A Visit from the Pages

Over Labor Day weekend, the Pages and Eric flew in to see Brian once more before he deploys shortly. We had a packed weekend of fun activities and little house projects!

Saturday morning we went to Hueco Tanks, a state park about 30 minutes from us. It's the easier hiking around here...fewer cacti to run into! No, I'm really being serious...We ran around and scaled up numerous boulders and saw some neat cave paintings; Brian and I have been here once before with friends and it was nice to go back! This time though, some of the rainy season had passed, and things were GREEN! Excuse me?...Aren't we in the desert? Amazing what fractions of an inch of rain do to this place!

After hiking around and working up quite a sweat (still pretty hot in the desert!), we grabbed a quick lunch and then cleaned ourselves up! The guys headed to Lowe's to buy...PAINT! Yes, we painted two of our walls, which is so exciting! Military housing always has white-ish walls, and we're tired of them...so we painted two green walls this weekend, and with the Pages' expertise, we got the whole job done in about 3 1/2 hours! It adds so much to the rooms. I am already dreaming of painting some more rooms! The Army's only stipulation is that you either pay a fine for each wall you paint or you prime your painted walls before you leave so you don't get charged...definitely keeping my rollers so I can prime!

We spent the rest of Saturday evening watching football and catching up! Sunday we headed to church and heard a great sermon and Sunday school lesson! I haven't talked much about church yet, but we've started going to First Baptist and are really enjoying it. The teaching is solid and based purely on Scripture and we have found a GREAT Sunday school class! The teacher does an excellent job of facilitating the class and everyone contributes--it is so neat!

Sunday afternoon we headed to Cattleman's Steakhouse, which is about 45 minutes outside of El Paso. It's famed for it's food and atmosphere; several movies were filmed out here and they also have a variety of animals to look at and feed...like goats, rattlesnakes, longhorn cattle, horses, buffalo, and ostrich! We got to go on a "covered wagon" tour of the movie sets as well as see some replicas of pioneer houses. It was really neat! We ended up being there almost 4 hours! And of course, the food was delicious. If you've never eaten a cow that was grass-fed, do it. It is the BEST BEEF you will ever taste in your life! Thank you, Texas for excellent red meat :)

The filmed "Courage Under Fire" here! As well as a Chuck Norris movie...haha!

As we drove into town Sunday we gave the Pages a tour of where Brian works and then headed home to be lazy...we had just eaten a very large lupper...aka, lunch/supper. The rest of our time we spent talking, telling stories, and just catching up--it was so nice to have visitors, especially now that we have the new house! I'm so glad they were able to come out and see us before Brian deploys. 

Well that's it for now...this teacher is beyond exhausted.
More to come on life in general, school, and Brian's deployment...