Mama Sue and Papa Rick in Dallas

Gavin convinced his parents to fly back to Dallas with Owen and I. It was so fun to have them here! We stayed pretty busy while they were here. It's safe to say they had a real good Texas experience, full of barbeque, tacos, homecooked meals, and fried food. These are the crowd-pleasers we shared with them...

The State Fair

The Texas State Fair is a big deal here. We were all first-timers!

Fried food galore here! We tried a good variety- including fried Reeses, fried Oreos, fried Jello, and my favorite- a fried Pop-Tart! Our hearts hurt by the end of it!

This guy behind us is the iconic Big-Tex. The ribbon on his chest was a new addition this year to honor Dallas's fallen officers. 

There was a huge Taylor Swift exhibit at the Fair! You all know I love Taylor Swift! It was cool! On display were some of her baby pictures, guitars, hand-written lyrics, her piano, her awards. My favorite displays were her dresses and her music video outfits! These were the actual clothes she wore! It was so fun to see! This picture is the outfit she wore in her "Blank Space" video while standing on the horse (mom), and the cheer-leading outfit she wore in her "You Belong With Me" video.

The Arboretum

The Dallas LDS Temple

Carrollton

Trinity Groves BBQ and Walkway

Babb's Brothers BBQ. Owen wouldn't leave the band alone! They were really nice while setting up, and let Owen come test their drums! When they started playing, Owen started dancing, which turned into legitimate twerking. Holy hilarious and embarrassing. About 10 people (including the singer of the band) whipped out their phones to start filming him. We were DYING! 

A fun little walkway with the Dallas skyline view.

This is one of those "A picture is worth a thousand words" things. Papa Rick was collecting acorns at Owen's request, while Owen is riding his new bike in his pajamas on our porch, wearing his sunglasses because he won't go outside without them!

We loved having them out here! Come visit us again!

Utah in October

Yup, I've only been in Texas a month and I already headed back to Utah for a week! I had this trip planned before we moved, which made it a little less hard to say bye, since I could say "see you next month."

Some girls I played lacrosse with years ago were participating in a women's tournament in Idaho last weekend, so it was the perfect excuse to go back. Owen and I flew in to Salt Lake on Tuesday; Friday night my sister and I drove to Boise, played a few lacrosse games on Saturday, then drove home Saturday night. We flew back to Texas the following Tuesday. The whole week was so fun, and hard trying to pack in everything I wanted to do! Here's what it looked like...

Cornbelly's with Maddy cuz it's tradition. I love and miss this girl!

"Sister lacrosse is the best lacrosse."

Lacrosse with the sister and old teammates. Surprisingly, we won all our games. This was such a random, funny tournament, but it was so fun! Yes, some husbands helped us out. Some girls on another team told us we looked intimidating and we were like "hmm, was it the car-seats we carried in, or the DI tags on our jerseys?" haha!

I left Owen with family when I went to Idaho. He spent a day with each of our families... I'm so grateful for them and their help! Sue took Owen and the other two grand-kids to the pumpkin patch to pick out some pumpkins. I love this picture of Owen trying to push the wheelbarrow there!

 Carving the pumpkins that the babes picked out. We kept ours pretty simple!

 Owen and I took a quick hike up to Bells Canyon Reservoir. I had to get to the mountains since we don't have anything beautiful like this in Dallas. This hike was so awesome. The weather was PERFECT, and the scenery was gorgeous. The hike is long enough for a workout, but easy enough to pack Owen and keep him happy. The whole hike, Owen was saying "Yay, we can do it!" and "There's the trail! Keep walking mommy!" He also loved talking to other hikers. Also, it was so nice just to sit by the water up here and let Owen play with rocks and dirt, and not worry about having to be home in time for anything. It was the most beautiful, peaceful experience I have had in a long time.

We went to Gardner's Village with my mom to see the pumpkins and witches. The perk of having one kid is that we can pay a stupid $5 for a 5 minute horse ride. This horse experience ended much better than the last!

Being in Dallas is good for us. Coming home frequently is also good. I can't wait for Christmas to be in this beautiful state again!

Lewisville Safety Open House

The city of Lewisville hosted a free "Safety Open House." It was honestly the best public, free, family activity I have ever been to! There were free hot dogs, lemonade, and popcorn for everyone, plus gift bags for all the kids- with a bouncy ball, fireman's hat, stickers, and coloring pages! Heroes of the city put on demonstrations with helicopters, CPR, police dogs, and fire hoses. They had SWAT cars, police cars, fire trucks, helicopters, and ambulances all open for kids to go look inside. We pet the police dogs, and a firefighter helped Owen "put out a fire". It was a great opportunity to thank them all for their service. Police officers can be painted as such bad people, so it was an awesome "uniting" activity! Every town should do this!

September 2016 pt. 2

We've been trying to get our bearings by exploring not only Dallas, but the surrounding cities.

Carrollton is winning so far! Downtown Carrollton has rock climbing silos, an awesome playground, a hilarious candy shop, free movies at the town square, and beautiful Texas-homestyle restaurants. Thank you Carrollton!

A minion in the candy shop!

We went on a date to Babe's chicken. I obviously haven't gotten the hang of humidity hair yet.

Mary Heads Carter Park

We talked to some employees at the silos, asking for adventure ideas. They told us about Ray Roberts Lake, about an hour north of Dallas. We took the drive and it was worth it! The "hiking"  had us gaining about 7 feet in elevation, but the flowers were pretty.  The beach and lake were awesome! We took a nice swim and we definitely plan on going back to spend more than just a couple hours there!

September/October is Texas's fair and festival season, so we came at a good time! A friend told us about Lewisville Western Days (Lewisville is another surrounding city) so we went and had a good time!

Owen and "baby Kinley". This is our friend's daughter and Owen is so cute to her! On the shuttle to the fair, O kept saying "hold on tight baby Kinley!"

We pulled some volunteer's teeth to get Owen on this horse (whoops!) and the whole thing was just a good experience gone bad for him haha

Owen has been loving jamming to live music! There's lots of that here!

 This is the park across the street from where Gav works. There's always live music here. Owen was jamming to this band when he started running in circles. 140 circles later I stopped counting but he kept going!

We still have a lot to learn about this place, and I'm more excited about it now than I was a month ago, but I still miss Utah. 

Stay-at-home-mom life is interesting. I don't get bored- the boss keeps me super busy, but it's with stuff like building train tracks and feeding breakfast to Winnie-the-Pooh. There are things I miss about working, but not having a job has it's perks too. Perks like...

I love having him as my adventure bud.

And in case you're wondering, our apartment still looks like this:

September 2016 pt. 1

Our first month in Texas! I have a lot of pictures and I have a lot to say. I guess I will start with words.

Dallas is better than I thought would be. However, I have become more aware of the conveniences in Utah that are not to be found here. Things like free things to do, playgrounds everywhere, a million blogs informing you of family friendly activities going on, running into ward members, driveways, Sunday dinners, the grid system, and changing leaves.

I have finally found a few parks that are good for Owen and I, but I had to SEARCH. There are some good playgrounds around us, but I can't believe how hard it was to find them online or by driving.

I'm so glad my mom stayed with us for a couple weeks while we figured out where we were. If it wasn't for her in the car, my mini panic attacks of "I don't know where I am, I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what I'm doing!" would have been much worse. It has happened a few times where tears came with these words. It's frustrating. On the other hand, there is a huge sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with being able to find your way to the church, a park, Target, and back to your apartment without GPS.

Resources to find kid friendly activities here are few. You have to try really hard to seek out cool places (other than bars) around here. They are here though. I've searched hashtags and blogs and everything I can think of to find family and toddler friendly activities here and I rarely find anything. (This is why I've started using hashtags on my posts like #dallasmoms and #kidsindallas, in case someone else is looking for the same thing.) Good thing I have a passion for finding the gems and getting us there!  

Here's what we've found:

The Dallas Arboretum and White Rock Lake are both pretty well advertised, but the details of them, not so much. I was pleasantly surprised that the Arboretum had a children's area where Owen could splash and play. We ended up buying an annual pass to this place! It's very comparable to the Thanksgiving Point Gardens. 
By the way the internet describes White Rock Lake, you would think it was awesome. I was expecting like a Daybreak. Honestly... It was kind of a dump.  Maybe I just had my bar set real high because of Daybreak. There were some nice tennis courts and a nice bike trail, but there wasn't really a place to sit and hang out, or a place for Owen to play... and you can't even get in the water!

This was at the Fort Worth Stockyards. The Stockyards are very touristy, but cool. There's livestock, a rodeo, Texas boutiques, and barbecue. It's not the most kid-friendly place in the book though.

We heard about this aquarium and "Toddler Tuesdays" from a friend. This isn't the main "Dallas Aqaurium," it's in a town about 30 minutes west of downtown. The aquarium is actually located in an outlet mall. This outlet mall is the weirdest mall I have ever been to. It's like someone said "let's make this the biggest, nicest, outlet mall anyone has ever been to... OK actually it's whatever." Half the mall is like name-brand outlets. There's an aquarium, Lego land, movie theater, bowling alley, Rainforest Cafe. The other half the mall is like the dollar store and dirty quarter machine rides. It's weird, but we liked it enough to go back twice. I think that's where we will do most of our shopping!

To be continued...