The Stars at Night Are Big and Bright...Deep in the Heart of Texas!

About a month ago, Burke and I got a wedding announcement from Gina Sexton, a girl that Burke taught and baptized on his mission over ten years ago, now getting married to her sweetheart in the Dallas LDS Temple.  Burke served in the Texas Fort Worth Mission from August of 2000 until August 2002.  It was the best of times and the hardest of times for him.  He grew a lot in those two years and especially grew to love many of the people in his areas.  He has always wanted to go back, but life happens and the next thing you know you have a wife, a baby, plus a job and that trip you've been aching to take just hasn't happened yet!  Gina invited us to her temple sealing and we couldn't resist the opportunity this afforded us to make the trip to Texas at last.  My fantastic in-laws agreed to watch Daphne while we were gone and although it was awful to leave her, I felt so much peace knowing she was in safe hands.

After a very relaxing Thanksgiving with the Adams family at the Rowley's, we kissed our sweet baby and caught a red-eye flight to Dallas late that night.  On Friday Burke showed me around Keller, an area he served in for 5 months just outside of Fort Worth.  We found his old apartment building, the Keller chapel and ate at a delicious pizza joint where he had lunch frequently with his companion.  Unfortunately, all the people he remembered and had contacted from Keller were out of town for Thanksgiving, so we didn't make any visits there.

Instead we drove around Keller, admiring the beautiful fall leaves in our adorable, canary yellow, Fiat rental car that Burke called our glorified rollerskates   

Next we drove to Fort Worth to check out the touristy "Stockyards" packed full of stereotypical Texan attractions: gift shops full of boots and cowboy hats, Wild West themed restaurants,  mechanical bull riding, the Texas Rodeo Hall of Fame, a rodeo arena, and (my personal favorite) "Billy Bob's Texas: The World's Largest Honky Tonk!"  Inside there were handprints of all the famous country stars that had played concerts there (Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash, Miranda Lambert, etc...), an indoor bull riding arena, dance floors for line dancing, etc.  I think this would have all been a lot more fun if we hadn't been quite so beat from our sleepless flight.

There was also the cutest candy store I have ever seen!  I loved the cheery ambiance with all the pastel colored taffies, brightly wrapped candies and sugary concoctions glittering from every inch of the store.  It reminded us of the descriptions of Honeydukes Sweet Shop in Harry Potter!

To finish up our time at the Stockyards, we watched the brief parade of long horn cattle as they were herded down the street by whip-cracking cowboys.  It lasted all of 30 seconds.  

We decided to throw in one more activity before calling it a day and headed out to one of the biggest malls in America - the Grapevine Mall in Dallas - completely forgetting what day it was - BLACK FRIDAY!  It was an absolute madhouse out there!  If we hadn't driven so far we probably would have just turned around at the parking lot, but instead we ventured into the madness.  Is anyone else out there disgusted by Black Friday?  Less than 24 hours after we say how thankful we are for our lives and blessings we BUY BUY BUY as much as we possibly can, as fast as we possibly can.  Gross.  We left the mall feeling a bit cynical,  having only purchased Dip-n-Dots ice cream and decided we are never going out on Black Friday ever again!

I was going to keep recapping the trip, but that's all I can muster for now.  More tomorrow.