Barfing, Bowling and Blue Bell

After school ended, we had about 1 month before my internship started in Las Vegas. So we decided to spend a couple of weeks visiting my family in good ole' Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. After realizing we have accumulated WAY too much stuff, then loading all that stuff into a storage unit, we started the 11 hour drive to BA. We got to my house at about 9:00pm that night and very much enjoyed visiting with my parents. At about 11:00pm, we decided to crash for the night. Right about the time we turned out the light, I said to Christina, "I am feeling a little nauseous all of the sudden." Her reply was "Me too!" We managed to make it through the night alright, but the next morning, we woke up with a NASTY case of food poisoning. It was absolutely awful. Our first full day in Oklahoma was spent getting way too familiar with the toilet - No fun at all!! We have traced it back to one of two restaurants, and have added them both to our "Banned" list for at least 1 year. Luckily, we both were sick together so it turned into a bonding experience for us (I am trying to think positively).

After the miserable first couple of days, the trip really was pretty fun. It was nice to relax and spend so much time with family. Brian and April came up from Dallas and we enjoyed being able to see them. Here are some pictures highlighting our time with them.

As you can see, we went bowling one night. This was the first time that Christina and I had been bowling together since our very first date in February of 2006 - That was the date that Emily set us up on. (For some reason, Christina can't remember the bowling part of that date... probably because I beat her.) Anyway, we had a lot of fun and are proud to say that our combined score won game 2. Yes, we are an amazing team!!

We also had the opportunity to do a tour of Blue Bell Ice Cream. I worked at this factory during high school, and for those of you that don't know, Blue Bell makes the best ice cream in the world! The tour was a little anti-climactic... I remembered things being way cooler than they were. But at least we got some free ice cream.

Seriously, if you haven't had Blue Bell ice cream, you need to try it. It's amazing!

One of the other fun things about Oklahoma are the thunderstorms. While we were there, we had a few big ones. The biggest was on Sunday morning. It was blowing and raining like crazy. Our home is at the bottom of a hill so all the water builds up in our yard. It made for some pretty fun mud-football games when I was a teenager.

The storm came around 11:00am or so. We don't have church until 1:00pm. As the storm was raging, Christina asked me if church ever gets canceled because of thunderstorms. I told her that this is normal in Oklahoma and it would be over in about 30 minutes. Well, a few minutes after that, the phone rang, and they were canceling church. Apparently, the power went out at the building so we couldn't have our meetings. Lucky for us, our power was on the entire time. It made for a nice afternoon with the family.

All in all, the trip was great! We are so grateful for good families and appreciate all they do for us.