We were off for the weekend with tickets to the BYU/TCU football game. Even though BYU was going to lose, we decided that it had been way too long since we had seen a college game, and we were still going to have fun.

But before we got there, we had to see what all the fuss was about and check out Buc-ee’s in Madisonville. I thought to myself: it must be quite the store if people are wearing their t-shirts and they have billboards over 100 miles away from the nearest store.

What did we think? It’s worth the hype. Holy mega convenience store! They have the most amazing snacks and food that anyone could ever want on a road trip.  Endless varieties of trail mix, beaver nuggets, candy, Icee’s, kolaches, homemade bread, fudge, chocolate covered nuts, you name it.  They have over 30 varieties of their own jerky which you can order by the pound, including deer and elk and other game.  Then they have a bakery with brownies, kolaches, and yummy sugar cookies.  They have real food like pulled pork sandwiches and fajitas, and other grilled options, banana cream pie, cheese and meat samplers, and you get the point.  The bathrooms are huge and super clean.  They sell Texas memorabilia, dutch ovens, smokers, and a building next door with outdoor cabin furniture. What a welcoming site on the road!

Once we made it to Dallas we ate downtown at a yummy Thai restaurant, right by House of Blues, and walked around to the American Airlines stadium.  Which was pretty fun since Dallas has a way better night life than Houston.  People are actually walking around downtown. And the AA stadium has mega huge TV’s in the courtyard.  We stayed at the Residence Inn in Dallas.  Close proximity to the yummy fabric store, City Craft!

Here’s the loot:

Enchino cameras and glasses! I’ve been dying to get my hands on this line for months but couldn’t justify paying $18/yd. I think half yards will do…for now.

Michael Miller and Alexander Henry

Castle Peeps

I finally started a collection of Kona solids

I was amazed that City Craft still had the whole collection of Hope Valley!

The owner of the store gave me some helpful info about starting a shop and said that there is a shop in the Heights called Sew Crafty! I drove halfway across town today only to find out that they are closed on Mondays. :(

Next door to City Craft is a shop called Paper & Chocolate. Intrigued by the combination, we decided to venture in. And found this:

Fran’s chocolate! My absolute favorite chocolate. Made in Seattle. Fran’s gray salt thins are the perfect end to a delicious meal. Unfortunately they melted in my purse at the football game…but they can still be salvaged!

The grey salt caramels are also heavenly

The store had some cute personalized stationary/ gift paper and cute journals.

Next up: Fort Worth

We loved Fort Worth and the cool architecture.

Every day they have a historical cattle drive and they walk the cattle through the street.  Unfortunately we missed it.

Kids could get pictures taken on longhorns, they had a mechanical bull, and yummy places to eat.  Plenty of saloons and  western stores. We ran into some friends from our ward who were also going to the game.

We wished we could have stayed longer, but the game was starting!!!

It took us FOREVER to find a place to park and we were very grumpy, but we made it.

There were BYU fans everywhere, in our fan section, and intermingled in the stands. Unfortunately we were facing the sun the whole game and got sunburned. We lost, but still had a fun time.

We went to the state fair in Dallas and met up with Fernando’s friends, Wynnter and Jason.  Jason was all about trying the fried concoctions. Ever wondered what deep fried butter, chocolate, coke, and cookie dough tastes like?

The winners: fried butter and fried cookie dough were yummy.  The coke was lame since it was all absorbed into the batter.

Of course we had to have roasted corn

We ventured into the car show where they had a giant foosball table.  Too bad it was taken over by kids.

The only ride we made it on was the ferris wheel. I got super scared at the top and had to gaze into Fernando’s eyes to distract myself.  I don’t like heights!

The next day we got to take the VIP tour of the Cowboy’s stadium

The building is so huge, we couldn’t fit it all within our lens. And we were parked across the street!

The tour is a must if you get the chance.  We got to see the owners suite, various suites and lounges, all of the locker rooms, and you get to go on the field and throw the football around. The tour guide explains a lot of the symbols in the architecture and the art, and neat facts.

wow, what a gorgeous building. Over 3,000 flat screens! That’s a record.

pretending I’m a Cowboy fan

Two free pictures were included with our tour.  I had to include it since its the only one of us together. Our scanner won’t scan so I had to take a photo of the picture

The cheerleader’s locker room was a lot more interesting than the Cowboy’s.  Even I thought so.  I thought there would have been pictures of the players, but there wasn’t any.

He didn’t want to do it. Haha. Doesn’t he look awkward?

The mega Mitsubishi. Guess who took this one…well, it wasn’t me.

While in Arlington, we ate lunch at Piranha Killer Sushi. Such good food! Sadly we ate it all before we thought to take a picture. Amazing yakisoba chicken and Forget About It crawfish sushi rolls. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

 

We also checked out some sweet neighborhoods in a city called Highland Park, close to Dallas, designed by the guy who started Beverly Hills

This mansion is more like a palace. We Zillowed it at $28 million.

yet another picture of myself.  Can you tell who had the camera this weekend?

The surrounding houses were not quite so huge, but still very massive

I couldn’t fit the whole house in the picture with my iPhone camera

On our way back to Houston, we had to stop by Wahoo’s Fish Taco in the Woodlands.  The first one in the Houston area! (You people in Austin are lucky, you have 3!)

 

Good California memories, although Ferd said it wasn’t the same since he wasn’t by the beach and wearing board shorts.

After viewing an ad about lake front properties for sale in the Southwest Magazine for dirt cheap, Fernando decided that he wanted to check the area out for investment purposes. So we contacted a realtor and headed out to Corsicana, specifically the Richland Chambers Lake. It was a nice, up-and-coming vacation area located about an hour south of Dallas and 2.5 hrs north of Houston. However, we decided that now is not the time to buy vacation property–we don’t have a first house to live in, or a boat.

The best thing about Corsicana was the Russell Stover chocolate outlet. The store was huge and super cheap, with tons of chocolates and candies and Blue Bell ice cream. Unfortunately, we couldn’t indulge too much because it would have melted in the car while we played at Six Flags.

I had never been to a Six Flags before, so I was pretty excited to see what it was like, and was glad to hear that they have some huge roller coasters. However, I did get a little nervous when we drove up and I saw and heard the screams coming from the Titan. Fernando insisted that this coaster was weak in comparison to the one he rode in New Jersey last year, although he couldn’t wait to get on it. But I insisted that we take a warm up ride on something little before we attack the big one. However, I later regretted my decision after waiting 45 mins for a kiddie ride. Overall, Six Flags was fun. I thought it was a little crowded, but Ferd informed me that waiting 30-45 mins for a ride is actually not bad. After six rides and massive headaches, we decided to head to Dallas to BJ’s Brewery–the best Chicago deep dish pizzeria–and indulged ourselves in a delicious cookies and cream Pizookie.

The next day, we checked out the Texas state fair, which doubled as a car show. Highlights were the Nissan GT-R, the retro Dodge Challenger, and we checked out the Hyundai Genesis. The rest of the fair was pretty comparable to the Puyallup Fair in Washington, only cleaner and on a bigger scale. One of my favorite parts as always, was the food. We saw everything from deep fried latte’s to giant turkey legs. We settled on frozen chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick and gyro’s.

We didn’t get to see much of Dallas, but we did observe that is has a huge smog issue; the climate is wonderful with very little humidity; it has very nice roads and a good freeway system; it was not dry and brown like people said it would be, and the zoning was nice which kept the nice areas away from riff raff. Overall, we could see ourselves there in twenty years if/when Ferd manages to make it all the way to the corporate headquarters. :)