Places I've Visited...sometime in my life

I found this neat map thing on a friend from ACU's blog. I thought it was so interesting, so here you go!

These are all the states in the United States that I've visited sometime in my life...I'm pretty sure. I hope I haven't left any out or put any in that I'm mistaken about. There were a few family road trips where I was a bit young to remember exactly which states we drove through. Funny enough, we used to have a map like this on the side of our van up through college! Remember that, anyone?
Make your own personalized map of the USA or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

I hope that shows up! I decided to do one of the countries I've visited as well. These are mainly the countries I've seen in the past 6 years (since the beginning of college), since I was working on the road trips around America before then...thanks Dad!

There are still so many more places I want to go. Also, I want Katie Coldwell to do this map thing! She's all over the place!

Operation Re-Prioritization...

During these past few weeks, I have come to the realization that I am too busy. This has been a problem in the past, but, to be honest, I enjoy being busy and having things to do all the time...to a certain extent. But it seems to have gotten a bit crazy in the life of Laura Rich!

For example, since the New Year, I have hardly been at my apartment other than to sleep. After the MLK, Jr. holiday, I had something every night. Tuesday night dinner (which I love!), Wednesday church, the symphony last Thursday, chaperoning my old youth group at Winterfest on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday: The band, "Shades of Green," was at Winterfest for "Battle of the Bands." I saw them a few months ago at Richland Hills Church of Christ with my dear friend Angie. Angie had worked with their family in Kazakhstan (sp?). This family is amazing!

After the crazy weekend, we had a leadership meeting after church. Some good things are happening at Prestoncrest, but the issues brought up made me want to tone down my schedule a bit to make room for more of a leadership role with that group.

Back to the craziness: Monday, I went to the Stars game:

Tuesday was TND again, Wednesday church, and tonight Dearing is coming into town for the weekend. I haven't seen her since I visited her in Costa Rica!

The purpose of the play-by-play is that I am too busy, overly busy, je suis tres occupe! These are all good things that are happening, but I hardly have a minute to cook dinner (er...New Year's resolution...), or even just to sit down! And after being on my feet all day with my precious 6th graders, that's tough.

I seek your prayers as I embark on simplifying my life yet again. It seems that every season, I have to do some kind of spring cleaning with my life. I'm excited about what the future has in store, especially at church with our Singles' group (sidenote: I hate that term. Why must we be classified by our relationship status...or lack thereof?).

Any pointers on how to reprioritize?

The Symphony!!! lalala.....!

Anne gets free tickets to the Dallas Symphony through Dallas Theological Seminary (she's taking some classes). So we went last night. Our seats were in one of the first balconies and exactly in the center. The acoustics from our location (I believe) made those seats better than the ones we were supposed to be in...there was a bit of a mix-up with date of the DTS students' tickets.

We heard an Ives tribute to General William Booth (founder of Salvation Army back in the 1800s) for the first part of the concert. After a brief intermission of fabulous chocolate cake in the lobby, the main portion of the concert was Brahms' Piano Concerto #1. This was an amazing piece, and Andre Watts played the piano portions with such elegance and passion. His fingers would just glide across the keys and sometimes he would have to stomp his foot to get all the notes in. It reminded me of an afternoon at ACU when the music majors (and minors) were invited to see this Middle Eastern man play the drums. He could beat out rhythms like nobody's business, but he had to contort his face to get all of the beats in!

Anyway, a good time was had by all.

MLK Road Trip

San Marcos
To begin the fabulous journey, two friends (Jessica and Jenise) from church and I piled into the "beefy echo" (to which I may call it "Jane" as in "plain Jane" because of the no frills wonder) and drove to Kerrville, via San Marcos. The trip went quickly it seemed, because we chatted. In San Marcos, we were a bit disappointed in the outlet malls. We were expecting lower prices because of the lower quality of what we found. Oh no! Although I found a fun shirt for $7, I think Jenise came out on top with her steal bargain of a much needed denim jacket. Jessica has the best story from the outlet mall, because she ran into her high school principal who doesn't live either in her hometown or in San Marcos! crazy...but not the craziest...

Kerr-Vegas
Half of Sunday was spent in Kerrville. J and J went to church with me and the weirdest thing happened. I shouldn't even be surprised at these random connections, but a young man who goes to my church back home now (whom I'd never met; I think he moved in October) ran into us on the way in. Jenise knew him because he and his twin sister used to visit their grandparents in Jenise's hometown. Jessica knew of him because her best friend at Tech was his twin sister's best friend in high school. What he is doing living in Kerrville is beyond me. There's not much for a young 20 something to do...or other young 20 somethings to hang out with.

Lunch was wonderful at our local Mamacita's for Tex-Mex-Iranian food. Since it has a 1/3 replica of the Alamo inside, we decided to visit San Antonio...

San Antonio
The afternoon was spent being educated on the Alamo and walking (and getting lost several times) on the Riverwalk. We dined at this Italian restaurant on the Riverwalk, which I do not recommend. Our poor waiter was having a rough evening. He dropped about 4 plates, spilled a large glass of water on a nearby customer, forgot Jessica's tea (and when another waiter brought her some, it was nothing more than colored water), and took his sweet time getting our food, check, etc... It wasn't busy either... no excuses.
So, we went to another restaurant for dessert where a young man with a mohawk (we got the full story about mohawks, by the way) was very friendly and fun. We discussed our waiter issues with him and he discussed his tip issues with us. Turns out our one piece of cheesecake split amongst us was "on the house." So, after the tip discussion, we decided to tip him (for an amount way above the normal amount, but not enough to cover the dessert... good, bad, comments?) and leave.

Comfort
On our way home, we stopped in Comfort, TX on a wild goose chase for this super-cute church that Jessica had heard about. It was 10:30 at night and we happened to stumble across the Comfort Cloisters church (so cute!), took pictures, and almost hit a few deer as we tried to get back on the highway...

Speaking of deer...
Jonathan (little bro) hit two deer on his way home to make curfew. He and his buddies were smart enough to realize that not making sure the little bambies were dead was against the law, so they got out of the truck and tried to help. Well, Jono's pocket knife wasn't quite sharp enough to slit the throat (or even cut the hair on the neck), so they tried to snap the neck and put the poor animal out of her misery. They couldn't turn the neck without the entire body turning, so one of them stepped on the hind legs, which created quite a stir in the defenseless doe. She jumped up, thudded about three steps into the bushes and then....silence... they were too startled themselves at this point to go check on her, so they came home to tell the tale.

When Jessica, Jenise, and I drove into our neighborhood, also speaking of deer, we saw an entire pack (herd?) of them in my neighborhood. This did not particularly surprise me, but they thought it was odd that deer would just roam around town. "My neighbors feed them," I tried to explain.

Kerrville and James Avery
MLK Monday, before we drove the 6 hours back to Dallas, we decided to go visit James Avery's retail store and visitor shop. Highlights: James Avery walked past us in the retail store (we weren't quick enough to get him to sign our catalogs, though); we watched a video circa 1991 about how they make the jewelry; a cute old man showed us his role in the workshop. He was so flustered, but did a good job explaining his job regardless.

And so ends the amazing adventure!

Utter Boredom...not me, though...

I'm posting this from school. My kids have just taken another practice TAKS test. They have all finished about an hour and a half before time is up. They have all assured me, individually, that they have double-checked their work and it is perfect. They may do one of two things: read or sleep. I already had to wake up a snorer.

So, my dilemma is this: They are utterly bored. They don't want to read because that would mean exercising their alreay tired little brains. Some are taking advantage of this naptime, but many are trying to non-verbally communicate across the room. My "look" has squelched this temporarily, but it may not work for long. I'm not allowed to give them color pages or crossword puzzles to work because we have to treat this "like the real thing." They have an hour and a half left of this nonsense.

So, I ask, what is one to do in this predicament? I kind of like letting them suffer a bit while I check up on blogs, get some work done, and prepare for the next couple weeks. I guess my real question is, what would you do if you were bored out of your mind? Keep in mind that the only things "allowed" are reading or sleeping. Any way to escape all this?

Christmas pics and the rest of the story...

The pictures were taken out to correct the weirdness of my template...

Coming into California, we saw huge "wind farms" (I think they're called). I just really like this picture.

It was about 75 degrees and Jono figured it was warm enough to go swimming! Boy did he regret his decision once he hit the water.

Dinner was lovely. As you can tell, Jonathan is up to no good... :)

Oh, we tried to color my hair (some low-lights), but it didn't take at all. Which was fine with me because I was second guessing the entire thing...

Here's our collection of Atari games from grandma's house. This provided a few hours of entertainment for Jonathan and his friend. Jono obviously is somewhat of a risk-taker. !

Jenny, Grandma, Laura, Mom -- of course we had to capture the holiday on our cameras...as you can tell, g'ma didn't get the memo to look at my camera. :)

On to Las Vegas and then to Texas. We decided that we needed to do some things in Vegas that a 17-year-old could also participate in. Jenny had always wanted to try the "Oxygen Bar", so we did that to relax. We got flavored oxygen, a natural power drink (G-rated), back massages, scalp massages, and all this while overlooking the gondola rides in the Venetian!

We also decided to let Jono have a go at the crane machine. It was one of the few games he was old enough to play. Well, we found one of his strengths because with about $5.00 worth of change, he won about 7 stuffed animals!

Richard's Wedding: Our cousin Richard married a wonderful girl, Allyson, on New Years Eve. It was great to see the family again. The rehearsal dinner was at Mr. Gatti's, which at first I was wary about. But, it turned out to be the best and most fun rehearsal dinner I've been to! All of the cousins (and "adopted cousins") pooled our tickets and traded them in for two big presents for the happy couple. That night, the Abilene cousins came over and we hung out and had good quality talk-time until the wee hours of the morning. I love the memories from this year!

The Christmas Wrap-Up...and into the New Year

Christmas was fabulous this year. The 3,000 mile road trip with my family (minus Ben) was a lot of fun and we just all had a wonderful time together. I've already written about Kartchner Caverns. When we got to California, we arrived about 10 minutes after my Aunt Christy, her boyfriend Don, and her daughter Asta. Ben flew in that afternoon and we were all together to (quickly wrap and) open presents. It's always so interesting to find out what others chose for you. Most of the fun for me is to see the expressions from opening the gifts I give. I want to show my family that I know them and care about them and have that reflect in their presents, so it's fun when what I think they'd like and what they actually like coincide.

Christmas morning was spent going through our stockings (from Santa, of course) and going as a family to church. When we're together, we go to church as a family, but Christmas is an extra-special time because my mom's entire extended family was together. It's not as crazy as my dad's huge Thanksgiving traditions, but it's more intimate and just as special.

On our way back to Texas, we decided to spend a night in Las Vegas. We had fun (aside from the fact that Dad was sick and Jono couldn't be even remotely close to the "gaming area"), but Vegas isn't exactly a place where I want to spend multiple vacations. Once or twice is enough for me. Sensory overload -- I'd rather go to a naturally beautiful place, or an incredibly historical place for a vacation.

So, on to the New Year of 2006. This year, I have several resolutions. I was over at Katie's Sunday night playing Nerts with some friends after dinner, and we all got to talking about things we'd "like to do in the New Year" were. We phrased it that way because "resolutions" oftentimes have negative or demanding connotations. One of the things I'd like to do this year is visit a new country or go to a state I've never been to (I have less than a dozen that I need to check off the list).

Another goal of mine is to read the entire New Testament of the Bible in French. My church is listening to the entire New Testament this year, using audio CDs that members were encouraged to purchase. Financially, I'm in no place to purchase the CDs, and I have attempted to read through the NT in French before (I made it to 1 Corinthians). By keeping up with the church, I hope to be held accountable and thus be motivated to finish.

One last written goal of mine is to cook more for myself. It's so easy to just pick up some fast food on the way home, but over the holidays, I talked with several family members about how to cook for just one or two. I've decided to make large portions of several different meals and freeze them in single serving containers or ziplocks. I began last night with my Aunt Joyce's "goop". The goop is essentially chicken pot pie filling, and you open one biscuit to put over the goop. Et, voila! Vous avez un bon repas!