is nestled in the country and we had such a great experience.  We ate turkey, ribs, brisket, and sausage.  Our waiter sat with us for about half an hour telling us all the things we could do in the country and places to see in city.  We walked out of the restaurant smelling like smoked meat, but by far the best bbq ever! 

I don't think we're in Utah anymore...

We recently moved to Texas for Nate's Masters Program. 

One of the first things we did was take a campus tour and shop at the University's Co-Op. 

 

 

Not only did they have every clothing item with the Texas logo, but they had everything else Longhorn style for a home, car, or gift ideas.  Needless to say, there was a lot of orange.  We snapped some pics of our favorite items there. We also bought our game gear including Texas shirts, hats, socks, wrist bands, and of course longhorn face tattoos!

 

 The campus tour was amazing!  Most every building on campus was built in the same style, so everything looks very unified.  We saw some really cool features of campus that we may not have seen otherwise.  Some of the cool features are:

1) Trees - every tree is numbered on campus with a little tag 

(the pic above is a tree dating past the Civil War)

2) Turtle pond - it's attracted over 50 turtles over the years

3) Battle Hall Library - it looks like the main hall at Hogwarts

4) The Statues - particularly the one of George Washington overlooking downtown

5) Student Gym - the pool area speaks for itself!

Hot Wheelers

Last weekend we had an awesome time rollerblading at Liberty Park with Darci, Kurt, and their boys. It was like being a kid again! Apparently it is a "hot" spot for rollerblading. Plus, the sidewalks are really wide so we could rollerblade next to each other and

chit chat. To cool down, we went to Iceberg for the world's best shakes and watched an episode of Duck Dynasty.

(An awesome reality show of some rednecks turned millionaires)

TEXAS!

Although many of you already may know, Nate has been

applying to several Masters in Accounting Programs.  We decided that we would treat ourselves to certain restaurants for any acceptances to the programs.  We chose:

Michigan - The Copper Onion

Notre Dame - Aristos

USC - The Red Iguana

Texas - Tuscany

We had no idea we would have the opportunity to eat at all four! Evidently, we set our eating sights high for Texas as it was our #1 choice for programs to attend.  To our happiness, not only did we hear great news from Michigan, Notre Dame, and USC, but we heard a yes from Texas too!  We are pleased to let you all know that we will be moving to Austin, Texas this fall.  We are so excited for the adventures that lay ahead of us.

Hook 'em Horns!!!

Puppy Pawty

We are lucky to have a lot of nieces and nephews.  All of them have charming personalities that make them unique.  It just so happens that Hunter turned one and he enjoys doing the following things: growling, chewing on shoes, and a little bit of drooling. 

So for his birthday, Darci threw a puppy themed party. 

There were puppy dog treats (sweetarts), dog bone sugar cookies, and a dog bone cake made by yours truly.  The highlight of the party was a visit from 4 bulldog puppies.  Brooke immediately fell in love with the tan colored puppy that had bright blue eyes.  Bulldogs have now made it on our list for future pets.  All in all it was an awesome party! 

For more coverage of this event visit, Kurt & Darci's Blog.

It's Pumpkin Carvin' Time

We love Halloween and all the traditions that follow with the holiday.  We had tons of fun carving pumpkins with some of our dear friends, the Burgoyne Family.  We even attempted to get our creativity on by carving old-world profiles of us.  Halloween night we dressed up as 50's and spent the night trick-or-treating with our nephews and nieces, followed by a spooky party at Mom's house.  Dinner is always an exciting thing to look forward to as it is cooked inside a real pumpkin. We were so blessed to have Daddy Don join us for the festivities.  We hope to still be a kids at heart when we are 90 too!

Happiest Place on Earth

Growing up our options were a sailor hat or plain black mouse ears you could have your name stitched on.... times have changed!

A few weeks ago we went to Disneyland with the Pace family.  We had such a fun time!  We were there for all the Halloween decor.  Pumpkins were everywhere, the Haunted Mansion was decked out in The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Space Mountain had spooky effects.  We stayed at the Grand California... what an amazing hotel!  We spent a couple hours exploring the place and the details are incredible, plus we were steps away from the parks.  Some of our favorite things were:

Matching Mickey Mouse shirts

Eating Monte Cristo sandwiches at Cafe Orleans

World of Color

Riding Splash Mountain at midnight (we were soaked)

Frozen Bananas

Stuck on the Vegas freeway for 2 hours

Tower of Terror

Shopping Mainstreet

Bountiful Harvest

This year we decided to attempt our first vegetable garden.  We teamed up with some of our friends and purchased a 5x20' plot

at our Ward's garden site.  We grew green beans, basil, parsley,

6 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and spaghetti squash. We weren't sure how much success we'd have, but it turns out

we hit the motherload! These pictures only show a small portion

of our pickins'.  We ate caprese salad for two weeks and 

nothing could beat the fresh flavors.  We love Fall and the 

bounty of food it brings!