San Antonio

It's beautiful here. Crowded, noisy, and the roads are absolutely insane...but it's beautiful. Definitely different than what I'm used to. I'm glad that Austin has been doing the driving, because there's no way I could manage these crazy roads! We've done a lot of stuff that I've never done/we've never done together...we've had a lot of fun. And we've been able to do a lot of talking about important stuff.

My plane ride out was an experience; I had a terribly long wait at the airport...I got there way too early, breezed through security in less than five minutes, and then waited for more than three hours. Thankfully I brought a couple of books, and I read while I waited. And I watched people; that's always fun....people are so interesting, and each of them are different. Anyway, I had a pretty neat lady sitting next to me...I confided that it was my first flight, and she gave me a lot of nifty flying tips. Take-off was a bit of a shock, but I survived, and enjoyed the flight; it was nice and smoooth with no problems. The two and a half hours went by pretty fast, and before I knew it, it was time for landing. I expected landing to be rough, but it was smooth and flawless. I was impressed.

Austin was waiting for me at baggage claim, and I jumped into his arms immediately. He was fancy looking...cowboy hat and shirt, jeans and boots. He looked awesome. I love cowboys. We got my bag, and got out of the airport quickly. We were both hungry, so we stopped at a local restuarant - Taco Cabana, which I really liked - for dinner. I made some phone calls to let my mom and Malew know that I'd arrived, and then we headed to Austin's room for the evening.

Austin had class on Friday, but on Friday afternoon/evening, we went out to our "big" dinner; we ate at Texas Land and Cattle. The food was soooooo good. The service...well, I've had lots better. But oh the food! I had a small steak and lobster - which I've never had before. Oh my gosh...I would have loved to eat JUST lobster! Austin had a big Texas steak....you know, one of those that covers your plate almost completely. And big surprise? Austin could have eaten more. I was sad that he was disappointed...but it was still all very good. After dinner we went and bought a new DVD and went back to the room, wrapped up in each other, and watched our movie.

On Saturday, we went into downtown San Antonio. We visited the Alamo, walked the streets of downtown and the Riverwalk over and over again, and then had a wonderful lunch at a place on the Riverwalk called The Original, a mexican restuarant. Austin said some silly stuff about it being the original mexican restuarant on this street, but we did some reading on the menu and it's actually the very first mexican restuarant opened in the United States. And the food was fabulous! The portions were huge, and I felt terrible about how much we wasted, but it was wonderful regardless.









Afterwards, we did some shopping at the mall, and the went to an IMAX movie. I'd never been to one before. We saw one called Dinosaur in 3D, which turned out to be less of a movie and more like a National Geographic special; the movie wasn't great....the experience was awesome though. After that, we went back to the car and headed back to the room. Neither of us needed any dinner, but we went to Green Bean coffee and each got a large cup of hot chocolate. Mmmmmmm! We had planned to go out dancing, but we were both tired, so we nixed that idea, and made plans for Sunday afternoon after church instead.

We got up on Sunday morning kind of lazily....it was so nice being able to roll over and be in Austin's arms. I've missed that. When we got up, we got ready for church, grabbed a change of clothes for afterwards, and headed out. The ward that we went to was an English speaking Spanish ward. It was definitely different; being the minority was really weird, but it was a nice experience. The church is the same no matter where you go, even though the people are different. I teared up several times during the hymns....I kept being reminded of Andrew, and Austin noticed my mood, but I managed to get through it and I was fine afterwards.

We left and went to lunch, then headed to Sea World for the afternoon. It was military appreciation day, and we had a complimentary pass. There was also a special country music concert after the park closed, just for the military families, and we decided to hang around for that. We'd never been to a concert together, and although Austin doesn't like country music very much, he wanted us to go. We rode some roller coasters (have I ever mentioned how much I dislike coasters? But I wanted to ride with Austin because he loves them!), saw a bunch of animals (the penguins were cool and we took pictures for Annah-bug), had a snack, then saw the Shamu show. We sat in the fifth row and of course, got soaked! But it was so neat! Those people have such an awesome job!













Afterwards we sat for a bit and then headed to the concert. The band was the Kevin Fowler band, and although I'd never heard of them, it was a lot of fun. Austin and I stood together and did a bit of dancing at the edge of the stage, and just enjoyed being together doing things we'd never done together before.



When it was all over, we strolled through the closed park, holding hands and savoring the moments. We left the park, stopped at a Jack in the Box for dinner, and then headed back to the room. Unfortunately we managed to get slightly lost, but it didn't take long to get us back where we needed to be and on to our room.

Today is a duty day for Austin, so I'm in the room alone. I plan to go to the base exchange and do some shopping, have some hot chocolate, and maybe get my hair cut. I have to do some laundry, repack my bag, and get my things ready to leave tomorrow. It's been awesome, and I'm so thankful that I was able to come and spend time with Austin; we really needed this. (Thank you to my very special and wonderful friends who made it possible for my visit to be longer!) It's time to start getting back to life....it's going to be hard, but it's necessary. My children are waiting on me at home, my job and my school kids are waiting on me to come back and teach them, and life goes on....somehow. I'll figure it out. This has been the starting point of that.