day trips & dog park rendezvous

Weeeellll, since Deron fulfilled his jury duty on Tuesday without getting selected, we packed up and headed to Beaumont on Wednesday for our oil leak repair….but it turns out the mechanic was ALREADY on vacation! So, our repair has been delayed by a week, and we had to turn around and go back to Livingston. At least now the mechanic’s vacation won’t fall in the middle of repair, so he can get it done in one fell swoop!

Other than the trip to Beaumont, the rest of our week consisted of an interesting church service on Easter Sunday (comprised of worship, a funny video (kids told their voice-over version of the Easter story while adults acted it out in costumes with silly wigs), a couple of songs by the kids, a song accompanied by sign language/dance, and a brief message and altar call), and spending a couple of afternoons hanging out in the little RV park’s dog park getting to know some of the older folks who live here most or all of the time.

The only other highlight of the week was our trip on Monday to a cute town called The Woodlands, about an hour away from Livingston. The town is well-named; it is literally full of trees. You can’t even see the businesses from the street because of the vast number of trees that line the road. (Unfortunately I didn’t get great pics of all the trees as our windshield was super dirty.)

We stopped at Camping World and another RV place to look at recliners, hit up Discount Tire for a quick tire repair, and then headed to Velvet Taco for lunch, a place that Deron’s sister Stephanie had recommended. And oh man are we glad she did! It’s such a unique place – basically the chef has taken all the dishes he loves, from all cultures, and put them into tacos. Korean fried rice, chicken tikka masala, falafel… the list goes on and on. Of course we couldn’t try them all, so we settled on the angus brisket, Cuban pig, chicken and waffles, and Mexicali shrimp. All were so so delicious! If you’re in Texas, I highly recommend you hit up Velvet Taco.

Our trip through The Woodlands continued with stops at Costco, Home Depot, Trader Joes, and Goodwill. By the time we got back to the coach, we were beat, so we picked up dinner at another Texas novelty – our first time at Whataburger. I’m not sure what I expected, but it’s pretty good!

Since I talked a lot about Livingston when we were here in the fall, and there’s not much more going on here, I thought I’d just fill you in on how our foodie life is going in the coach. We’re slowly but surely learning the ins and outs of our coach kitchen, and starting to make some of our favorite meals again. We don’t have fancy dishes, and we’re not super worried about plating, but the food is yummy! Here are the ones I took pics of:

praise & prayer

Spending so much time with friends and family in San Diego did my heart so much good! But now that we’re out on the road again, the separation is feeling much more real than it did when we started this journey in July. My brain is really trying to wrap itself around being away from that community permanently – and it’s hard! I keep thinking “next time we’re home…” I’m just not good at imagining what it might be like when San Diego’s not my home and I live in an entirely new place. I’m praying that God would fill me with excitement about the new people I’ll meet and come to love. Would you pray with me?