"On the Road Again!"

March April 1, 2012

Happy April! I cannot believe how fast this year is going...the beautiful weather here in Texas makes me fully aware that summer is coming and feels like it is already here (it is about 90 degrees here today!) .

Well as you probably noticed by the title, (and if you are like me and everything makes you think of a song you probably have a very familiar song in your head that continues as... "I just cant wait to get on the road again...) we are on the road again. On Friday morning as I was walking back to the apartment to get ready to go to a women's retreat with church, I saw that I missed a call from Ben.He called with some exciting news! He told me he was looking up McAllen, Texas on the gps and asked me if I wanted to go there with him... of course I said yes:)

There was a huge hail storm there on Thursday evening and Ben got a call Friday morning for deployment to head down asap. The drive is about 6 hours South of where we live, so we planned to leave Saturday morning after we had everything packed and ready to go! Luckily I had made most of my meals a few days before... but I did spend Friday afternoon packing up stuff, making appointments for work, and COOKing! The nice thing is that I'm getting REALLY good at knowing what you can freeze and what you cannot freeze since we could never have enough room to bring everything with us from our refrigerator! I learned that you CAN freeze peppers, jalepeno peppers and chopped onion without blanching, and to freeze asparagus you just need to blanch it and stick it in cold water right after.

So our freezer is PACKED full, our refrigerator is emptied of all items besides condiments (and I only had to throw 1 thing away!... a little bit of cabbage...) our car is weighed down to the ground with all our stuff, and we are ready to go!

We headed out around 10:30am Saturday morning and made a stop by Todd and Shaina's house, which is right on the way. It was Shaina's birthday so we got to say hi, happy birthday and see her, and the kids. Linda and her boys were there to celebrate her birthday as well, so we stayed for a little while to visit. Then we headed South with Todd following right behind in his truck. Todd (our cousin, who is also an insurance adjuster) is also working claims in McAllen, so we got a hotel room with him again (we worked a snowstorm together last November in Connecticut).

Not sure how long we will be here... but I will keep you posted! The hail here was the size of baseballs and the damage is crazy. Most of the roofs we have seen so far are completely torn up from the hail, and we have seen so many broken and shattered windows. One guy today showed us a spot where the hail literally went through his CAR... no, not his car window, but his actual car! I've never seen hail do that before. And it definitely feels like summer down here! Up on the roofs we were already sweating after just a few minutes! We are hoping to leave here and go someplace cooler before the Texas heat REALLY kicks in!

On a very positive note... Our hotel has a kitchenette!! which I am super excited about. Not that I will really do much cooking while we are here, since we dont really have the spices and all of that, but it is really nice to have more space and not have to use the bathroom sink to wash dishes! I did bring along about 6 different meals that I cooked beforehand and will last us a little while... but once those are gone I think it's back to brats and potatoes:)...poor Todd.

As soon as I get the chance I will post the meals that I cooked for this week, so stay tuned!
(and all picures will be postponed because the internet here isnt fast enough to upload them!)