Sea World!!

On Tuesday Andy and I drove to San Antonio to visit Andy's best friend from college, Brittany.  Unfortunately, it took us a little longer than we had expected to get there thanks to traffic.  It really surprised me how many people were on I-10 at 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon, but I guess that's the world we live in.  Once we got to her apartment, we hung out for a little while letting Maddie play outside with Haley (Brittany's dog).  We ate at El Chaparral a Mexican food restaurant in Helotes which is near Brittany's apartment.  It was quite delicious!  Then we went back to the apartment and just hung out talking until midnight.

Typical car shot of us on our way to SA!

Brittany is in senior management at Sea World, and she works on the education side.  She's what I would consider a "big dog" at Sea World.  We would have gotten into Sea World for free since we are both teachers, but Brittany also gets free passes for her guests.  We went to every show except for the Elmo and Seasame Street shows.  We did not get on any rides or go to Aquatica the waterpark.  Neither one of us had been to Sea World since the mid-90s and a lot has changed since then.  Most of the shows were still pretty typical for Sea World, but we had so much fun.

Since we had a connection with an employee at Sea World, we got to do some behind the scenes things.  Brittany met up with us first thing when the park opened and showed us the coral reefs and shark tanks from above like where the divers would actually get in.  It was so cool!  The Tiger Sharks were so large from this viewpoint.  I mean, they look huge when you actually look at them inside the aquarium facility, but they look even larger at the surface of the water.

After lunch, Brittany met up with us again and watched the Shamu show.  Then she took us behind the scenes to several holding tanks that they have for the marine life who aren't in the shows.  We got to see a baby dolphin!  So cute!  I couldn't get a picture of it though; it moved too quickly for me.  Then we got to touch a shark - eek!!  Actually, it was a small shark called a White Spotted Bamboo Shark.  I didn't take a picture, but here is one I found on the Internet.

Then we fed... yes fed like fed them food... sting rays.  This was by far my favorite thing of the day!  Brittany gave us shrimp and we had to hold it between our pointer finger and middle finger so that it was just barely stuck.  The sting ray would then cover your hand and suck up the food with its mouth.  This was really cool!  Seriously!  After Andy and I fed them we just touched them in the water.  They have no bones in their bodies so they are made up entirely of cartilage. All of the barbs on their stingers had been removed, but it was still a little freaky.  Andy actually touched the stinger, and he said it actual felt flimsy even though they look rock hard as they are swimming.

We got to the park around 10:30am and didn't leave until after 8:30pm.  We had such a great time!  It was just like being a little kid all over again.  I told Andy that we will definitely have to take our kids one day to Sea World.

I have a TON of pictures, but I will try to post only the best ones on here, so bare with me!  No, seriously... I had 200 pictures and I think I got it under 30.  Not sure if I'll post all of them.  LOL

Brittany, Andy, and I waiting on the Shamu show

The first show we went to was the water ski show.  It really fascinates me what people can do on the water behind a boat.  This show was similar to what I remember as a child.

We went to the sea lion and otter show.  We actually saw them twice.  The first show was their normal show and the evening show was a spoof of all the other shows at Sea World.  Both shows were funny!

Brittany told us that this is a female walrus and the
male walrus they have is much much larger.

I don't remember if this one was Clyde or Seamore...

Another show we saw was the Beluga and Pacific White-sided Dolphins.  This show was probably the most disappointing show because there were divers who did a lot stunts.  Don't get me wrong, the stunts were really cool and they did some diving from pretty high up, but I wanted to see more of the animals.

And of course, we saw Shamu!  Just like the sea lions, we saw this show twice.  One was the typical afternoon show and then we saw the evening show which was Shamu Rocks.  The evening show was more entertaining because the whales did a lot more jumps.  These creatures are so massive that they are fascinating to watch.  Plus, Brittany gave us a lot of statistics about them so it made them even more fun to watch.  The whale with the bent top fin is the biggest whale at Sea World San Antonio.  His father actually weighs 12,000 pounds, so they are expecting him to be even bigger!

It's amazing how they can get their entire body out
of the water and flip in the air.  They are moving at great speeds under the water to do this!

The Shamu show would not be complete if he didn't
splash you.  That's A LOT of water!!
We stayed out of the splash (drench) zone.

Texas Land Cut

I really should be doing things like unpacking boxes and organizing all of our stuff, but... I enjoy blogging and don't like to fall behind.  So, I will put off the unpacking and organizing for now.  :)

Last weekend Andy went to Texas Land Cut for a fishing trip.  I don't know a lot about the place except that once in Padre you have to travel by boat to get to the cabin, there's good fishing, and the trip was free for Andy.  The cabin that Andy stayed in used to be a camp house for troubled boys.  It was a place this gentleman took teenage boys to help redirect them to a better path of life and to help them make better choices about their life.  This particular cabin actually has it's own natural spring/aquifer so the fresh water for cooking and bathing does not have to be shipped in from somewhere else.  There is electricity but cell phone reception is spotty.  I am sure Andy will read this and probably have to correct me because I can't remember every little detail he told me about this camphouse.

Pier and camphouse

Andy went with our realtor Curtis (he helped us find our house here in Katy) and another mutual friend of theirs.  They left on Friday afternoon and came back late Sunday evening.  They fished whenever they could, early morning, morning, night, afternoon.  You name it, they were fishing.  Andy said there were quite a few fellow Aggies on the trip!  Whoop!

Andy's friends... Curtis and Nathan

Andy actually caught a total of six fish, all speckled trout, but all of the fish caught were put into a group collection and then divided evenly among everyone on the trip.  On Sunday they could wait around extra for someone to fillet the fish and divvy it up.  However, Andy and his friends were ready to head back home so they didn't wait on any fish.  I was a little bummed because I was really hoping he would have brought enough fish home for a fish fry.

Night fishing

Curtis decided to take a nap... on the boat!  LOL

Nathan threw is fish on the dock and this is
how it landed.  Too funny to not share!

Credit Card Woes

Since we've been married, we have used a Bank of America MasterCard.  They are extremely overprotective about fraud and making sure that we are the ones using our card and making the purchases.  However, instead of using technology (like text messages, a phone call, or email) to contact us when a "weird" or fraudulent purchase is being made, they just decline the card.  This has happened to us several times, and it's quite embarrassing.  Especially when we put thousands of dollars on our card each month and pay it off completely each month.  I understand the protection and am thankful for it.  But it's a bit much when the actual owner of the card can't even use the card.  If we make a purchase outside of our usual purchasing area, they shut the card down.  Andy changed our address on the cards before we moved to Katy, but it still didn't help.  They shut our card down after we made the large purchase for our flooring.  We never received any notification that they were going to shut it down until it was declined that same evening when I was purchasing our new gas grill.  Long story short, they have issued us 3 new credit card numbers in the last week because of all of this safety protection. 

We are finally fed up and are switching banks/cards.  We are going to a Capital One Visa because they offer 1.5% cash back as opposed to the 1% cash back that other cards offer.  I really wanted a Chase MasterCard since we now bank with Chase and they actually use the new technology available for banking.  But I didn't win.  Honestly, I don't really care.  Andy does the finances for our family, and he did the research and decided this was the best card for us.

Apparently, you can personalize your credit card and this is how Andy designed my card.  So cute!

Reunion and Other Things

This past weekend I had my ten-year class reunion.  It was nice!  We had about 15 people show up out of the 33 we graduated with.  I guess that's a good turn out, but I don't know.  It really surprised me who did not show up, but oh well their loss.  I thought it was interesting that the same cliques from high school still hung out together, but at the same time it makes sense.

We had the reunion at the Green Dickson Park in Shiner.  Thankfully the weather was cooler since we had it at one of the outdoor pavilions.  We asked people to bring snack food to munch on and the class officers bought a cake for everyone.  I ordered the cake from Brookshire Brothers in Hallettsville and it was very delicious!  However, the lady that took my order over the phone must not have fully understood what I wanted written on the cake despite repeating the wording back to me correctly.

Do you notice the problem?

Yep, apparently we graduated in 2013 and were already celebrating our ten-year reunion!  I did the best I could to fix it....

Here are some pics of us prior to the reunion.

You know I love selfies!

I really love my puppy dog.  She has such a personality.  I took these pics one morning because she was being so sweet.

And then I get the cheesy smile!  So sweet!

Media Room (aka Man Room)

Currently, our media room is the most complete room in our house.  Andy absolutely loves it!!  I think it's awesome, and our big screen TV looks huge (the picture doesn't do it justice) since the room is so cozy.  We will definitely be spending a lot of time in this room.


Love the gray walls! 
Love everything about it!

Andy had to have his first beer in the "man" room!

Laminate Wood Flooring

Andy and I chose to use Lumber Liquidators for our laminate wood floors.  Little did we know, our installation process ended up being more work on our part than I had ever expected.  But before I get to that drama I do want to say, we absolutely love our floors!!  They look beautiful.  They are the perfect color.  They are the perfect look for our house.  We love them!

Now, would I use Lumber Liquidators again?  I don't know.  Would I recommend them to a friend?  I don't know.  Would I purchase my flooring from them again?  Yes, they have great prices.  Would I have them install my floors again?  I don't know.  Here's the deal... I don't know if it's the company in general or if we had trouble simply because of the specific store we used.  With chain businesses, they all have different managers for each individual store so the problems could be because of the individual store we chose.  Had we picked another store, we may have had no problems whatsoever.  I am not 100% against Lumber Liquidators, but I am hesitant to say they are the best.

Ordering our flooring was very easy.  Our flooring arrived in the time frame they told us.  We picked up the flooring ourselves to save the delivery fee and that was a very easy process too.  So far, so good.  The installation manager came to our house to measure everything to make sure had ordered enough flooring.  That process went smoothly as well.  We scheduled Friday, July 5th for the installation crew to come to our house to check the floors if they were level.  If they were not level, then they would need to put down leveling compound.  Andy received a phone call around 9:15 from the installation manager that the crew would be at our house after they finished up a project at another house.  We were okay with this because we needed to finish up our painting before they arrived.  So, 1:00 rolls around and still no installation crew.  Then 4:00 rolls around and now we're getting impatient, so Andy calls the manager.  We find out that the crew did not show up to work that morning and that no one is coming to our house.  Andy is livid!  Why did you not call me when you knew your crew did not show up to work?  Seriously?  What if we had not been teachers and one of us had taken off of work because we needed to be at the house?  Very frustrating.

Long story short, we were told a new crew would show up on Saturday after they finished another project.  They show up around 2:00pm.  We ended up speaking to several managers at Lumber Liquidators because it's Saturday and our floors were supposed to be complete so we could pick up our new furniture.  We were told that the crew would finish the floors completely.  And they did until 8:30 that night.  They did not take the trash with them because they did not have the appropriate vehicle, and they did not caulk our shoe molding.  I called the next day (Sunday) to ask Lumber Liquidators to send someone to dispose of the trash and they said they would send someone.  We were gone to my class reunion, and when we got home our trash had not been picked up and it was blown all over our neighbor's yard.  How embarrassing!  So, I call back on Monday and explain my story and how frustrated I am about them telling me they are going to do something and it not being done.  Andy is... well... pissed.  There's no other way to describe it.  We spent $3500 on flooring and did not receive $3500 worth of service.  Andy ended up driving to the store to return the unused leveling compound and spoke with the manager.  They discussed several of our complaints and the manager decided he would refund us some money to help make things right.  We were concerned about some soft spots in our flooring and the installation manager came to our house the next day to verify that the soft spots were normal with laminate flooring.  He did reassure us that what we felt was normal and that as the flooring acclimated more to the house the spots may go away completely.  Oh yeah, someone did finally come get the trash and dispose of it.

Here are some pictures of our floors in different lighting.

Painting Walls

We wanted to paint a wall in our bedroom, a wall in the living room, and the entire media room.  We waited until we pulled up all the carpet for the flooring installation.  I didn't realize painting was that tiring, but I've never painted that much either.  Thankfully none of the walls in our house are white.  Andy and I vowed to never have just plain white walls in a house again.  We just like the light beige color for walls so much better.  They just seem much warmer than white walls.  Now, there are some room designs that I have seen recently with white walls and it's beautiful.  I just don't want white walls in the entire house.

Andy painted the blue wall in our bedroom.  The brown curtains are absolutely hideous, in my opinion.  They were the curtains left by the previous owners.  I will definitely be replacing them, so try to ignore them in the picture.  We had a light blue wall in our bedroom at our old house, and I definitely wanted something darker.  This color turned out perfectly!

Andy wanted light gray walls for the media room or man room as he calls it.  We love, love, love, love the wall color in this room.  Definitely one of my favorites!!  I think it is Andy's favorite wall color, and I know it's his favorite room in the house.

I am not a huge fan of loud, bright color.  However, I went to a friend's house and she has a Tiffany's blue color wall in her living room.  I fell in love!  I told Andy that in our living room I wanted a bright, loud color.  I told him that I wanted people to see the wall and think "wow, that is unexpected but it looks great."  And boy did I pick a loud and bright color!!  It's called Granny Smith Apple...

While we painted, Andy kept singing "Casa Ole..."

It has dulled significantly over the past few days and looks fabulous!  It is no longer a lime green color, but actually looks like a Granny Smith Apple.  I love it!!  I need to take a picture of what it looks like now.