Being mom of 4 children means I don't travel much, so I will milk this trip, fully realizing that by the end of my Dallas posts you all will be super sick of hearing about my trip. Oh well, it's my blog.
First of all, I did not make it clear to you readers who don't know me personally (thanks for the heads up Elizabeth!) that Marshall is my brother. My little brother. I am the oldest and I have two brothers, Mitchell (featured here) and Marshall. Both of my brothers have married amazing women. Having no sisters kind of stinks, but I have great sisters in law so that makes up for it. I love my brothers, they are super funny guys (usually cracking jokes at my expense, but I don't mind.) They are fun to hang out with and they are really smart.
Marshall and his family moved to Dallas about 3 years ago to go to Parker Chiropractic and now that he has graduated they are moving to Mesa, AZ. The Queen Creek area specifically. It still is far away, and I will miss them some more. So now I will just get to go to Arizona to visit them. (If any of you AZ people are reading this, welcome them with open arms, they are great LDS people!)
So anyways, back to the trip. We flew into Dallas on Thursday night and went to eat at a place called Salt Grass Texas BBQ. Excellent food. Great service. We only got to see Marshall and Kary and their friends for a short while and then we headed to the hotel to get some sleep. The next morning we met at an adorable place called La Madeleine, which was a french cafe, bistro, bakery and I had Crepes Romanoff. Yummmm! We took lots of pictures of Amelia, Elyse and Jack. I love being an aunt to such adorable nieces and nephews.
(Mitch and Jack at Salt Grass, Amelia, Elyse and Jack at La Madeleine.)
(The guys at La Madeleine talking about golf or something.)
Then we went to Body Worlds. Now, let me just warn you, if you are squeamish at all, this exhibit may not be for you. But I loved it. It was so interesting, and especially fun to walk through with Marshall because he explained things so well to us.
Throughout this exhibit you see a lot of genitalia, male and female, so it is kind of graphic, probably not something I would take my small children to. That would lead to conversations I am not quite ready to have yet. This exhibit will be in Portland later this year, so if you have an opportunity to go there, I would recommend it. It was very, very fascinating. Here is the link. Check out the site and remember that these are real bodies that people have donated to the exhibit in the interest of science and human learning. Fascinating. (You may also recognize this exhibit from the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale, there was a scene that included some parts of the exhibit in it.)
After Body Worlds we headed to dinner at another Texas BBQ place, but on the way we got caught in a storm. It started hailing and a tornado passed nearby in Fort Worth killing one person. While we were driving on the highway, people just started stopping in the middle of the highway and pulling under the overpasses to protect their cars from the hail. It was one of the craziest things I have ever seen. Like 20 cars all huddled under the overpass, so weird. It was kind of scary because other cars were still zooming past us so fast and there were people slowing down to get under the overpass, I was just waiting for a collision to occur, but luckily nothing happened and no one was hurt.
We went on our way to Spring Creek and it was like a Cafeteria style BBQ place and it was really good. They had delicious ribs, baked beans and homemade ice-cream that was to die for. Texans know how to eat, that is for sure!
After dinner we went to see the movie "Blades of Glory" with Will Ferrell and Jon Heder. This is totally the type of movie that my brothers love and it was funny, but so crude and kind of stupid. We laughed hard anyways. I still wouldn't recommend it though.
That was the end of day one, stay tuned for lots more fun, Dallas style!
