Everything is bigger

A few months ago my friend Mary called with a brilliant idea. She is the president of the Ad League of Central Texas and needed a speaker for one of their monthly meetings. So she proposed that I come down and speak and then hang out for the weekend. Mary and I have been friends since we were baby college freshman and I've known her husband Jer for almost as long. Of course I couldn't resist.

The presentation went well and it was fun to watch my little Mary conducting a meeting like a real grownup. It's definitely a world away from the Southern Utah University Senate meetings....afterwards I was starving and anxious for some real live Texas BBQ. Until we got to this place

And that's when I became a vegetarian and we went to get Thai instead!
They moved to Texas because Jer was in the army and stationed at Fort Hood. We went on a tour of the town and Mary showed me where Elvis Presley lived when he was stationed there. (I took this picture solely for Dainon!) That night we went out for sushi with a really fun bunch of Mary and Jer's friends. And of course we stayed up way, way too late talking.
The next morning, and by morning I mean it was about 11 a.m. when I crawled out of bed, we woke up to this. It's snow. In Central Texas. On Easter weekend. So guess what we did? Watched almost 5 hours of TLC. We were in heaven. Jeremy fixed stuff in the house while we commiserated over bad wardrobes with Stacy and Clinton and I drooled over that guy on The Handyman for the Weekend show. I renounced my vegetarianism from the day before so we could eat chicken strips and fries like we used to do EVERY NIGHT at the 24 hour Denny's in college. It will come as no surprise if any of us die of heart disease. We finally managed to get ourselves off the couch and ready for the day of shopping near Austin we had planned. We asked Jer to come but for some reason he thought the idea of some quiet time to work on the bedroom shower might be more fun than watching us try on shoes for four hours. First we had to make a pit stop at Randy and Bentley's house. My new favorite people on earth. I wish there was someway to post Randy telling a story on the blog because he really might be the world's funniest human. He worked on The Bachelor for a couple of seasons and had me nearly wetting my pants with his stories.
We pulled up and noticed that the kids across the street had built a little snowman. In Central Texas. On Easter Weekend. Also, apparently it's important for Texas snowmen to have a noose with them at all times.
And here is the poor palm tree in Randy and Bentley's backyard. They look really funny with snow on them.
So this is actually Randy's parent's house that they are taking care of while his parents are stationed in Louisiana. His mom is a designer and she did this rad display for Christmas that I am totally going to steal next year.
We finally did make it to the shopping where the bargain fairy really smile on us. I walked off with a nice spring makeover for my wardrobe that didn't make my bank account cry TOO much. Somehow we ended up staying up until 2:30 in the morning once again. It's a wonder we ever graduated from college because that was pretty standard behavior for us back then. The next day we (I) slept in again and then we ate the greatest boneless chicken wings and various other frighteningly fried foods for Easter Dinner. It was perfect.

And then I had to say goodbye to everyone. Mary, Jer and the giant television. It was soooooo fun to see all of them and to just relax. When you are hundreds of miles from home you have no choice but to forget about taxes and messy bathrooms and Costco runs. I even wrote an entire marketing proposal on the plane that my boss really liked which I think was a product of clearing all those worries OUT.

Hope you all had a great Easter too. I'm off to the grocery store to see if there are still any peeps leftover!