Everything is bigger in Texas!

So I've been in Dallas for the past week at a National HOSA (health occupation students of america) leadership conference. I went with two other girls from my nursing program, and one of our instructors. We had a good time, and I think we did everything that there is to do in Dallas as well as Fort Worth and every town in between the two, including Six Flags over Texas, Holocaust museum, JFK museum, Dallas World Aquarium, an awesome rodeo at the Stockyards in Fort Worth, visiting with my dad's cousin Mike, who's from Texas, lots of shopping and eating, enjoying our 5 star hotel, and trying to bear the 90+ degree heat combined with the high humidity! I placed as a top 10 finalist in my event that I competed in, so that was cool I guess. Clint and Tonya are planning to move to the Dallas area sometime in December, so it was cool to see where their stompin' grounds are going to be. But I will sure miss them and am sad that they will be so far away! Overall, the trip was fun, but too long away from Kyle. It'd been 9 days that we didn't see eachother because as soon as I got back to Monticello, I had to work the night shift at the hospital. :( Kyle, however, came up to visit for a bit at the hospital while I was working and brought me food too, including some of his amazing homemade jerky that he whipped up while I was gone. I also got to play on our co-ed softball team for the first time last night! Kyle is such a good athlete all around - he is constantly hitting homeruns and helping our team to WIN! I did get a pretty good hit in that got me on base, and Kyle and I both scored. We have a fun team. It's so good to finally be home and in my wonderful husbands arms! I sure missed him. Well, here's a few pictures of what we did to pass the long week in Dallas...

The longhorn is an icon of Texas, and in downtown Dallas, there is a park that has over 30 bronze statues of longhorns and cowboys that commemorate the Old Rio Grand Cattle Drive Trail - or something like that. It's pretty cool.

This is Kassie, Linda and I kickin it at Six Flags for the day. We had a blast and there were some amazing rollercoasters there! I must be growing up or something, though, because I couldn't take much of the rollercoasters. I got nauseated and dizzy, which didn't used to happen to me at amusement parks. My thrill of them and big rollercoasters is sort of waining :(

I think that this was the highlight of my trip - my dad's cousin Mike Fisher, lives in Plano, about 40 minutes out of Dallas. Him and his wonderful wife, Crystal came down one evening and took me out on the town! We found this awesome Venezuelan resteraunt and comepletely stuffed ourselves. They took such good care of me and showed me some awesome sights of the places surrounding Dallas. It's so great to have wonderful family members around!

The Dallas World Aquarium was really fun. When you first walk in to it, you are at the canopy of the rainforest - birds and monkeys all around you. A path leads you down slowly and there is every tropical animal you can imagine from this beautiful cheetah to flamingos, monster crocodiles, turtels, piranahs and huge spiders (one was called the Goliath bird eating spider! scary, huh?). Then you went underground to a tunnel that takes you right in the middle of a huge salt water aquarium. So you have sharks, HUGE stingrays and all kinds of ocean animals all around you. It was amazing!

How cool is this? The night that we drove over to Fort Worth for a rodeo at the Cowtown Colesseum (where the movie Pure Country was filmed), we saw the random longhorn on the street. A guy takes him out there so that people can see what it's like to be by a cow. Us three country girls were pretty bold to go right up to him, and it was funny to watch the passing 'city folk' gaping at how 'brave' we were! This was the first time since we'd been in Texas that I really felt comfortable, and it's cause I was surrounded by hundreds of good ol' country people just like me! We really had a fun night here, and the rodeo was awesome! The barrel racing was incredible as the riders were getting faster times than I'd ever seen!