Easter Sunday

I thought it was going to be hard being away from my parents and sisters this year for Easter but we had a fun weekend here in Texas! We went to dinner to a seafood restaurant that is right on the lake. It was so good to get out and get some fish and chips. 

On Sunday, we went to church and then our friends invited us over to dinner. I made Easter cupcakes to take and we had so much fun. They are such a cute family and have totally taken us under their wing since we have moved here. They have made the move much easier. We knew them from Utah. I help her sometimes during the week with her little ones and we go to the Taco Stand. We have been so lucky to have them here to help us when we need something or when I am having a bad day she is the first one I call. We love Beau and Amber! We loved having our first Easter together as a married couple in Houston. 

Perk of living in Houston

How BEAUTIFUL is this? Ah! I was so worried moving to Houston because I thought that the temple would be super far away. It is only 30 minutes away! We are so blessed to have it this close. I love to go to the temple! I love to go in the mornings. It is never busy and it is just so nice to be in a place that makes you feel so great. I love going with Eric though on Friday nights for a date once a month. The temple and the Taco Stand make for the perfect date. 

GUESS WHO I SAW?!?

SISTER HUBER!! This is my best friend and she is serving in the Houston, TX mission. I wrote her and told her I was coming and we were dying to see each other. She lives 5 minutes away from me and we finally saw each other. We went to a crawfish boil. YUK! Eric was in heaven and loved it but that was not something that I wanted to try. Finally, Sister Huber and I decided that it is a cultural thing and we better try it to say that we have tried crawfish. Eric cracked them for us and we ate them. It was so fun to see her for a couple hours. I love to put together packages for her and send them with the sister missionaries in my ward to their Zone conference to give her. So proud of this girl! 

Now those are two BIG perks of living in Houston, TX! 

Birthday Weekend!

Birthdays are so much fun! Eric and I celebrated on Friday night and Saturday morning and afternoon and then my mom came in to town that night. Eric and I shopped, and ate and then Mama Shan came and we shopped, ate, showed her around Houston, and shopped some more. It was a fun weekend eating at fun restaurants and shopping! 

I had to take mom to my favorite place here in Houston so far. The Taco Stand is the place to go. It sits right by the lake. This is where I will be spending lots of time doing my homework!

Yay for birthdays! 

Keeping Busy...

I haven't been on top of this blogging thing lately but there isn't much to report on. Eric has been traveling quite a bit lately and things have started to slow down. I really should find a job to keep myself busy but I want to be able to do things with friends when things come up, hang out with my family when they come to visit, and make sure I am ahead in school. I found out I will be graduating next summer so Eric and I are super excited about that and school, of course is my first priority. 
Here are a bunch of pictures of what we have been doing:

My parents sent me a package for Valentines day and they sent Eric a gift card to Outback. Eric loves that place and I got to go out to eat with him so that was fun. Eric's parents sent us a gift card to Applebee's so we got to go to dinner again together. Our parents sure know how to make our day. It is so fun to get things in the mail when you live far away from family. 

One of the many perks of living in Houston right now is that my best friend Sara is serving her mission here. I walked outside a couple of weeks ago and my car was covered in mormon.org cards. I was so confused and then one of them had a note on it from her. I was so bummed I wasn't able to see her. I put together little packages for her and the sister missionaries in our ward take them to her at their Zone Conference. I better see her before she leaves in November. 

Easter is super far away but I have been decorating for Easter a little bit. My cute mom gave me some decorations last year so I got them out a little early. Hobby Lobby is so fun and I could spend hours in there. I go there all of the time and always find something cute. I have a birthday coming up next week so I had to put out my one birthday decoration too. It is a darling frame and you change out the pages for all of the different holidays. I had the Easter one in and then took it out and put in my birthday one yesterday. Eric laughed when he got home that I was decorating for my own birthday...Whoops! :)

My Aunt Kim made us this wreath and I love it! It is so cute on our door. Eric made my trim the ribbons so I could see out the peep hole so it doesn't look like this but it is still cute. He was worried that since he traveled I needed to be able to see who it was if anyone knocked on the door. I was bummed about cutting them but he was just looking out for me. He is such an awesome guy!

I ran the Woodland's 5K with a group of people that Eric works with. I finished it but it was hard. Before I even started running I was sweating from the humidity. It was a super pretty run and it was fun to do it with the people Eric works with. I hope we do another one sometime soon. It helps me when I go the gym and have something to be training for. 

My dad came last week for seriously less than 24 hours. He came to speak at a conference about oil downtown in Houston. We live about 30 minutes away from downtown. He came on Monday night and we all went to dinner and he came and saw our apartment. On Tuesday morning, Eric had to go to work so I went with my dad downtown to listen to him speak. I have no idea what he was talking about but it was fun to just spend time with him. After he was done, we had breakfast in the airport at the Marriott and then he had to go back to Utah. It was fast but fun to see him. He was called as the Bishop in my parents ward on Sunday and we weren't there to be with him. I was super sad and it was a big thing to miss but I know that my dad is going to do an incredible job. I was starting to get super lonely so when he came that really helped. 

I had to get Texas license plates a couple weeks ago and a Texas drivers license yesterday. I am not going to lie.. it was kind of a hard thing. I guess we really are living in Texas for a while. Ah!! I now have a Texas license plate with a BYU Cougars license plate holder. Perfect!

BNSF has tickets to the Houston Rodeo and Eric and I were able to go last week. It is the biggest Rodeo and kind of the thing to do right now in Houston so Eric and I were super excited. Eric forgot that he was allergic to horses until we were walking into the stadium. Whoops! We were sitting on the second row and horse hair was flying everywhere. He could not stop sneezing but other than that it was super fun. I have never been to a serious Rodeo like this one before so it was a different experience. Every night at the Rodeo, they have a country concert. Eli Young Bang did their concert the night that we went. It was great! They were so close to us. We had a blast! 

Currently in Houston...

We have lived down in Texas for 3 weeks and we LOVE IT! I have been wearing my north face coat and hunter rain boots it has been so dang cold I feel like I am in Utah. It is starting to warm up though and then in the summer I am going to be wishing for rain.
Here is what has been going on...
1. The movers showed up with all of our stuff and then we had a serious project on our hands. It has been so fun moving in and opening up all of our wedding gifts that we had forgotten about. They have all been in boxes since we got married so it has been great to finally get settled in. My guest bedroom still has like 20 boxes in there but I will get to it one day. Our cute place still has lots of work to be done but decorating will take time. It is turning out great though so far.

2. Eric goes to work everyday from like 7:30-5 and he LOVES his job. It is exactly what he wanted to do and I am so grateful for a husband that has a job so he can support our little family. Here are some pictures of his office..

3. We feel really old because since Eric has a good job, that means that we get insurance. Our parents were probably really happy to get us off of theirs. I have been finding a dentist and doctors and we love all of them so far. Things are just great down here.

4. I have been doing lots of exploring! We live in the Woodlands/Conroe area and the shopping is great. They have the Woodlands mall and then a little strip mall across the street that is called Market Street. They have tons of nice shops and lots of fun places to eat. Eric and I go into the mall area like every weekend and scope things out. It is super nice! My mom and I are going to have lots of fun in here in a couple weeks. 

5. There is a Lake right by our house so we are going to have fun there when it starts to warm up. We are going to go rent some jet skis and hang out on the Lake all summer. It will be so hot we won't want to be anywhere else. There are little Tex Mex restaurants on the lake even. Yummy!

6. I have been running a lot lately and I actually love running out here. Crazy I know! I can run much faster and further. It is so much easier to breathe here than in Utah. There is a group of people from the BNSF office that are running in the Woodlands race in March so I have been training for that. It is fun for me to get to know the people that Eric works with and do stuff with them.

7. Eric and I just got called to be Den leaders in Cub scouts in our ward. When they gave us the calling, I looked at Eric and started laughing. I grew up in a house of all sisters so I have NO idea what a badge even is. We had our first meeting last night and it was actually really fun. We are going to enjoy meeting with the young boys and getting to know them better. Maybe this will teach me so when I have sons I will know what I am doing. :)

8. Eric goes to work and I hang out, watch the Today Show and Ellen, decorate, unpack, go running, shop for the house, plan activities for the cub scouts, work on my school, make friends, and do the wife thing. It has taken me a while to get my feet on the ground but I am getting there. School takes up a lot of time so I stay busy and there is no time to be sad. I don't have any reason to be sad either. My dad is coming the first week of March, my mom is coming the last week of March, and then I am going back to Utah in April for a week to take finals and attend some family stuff. Eric is going to come out the end of the week so we can attend my cousins wedding, welcome my grandparents home from their mission, and celebrate my great-grandma's 90th birthday. Eric's parents are also going to be coming sometime this year to see us as well. Eric and I are so grateful for parents that are so loving and care so much about us. We miss them all so much but Eric and I are so happy here with just the two of us. We know that this experience will be great for our marriage and we will be so glad we did this.

We are loving Houston and are so grateful for the opportunities that we have had here so far. People are so nice and we feel like this is where we need to be right now and call this home.

Cecil's in Houston

It has been a while since I have been on here and better give everyone an update on what we are up to. Eric got a job working as an analyst on the BNSF's marketing team. He is so excited and it was exactly what he wanted to do. That meant that we had to move to Houston, Texas. I was at first super nervous but we have only been here for 3 days. We are really enjoying it so far. The moving truck came on Monday and picked up our cars and all of our stuff. 

 After they left, it meant cleaning Grandpa and Grandma Warnick's home. We are so grateful that they let us live in their house for the past 8 months. We flew out on Tuesday night and arrived at our new home in Houston. We live about 40 minutes away from downtown Houston in The Woodlands and Conroe area. We were able to get into our new apartment on Wednesday morning and it is so great! Eric did such a good job picking it out. Our cars got here on Wednesday afternoon but our stuff won't be here until next Thursday. We bought a blow up mattress and have been sleeping on that until our stuff gets here next week. We went to Costco and got a Costco card and shopped for the house. Every time you walk into that place you walk out spending like $200. Thank goodness it is like 35 minutes away so I won't be going there too often. They are building a Costco 5 minutes away from us that will be done in about 4 months. We had a hay day in there!

Eric has to go to work everyday all day so I have been exploring around and getting a lot of homework done. I am getting ahead in school before all of our stuff shows up next week. I know it will take a while to get everything put away so I wanted to get ahead. Eric is working and I am going to be a wife and do the wife thing getting things settled and decorating our new place. I am doing school online through UVU so that will keep me busy as well. I may find a little part time job in a couple weeks to try and keep myself busy. You can only do the wife thing and do school so much. Eric and I are so excited for this adventure! It will be hard to be away from family all the way in Texas but we know this will be such a great opportunity for the both of us. We can't wait to meet friends out here that will be our friends for life and make memories here in Houston. It is a great part of town that we live in and we are excited to call this home!

Our First Christmas and New Years!

We could easily say that we had a blast over Christmas Break! From making chocolate covered pretzels with my sisters, Juanito Bandito, the Piano Guys, and the Musical Elf, the break started out very fun. We then enjoyed tubing on Christmas Eve, new jammies, doing the nativity, and then enjoyed a day filled with family on Christmas Day.

The picture where we are all in the matching shirts (2 pictures above), was to send to my grandparents. They are serving a mission in Arkansas and these were their mission shirts. 

The day after Christmas, Eric and I loaded up the car and drove to West Virginia. It was a very long drive but we made it in time to attend the funeral for Eric's Grandpa. We then got back in the car and drove back to Draper so we could enjoy the last couple of days with family before McCall heads back to Hawaii for school. My parents surprised us on Christmas with tickets to go Snowmobiling on New Years Day. We are all very sore and Eric and Morgan were going so fast that they got in a little crash but other than that it was a blast.

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and has a Happy New Year!!