Fun Times in Texas

I apologize for the lack of blogging for the past couple months, but things have been busy in Texas! I've been so lucky to be able to spend 7 weeks visiting with friends and family in Kingwood and Dallas. Here is a brief re-cap of the trip home:

I started the visit getting to participate in Vacation Bible school at KUMC. They had a different missions emphasis each day, and one day they focused on the babies in Romania. During their missions time, the kids made fleece tie together blankets for the babies. It was amazing to watch all these kids in Texas making something that will affect the lives of children half way around the world. I can't wait to get them all to Romania and pass them out!
I had some quality family time at the beach in Maryland. I grew up my whole life visiting Ocean City, and we all love to go back! We had some great weather and lots of fun relaxing and reading on the beach everyday.

My brother's fiancee Dinah joined us for the trip, which was great! I was happy to get to spend some time getting to know her better before their wedding. This is my family eating one night on the bay. We found lots of great restaurants on the bay to eat dinner and watch some amazing sunsets!

After the beach, I headed to Dallas. Mary and I put together a brownie taste test that we tried out on our small group friends! We made 6 different types of boxed brownies and had them taste each one and put them in the order of best to worst. The test came complete with lemon sorbet so they could "cleanse the pallat" between tastes! In case you're curious, the winner was Betty Crocker! They claim to be America's favorite on the box, and they aren't lying. The only one that was unanimous was last place, and that was the fat free box! Lesson learned - fat free brownies are just not worth the trouble!!

All the girls holding up a sample bite. They were such good sports to play along!

Kelly and Nate came to hang out for a night as well. It was great getting to catch up with them and just to relax with friends!

So, that was basically some of the highlights of the trip home. I did a few more things, but don't have pictures from all of them! Tomorrow afternoon I get on a plane to fly back to Romania. I'm excited to get back and see everyone there and get back to the babies in the hospital!