So the biggest thing about August was probably the road trip to Houston. Talk about a kick-in-the-pants! (By the way, for those who don't really know me, that's a good thing...) The only sad note in the trip was that at the last minute Corrinn decided she didn't feel good about going, and had to back out. Well, chose to back out. Good for her for following promptings. But we missed her :(
Friday:
As for the rest of us, we loaded up the cars (mine and Chris's) at about 9am on Friday the 13th. We figured it was a lucky day to begin anything, especially a road trip of over 1500 miles and 25 hours :) The group included Braden Piggott, Chris White, Dontrell Morrow, Mitch McBride, Me, Karen Johnson, and Cindee Perry.
Our destination that day was Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Chris's oldest sister lives with her family. They were going to let us stay the night there so we didn't have to pay for a hotel, and so we didn't have to drive all night. It was very generous of them, and much appreciated. And by the end of the trip I think we all learned how to spell A-L-B-U-Q-U-E-R-Q-U-E. It's weird.
The first day we stopped in Moab, UT for lunch, and to fill up. We entertained ourselves by using the walkie-talkies that Mitch brought to play a sort of "musical word association" game. One car would sing a song over the walkie, and then the next car had to sing another song that used a word the first car had sung in their song. Got it? I promise it's not that complicated. Mitch wasn't a huge fan of the game, but the rest of us liked it! We got to Albuquerque just in time for dinner with Chris's family. They had bought two enormous pizzas for all of us to share. Seriously, these things were 2 feet in diameter! It was great! Then we played with nieces and nephews and visited. We crashed for the night in two separate play rooms, one for the boys, and one for the girls.
Saturday:
We optimistically planned to leave at 5am, so when we actually left at 6:30am we were all anxious to be out of there. The route we took was the "road less traveled by" you could say, so it took a little longer than anticipated, but boy was it beautiful! We drove right through the "heart" of Texas and the green, rolling hills about took your breath away. It wasn't the Texas we knew from serving in Houston, and it was fun to see. We stopped in the middle of the day to fill up again, and what a shock--getting out of the air-conditioned cars into the muggy, humid, central Texas heat was....well, shocking! It was over 100 degrees and we wanted to hurry and get back on the road and out of the heat. However, Mitch and Chris wanted to look at the map and determine the best route. The heat prompted a quick decision, and further discussion was cut off by my shout of "It is HOTTER THAN HADES OUT HERE!" Everyone laughed about that for a while. It was true! And I didn't want to stand in the heat and discuss something we had already decided! :)
That night we stopped at Denny's for dinner and our waitress was hil-aaarious. Highlights of the meal were when Braden got too friendly, Chris said Mitch's apple juice looked like beer, Perry commented on how everything was covered in gravy, and we had a total stranger take our picture--which turned out nice! See?
We got to Houston about 12:30am, and rolled into Gaby and Neftaly's around 1am. They are saints and had everything all ready for us. I forgot to mention that on Friday we were driving and it occurred to us that no one had been specifically assigned to tell them when we were coming. Oops! Luckily they are amazing, and when we talked to Neftaly he said they were up for whatever. Turns out that Corrinn had told Gaby, and we had worried needlessly, but still... That night we went straight to bed because we had early church the next day.
The next few days are a bit of a blur...of visiting, eating, singing, laughing, crying, attempting to speak Spanish, and lots and lots of memories. I will post a few of the pictures on here, and try to get the highlights of the trip, but I doubt I can do it justice.
Sunday:
In the morning between church and lunch we stopped to see Monica and her doggies. It was so fun to see her and she was really surprised. The picture on the right is after the fireside that night, of us with Hermano and Hermana Avalos, and Fernando. Nancy is cut off on the right lol...
After church we ate dinner with the Velasquez family until we were completely "brisketeado" as Chris put it, and then we hurried and took a picture...I say hurried both because we were late for a fireside that we just found out we were doing a musical number at, and because it was SO hot and humid outside that we had to hurry before we melted! After the fireside (where I sang and Chris played "Senor Me Has Redimido"--a little throw-back to the mission) we went to the Tenorio's for dessert and lots of laughs as we tried to recount the stories of the past few days in our very broken Spanish.
Monday:
This was our "free day" meaning we had no group plans, and were free to visit old areas and people we loved. Luckily, Karen, Cindee and I had served in all the same areas, so we had no problem deciding where to go. We headed out to Broadway 3 and visited Maximino, Rebecca, and Edgar, had lunch with the Marun family, and stopped by Cesar and Rosio.
Of course we also had to get some Blue Bell and Sonic. What would a trip to Houston be without those two things?
That night we had a HUGE FHE at Nancy and Fernando's, complete with dozens of members, all the missionaries from the area, water fights, games, and of course lots of food! We played volleyball (and got sweatier than I ever remember because it was a billion degrees outside even at 10pm), Perry tackled me for teasing her, and Chris got attacked by a "Spiderrrrrrs Nesssst!!!" as he screamed while running across the lawn. I think the members decided that they either didn't know us at all while we were serving there, or that going home makes perfectly normal missionaries go crazy. Maybe a little of both....;) At any rate, it was a fabulous night and tons of fun! Sadly, no one took pictures :(
Tuesday:
We planned to go to the 9am session at the temple, so we planned to leave Gaby and Neftaly's at 7:45am. However, we encountered a few problems: no one woke Chris up, and when someone finally did, he couldn't find his keys. We ended up working it all out, and getting on the road about 30 minutes late, but there was no way we were going to make the 9am session. We all decided there must be a reason we needed to be in the 10am session, and changed our plans for that. Turns out, we saw a couple from a ward we all served in, Hermano and Hermana Suazo; Elder Steltsy, the vehicle coordinator for our mission; a friend of mine from college; and three members from the Kingwood 3rd ward. Think we were supposed to be in that session? I think yes.
After a beautiful session we headed off again in separate directions, the girls back to Broadway 3, and the boys to their different areas. We saw more members, like the Perez family and the Guajardos.
Then we headed up to Kingwood to have dinner and chat with President and Sister Moldenhauer. It was so much fun to see them, especially when President explained to us all about the new program for Preach My Gospel, and how things were changing and were so exciting! It made us all miss being missionaries! :(
Wednesday:
This was supposed to be our last day in Houston, but after being so busy with things all week we decided that we would stay Thursday as well. That we we had time to spend an evening with Gaby and Neftaly, something we had not yet really had time to do.
So, Wednesday was spent, you guessed it, visiting more members and old investigators! Among those we saw were Monica (again...she fed us lunch and told us her secret recipe for enchiladas!), and Vicky and Raymundo. Also, Perry and Johnson went on "splits" with the Sisters in Broadway 3 because Johnson is friends with Hna. Case. And Hna. Harris is my granddaughter! Fun! 
That night was a big party thrown for us by Mario, at the Martinez family's home. The pictures make it look like we were all sweaty...but that's just because for some reason the AC wasn't working, and we were dying of heat. And so we WERE sweaty. No worries, it was still fun with tons of food, friends, and good music!
Chris even got in on the karaoke with "Ahi Viene la Plaga" complete with dancing, as seen here, and the use of a new word: rocanroleando.
Thursday:
We decided to use this day to do something we rarely got to do on the mission unless we were sick or broken--we went downtown!!! We got to go to the top of the tallest building in TEXAS, (the Chase building), play with a giant chess set, play with ducks and sit in trees in the park, walk through the underground mall (where we also ate lunch) and see the city from a whole different angle (okay, a few different angles haha)! It was pretty fun, though whenever we were outside we were sweating to death. Seems to be a theme from this trip. What's with 106 degrees? Oh well, I guess it was August... 
That night we headed back to Gaby and Neftaly's for a chill evening at "home." We ate home made empanadas (yummy!) and sat and visited. We played "Wii Dance" which is hilaaaarious, and it was fun to play with the Neftaly Jr. and Aliah. We also started to watch a movie, but by the time it got started we all needed to head to bed--we planned on leaving the next morning very early, since we had the longest part of our drive to do that day. Sadly, we didn't get ANY pictures with Gaby and Neftaly. We decided that it was because all the other times we took pictures during the trip we were usually leaving someone's house. And since we weren't leaving yet, we didn't take a picture. Piggott got a picture with their family later that night, but the rest of us are lame and didn't take any. Here is a picture of the family anyway, from when they were here visiting Utah. 
Friday and Saturday:
These two days are somewhat of a blur. We drove through Dallas on the way home so that we could drive faster the whole way. Seemed to be a good idea until that stupid motorcycle cop clocked us going 82 in a 70.... :( Guess it was a little too fast. Unfortunately he caught us during the ONE time we were actually speeding the whole trip. We had been passing some cars just to get out of the congestion, and since we were trying to stay together both cars were speeding when BAM there he was. I wasn't driving, but that's all I'm gonna say ;) OH well, one day it will make for a good story, right?
We stayed with Chris's family again that night, and though we got there late and everyone was in bed, we were able to have breakfast together in the morning since the shorter leg of our trip was left. Perry was my angel and that night she worked the knots out of my hip that had somehow formed during the sitting portion of the trip thus far...what is 25 hours plus 15??? Yeah, it had been quite the drive...and it wasn't even over yet! With her help I could actually sleep that night without pain! 
Friday and Saturday we stopped in Texas to take pictures of the windmills that I love (they are so iconic) and in Colorado to take pictures with some sunflowers, but mostly we just made a beeline for home. 
It was great to be with people we love in Houston, but we were ready to be back in Utah.
We pulled in to Sandy around 9pm on Saturday night, worn out, happy, and ready to rest. I don't know the exact numbers, it was around 3,000 miles, and 50 hours of driving, but the memories we made, the people we saw, and the laughs we had made all the tiredness worth it. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm ready for next summer's trip!
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