Houston House Hunting

Last week Scott and I were able to go out to Houston for Spring Break.  Our goal was to find an apartment.  We wanted to find it as quickly as possible, so that we could spend the rest of the weekend exploring Houston!  We spent basically all day Thursday searching for an apartment and found out that in order to be close to the school (which is pretty much downtown) we had to pay a lot more than we would like.  We were able to find an apartment right down the road from the school and in a safe neighborhood (as safe as you can be when you're downtown).  Now that we've found our apartment we're getting really antsy to get down there to live.  One thing that we both love about Houston, and Texas, is the great barbecue.  As you can see in this picture, we had some awesome barbecued ribs that were as large as my head!

Thursday night, we were so sick of looking at apartments that we wanted to see what else there was to see in Houston.  We decided to drive out to the temple.  Although the temple is in Houston, it takes about an hour to get there because Houston is HUGE!  It was a nice drive getting to see all different parts of Houston.  This picture didn't turn out very well, but the temple is absolutely beautiful.  We're anxious for it to become our temple.

Because we found our apartment the first day, we decided to spend some time on Friday in Galveston.  I was really surprised when we got there.  I didn't realized how big hurricane Ike was last year.  The city, which is right on the coast, was torn up, even after this many months.  We went by  Joe's Crab Shack that was completely shut down and nearly demolished.  Many of the ports still had upturned boats.  The old main street had many shut down shops.  A lot of the stores were in the process of renovations, but there was not a lot of progress.  It was really sad to see all the destruction.  This is a picture of how high the water line was during the hurricane.  To give you perspective, it hits about three feet above the man standing below the line.

Unfortunately, we did not take our swimming suits, so we were only able to wade in the ocean.  We were surprised at how warm is was!
On Saturday, we were able to drive out to Austin to visit our friends, Tyson and Kristina and their little girl Alissa.  The drive to Austin was beautiful.  The grass on the side of the highway was covered in bluebells.  I was surprised at how green everything was.  In Austin we went to a little Easter celebration with the Smiths at one of their friend's houses.  It was so great to see them.  It felt like old times when we would hang out in Provo.  We are excited to be moving closer, so that we can see them more often.  This is a picture of Alissa on her easter egg hunt.