Texas!

Last month (meaning October) we were able to take a trip to North Texas to visit family.  It was such a fun and relaxing trip!  The kids are now old enough that we were able to make most of the trip during the day with minimal fighting.  It was GREAT!  I took the last night of my last rotation off, and the first day of this rotation off, and John was able to take some time off as well, so we had a whole week without work.

While we were in Texas, we spent time with John's sister, Erin and her husband Craig and son Jesse.  We went to Jesse's football game (Texas football- heck yeah!) and stayed up late playing phase 10 every night.  One of the days, we went to Dallas and ate at Razoo's- our favorite!  It's a chain Cajun place, and it's super fun.  When  we go there, we always get the Jaws platter.  Basically, imagine any critter you would find in a swamp- gators, catfish, shrimp, and oysters- bread 'em, fry 'em, and serve 'em piled high on a turkey platter on a bed of french fries with a generous helping of hush puppies, and that's the jaws!  We've never finished the platter.  One of these days- when the boys are teenagers, maybe, but the entire 12 years we've been eating there, we always end up with tons of extra.  This time, we had our entire family and John's sister all working on it, and we still ended up with a roaster pan full of leftovers.  I think the gator tail is my favorite part of the dish.  It's really good.

We drove around our old neighborhood/town and went down memory lane.  It felt like we had never left.  The kids said it felt like they were home.  When we returned to AZ, however, they admitted that it was nice to see mountains again.

On Friday, we drove over to Allen and got the kids new shoes at the outlet mall there.  I miss having shopping so close!  Every time we went through a new town, and passed their schools and football stadiums, we ooed and awwed over them.