Life After London

Well, in just a few weeks, I'll have my final grades from London. I turned in my research paper last week after having to force myself to finish. If you follow me on Twitter, you saw how terrible it was having to write that thing. I also sent off my book review for the class.

Once those grades come in, London is officially done. It's sad. Every time my mind is empty, I go back to London. People keep asking if I'm going back next year and while I'd love to, it wouldn't be the same. I'd go expecting the exact same people, situations, events, and it wouldn't be that way. I'd want it to be the same people just a second time.

My London MixBook came in, so I look through that quite often. It's like a digital scrapbook. It's 50 pages long and gorgeous.

 Every single thing reminds me of London. I had a game on my phone where I had to guess brands.

Three of the brands I had to identify. I miss all of those. 

Speaking of Milka, the local Market Street sells it! I got my dad hooked on it. It's so amazing. It's just a tiny piece of London back home.

Mostly, all I've been doing is school and theatre. I have three tests this week, but one allows a full printer sheet full of notes and the other is History. Botany is the only scary test. West Side Story is about to end, and after that, I'll get a bit of a break. I haven't gone anywhere fun, so that's been boring. Luckily, the next few weeks have some cool things! I have this app that counts down to different events, so I've been watching closely as some numbers go down.

In less than a week, I'm going to my first convention in Dallas. It's called Fan Days and JOHN BARROWMAN will be there. I'm getting a picture with him. I am so excited. Tom Felton will also be there as well as the Glenn from Walking Dead and Ron Perlman from Hellboy. #nerdstatus

I've also got some family trips coming up that'll be fun. We've got our annual cruise and our annual spring break trip coming up soon, so that's all getting planned. This year, we're cruising out of LA. It'll be the first time we go there, so I think we'll leave early and spent a day hanging out there. We'll go to Puerto Vallarta on the cruise! There's an island I want to visit called Las Marietas. It has a hidden portion that's beautiful.

I'm also so lucky to be able to go to Passion Houston this February! Passion is usually only in Atlanta. It's Louie Giglio's church and this year, it's coming to Houston as well and I'm going to the conference! I saw Louie in London at Hillsong Conf alongside Chris Tomlin. Well, guess what? Chris Tomlin will be at Passion and so will Judah Smith. I wonder how many other college kids can say "I saw you in London and in Houston within the course of one year!" Houston is about 8 hours away, so it's isn't bad at all. My oldest (not age, but length of friendship) is going with me, so that's exciting. We haven't spent time together since the middle of high school when we stopped having classes together. It'll be a great weekend! 

Europe in 600 days isn't 100% confirmed yet, but it's happening. I just need to sign up. I went to Costa Rica on an EF tour when I was a sophomore and this is with the same company. My former newspaper teacher is leading the group. It's a two week tour to Berlin, Prague, and Paris. It'll also go to Dresden, which I'm most excited about because I learned a lot about that city in my WWII classes.

Anyways, I just wanted to post something so that there wasn't over a month between updates. Another will come next week after Fan Days and possibly after the Halloween party. Also after trips, of course. And whenever something fun happens or I cook something neat. Or just when I feel like typing something up.

The fair is in town!

Several times a year, the carnival sets up shop in the mall parking lot. Once a year, the fair comes to town. The fair is cooler because instead of just rides, the MPEC exhibit hall is full of local booths and stuff. I'll look at all of that on Saturday when I go to watch my sisters dance.

Tonight was wristband night, so a group of friends mostly from West Side Story (Hannah, Bonnie, Mickey, Patricia, Margaret, Caitlyn, and Jacob) and I went were able to ride everything without tickets.

Once we finally made it to the midway, (several friends had to stop and enter a car contest) we were distracted by black bears.

When I was finally able to drag the gang away from the bears, we hit the traditional (for me) first ride, The Spider.

Believe it or not, Margaret had never ever been to a fair or carnival before!

After The Spider, we rode the ride that looks really boring, but is actually terrible.

Don't ride this ride with someone you aren't close to.

He showed up late with a full stomach, so he held our stuff. Thanks mom!

We were going to ride the YOYO next, but didn't. We did get a group picture though!

We rode the Ferris Wheel instead. I was with Bonnie, Hannah, and Jacob. Not really important, but kind of. We got around once as they filled it, but then we got to the bottom and made us get off. "One side was heavier than the other and the wheel wouldn't ride that way." That makes you feel safe!

Us that were kicked off rode the YOYO while we waited for the Ferris Wheel. We got to watch the bear show! It was so adorable. They had little chairs they sat in and they walked on a barrel and they climbed a dog agility ramp and there was a baby bear!

Our only view from the top.

We decided to hit the big rides next. Margaret's goal was the Fire Ball. It's that circle in the picture above. Instead we rode the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Her first time!

We got the slow pod...

After the Tilt-A-Whirl and some others and some talking and walking and fun having, we split for what became the last ride. Bonnie, Jacob, Hannah, Margaret and myself rode the rocket ride that looks like the Dumbo ride from Disney, but it isn't.

Too much for them

That ride was awful. I mean, it was fun, but it was awful awful awful.

After that, we all (minus myself) got our funnel cakes and it was time to leave. We went and sat at Sonic for a couple hours and shut the place down.

Paleo Lasagna

Hey guys! I'm going to start posting recipes here on occasion too. Last night, my dad made tortillas and loved them. We had the idea to layer them into a lasagna, so we decided to try that today!

Ingredients:

• 6 eggs
• 3 teaspoon melted ghee (sub: melted coconut oil)
• 3/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup arrowroot powder
• 3 teaspoon coconut flour
• 3 pinches of salt
• 2 lbs ground beef or turkey
• Tomato sauce
• Cheese of choice
• Parmesan if desired

First, you'll have to make the tortilla recipe here: Simple Paleo Tortillas. The ingredients in the link are for one batch. Above are for the three you'll need for the lasagna.

We were able to make five tortillas per batch and made three batches.

After that, while you let the tortillas cool, you'll cook up your meat. If there are two people working together, one can cook meat and one can cook tortillas! We used ground beef, but ground turkey works too.

Once you have the meat cooked and the tortillas mostly cooled, grease the pan and start layering. We did three layers of noodles with meat and sauce in each one. On top, we layered mozzarella. I know the cheese isn't really Paleo, so switch it up with goat cheese or no cheese!

We put it in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes.

It was delicious!!

Pictures of the process are below.

Those aren't my hands. That's my dad whisking the batter. I don't have man hands.

The tortillas and the meat

We cut three in half, bordered the outside, and then put two in the center. Each layer looked like this.

We layered the meat on top of the noodles and spread it out.

On top of the meat, we put some tomato sauce. 

More shells. We put meat and sauce on top of this as well.

The final layer only had sauce on top before we added the cheese.

Tons and tons of mozzarella!

My dad holding the dish before we cooked it. Here, we were just hoping that it would taste alright.

After

We loved it! Even my super picky sister ate it. You could also add vegetables to it if you wanted. I suggested asparagus, but my family said no.

New Mexico or Bust

*Long post warning*

Hey you guys! I found something to post about sooner than I thought I would. I went to New Mexico for a few days! I haven't been since the church used to take ski trips every year TEN YEARS AGO. We rented a cabin in Angel Fire, so that'll be exciting! It's supposed to be crazy nice weather, but they said that about London too.

We took day trips to Taos and the top of a mountain, but mostly stayed in the house

It took 9 and a half hours to get there. That's seriously more time than London.

I'm going to divide this up into the different days I spent there.

Day 1

Today, we left town around 8 am. We made our first major stop in Amarillo, Texas.

Ice cream time

 We stopped at Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo. It's on Historic Route 66. None of us had ever been before, so we figured "why not?"

Cadillac Ranch

I pretended to paint

An older gentleman saw us pretending to paint for pictures and gave us a bag of slightly used bottles. He said everyone needed to leave their mark on history.

Dad's idea. I think my shirt inspired him. 

Family photo

After the ranch, we stopped for lunch at Red Robin (yummm.)

We brought Kacie's friend Peyton along on the trip. She made lots of faces and caused a lot of secondhand embarrassment.

Those are mountains!

We got to our house around 5 pm. It was 3 floors! The ground floor had a bunk bed room and a games room. I was on the top floor with sister Daryl. We had our own bathroom and loft area.

It was so pretty and big! 

There were stick tee-pees built in the yard

On some rocks outside of our house

Always dancing

It was raining when we got there, but that didn't stop us from heading back down the mountain (an eight minute drive) and going to get food.

Healthy, huh?

After we got back home, us kids started a game of Monopoly that continued the whole trip. The first night I bought Park Place and Boardwalk, so I really won. We kept playing though.

Day 2

Today, I woke up really early. Lucky, because I was able to witness the first casualty. A hummingbird smacked into the window and died. 

We explored a bit, but it was too muddy for much

This chipmunk visited us several times. We call him Theodore.

Today, we went to Taos, another ski town nearby. They have a pueblo that we wanted to see called Taos Pueblo. It's an Indian Reservation.

The church

We took a guided tour around the pueblo. The young guy who toured us said he was going to college next year. After the tour, we all bought jewelry from a lady in an adobe shop. She said she makes it all herself.

An oven and an adobe house

The cemetery

Sisters

Their water source 

The main house

After seeing the Pueblo, we ate at lunch and visited a market in the center of town. Then, we headed to the Rio Gorge Bridge to see where the Rio Grande is.

Each night, we ate dinner at the house. We had burgers and chicken and burgers.

There was also a hummingbird feeder that was always attracting the pretty birds

Rain again

Our house was a ski-in/out house, so there was a ski slope two minutes away. We walked over and enjoyed the view. There wasn't a ski-lift, so I'm thinking that was the ski-in part and a bit further down, it meets up with a main slop.

This pretty girl visited every morning and evening. Her name was Zuni and she lived next door.

This is the house that Kacie and Peyton built of sticks. In the end, it ended up with a fence as well.

They played "Katniss"

This night, we all sat around and watched the Teen Choice Awards in the living room. I didn't want Justin Bieber to win, but he did.

Day 3

Today we woke up with the devastating news that a good friend had passed away that morning. Andrew Duncan was only 20 and was killed in a car crash north of Amarillo with four others. The entire past two days Facebook and Twitter have been filled with memories. My favorite was when he broke a door during Narnia because he thought it would be smart to take his entrance for his bow through it. It fell and busted and he got in trouble. He also liked to poke my broken nose during CATS.

On this day, we were planning on taking family pictures. It definitely took a lot more to get us smiling. 

We rode the ski-lift to the top of the mountain, a 15 minute ride. There was a bar that you could lower if you wanted to. We did. On the way up, we waved at the few people heading down. On the way down, we waved at a ton of people, mostly mountain bikers, headed up.

The scariest part was unloading from the lift because you had to lift the bar

View down the side slope

See what I mean about getting us to laugh?

We got hot chocolate from the cafe on the mountain after the pictures. We were outside at a table when the waitress comes out with a bag of Doritos and dumps them on the ground. She said the chipmunk likes Fritos better, but Doritos work for getting him out of the cafe.

I wasn't supposed  to have my phone out on the ski-lift. Sorry mom. I didn't listen.

After finishing at the summit, we went back home for lunch. We lounged around the house and did some building on the fort.

At one point today, we also drove to Red River, but there wasn't much there. We had coffee and then headed back to Angel Fire.

For dinner, we went back into town because there was a pub that was only opened for dinners that had a ton of gluten-free options.

I had a pizza and a brownie. It was amazing.

I was hoping the pub would be London-y, but it wasn't. It was a restaurant.

Day 4

Today we headed home. We listened to Radio Disney the entire way and stopped for ice cream at a Dairy Queen.

For lunch, we stopped in Amarillo at "The Big Texan."

The restaurant is on Route 66 so it's a huge spectacle. The food was good though!

It's a novelty food challenge restaurant.

 Man versus Food did the challenge and won!

If you eat a 72 oz steak in an hour with sides, it's free. If not, it's $72.

My dad wouldn't let us do the challenge. Party pooper. 

After Amarillo, we headed home. It was a faster drive than the way there, but still long. I listened to 58 songs without skipping!

It was a good trip and I hope it turns into a tradition.