So.. My mum doesn't know how to use anything technological.. I guess that's being a bit unfair, she can use some things but anything too "21st century" and she gives up. Like her first touch screen phone, only five years later than everyone else, but no, she went back to a flip up old thing for years, but anyway, that's not the point in this blog. I'm away quite often, and I realise there may be others techno-challenged like my mother so this blog is for them to see :)
We are currently in the USA. (We being me and dad) Been here for over a week now, and the weather has only gotten hotter. Mental. Though I think I'm becoming accustomed to it as 30 degrees seemed cool to me today.. Anyway, I'll do a quick run down of my previous events!
We first stayed with my rents almost family, the Tolemans. Coral and mum were best friends way back and we met Val in Florida a few years back. We spent Sunday in Oklahoma with Val and her family before going back to Denton, tx. Both ladies were excited to have some chocolate hobnobs as you can see!
This is my favourite photo of the day! Me and Karis chilling in the pool. Felt like I had my own little sister! And two other brothers Mark and Ian :) It was a fun day! We also went to the memorial in the city centre of when a man blue up his van outside a building with hundreds of offices and also a nursery. It was pretty touching, especially seeing the seats of everyone who died, big ones for the adults and small ones for the young children who were killed. We also went and watched Neeya and Ayden singing with their church choir as they were on a music tour which was going through Oklahoma city.
This is a divide from where the picture was taken, at the top of it read 9:01 and the other read 9:03. The water in the middle is there to separate the two as a structure for 9:02 as that was when the building was blown up. At 9:01 everything was fine, but then by 9:03 people were already alarmed by the sudden noise of explosion, smoke and destruction that was about to take many people's lives, but also bring a city - old and young - together.
This is a picture of the gardens where 168 chairs sit. There is nine rows, one including a row of 19 tiny children chairs for those children who were killed in the nursery that day. Each chair has the name of the a person who died on it, but three have two. The reason for this being there was three pregnant women killed on this day, and it only seemed right to put both mother and child names on the memorial chair.
On a more happy thought, this was from when saw the choir sing. It was a great night of singing aswell as Neeya doing a skit with another guy from her church. They did a skit by the skit guys, "God's Chisel" While it was funny, it had a serious point to it too! Give it a watch !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhfUzodLRvk
So then it came to Monday. I didn't do much on Monday..
We got some AMAZING tasting peach ice cream and sat on the rockers while dad and Tom sorted the peaches and pictures. We then went for lunch on the outskirts of Calloway gardens and also went to see a couple of sights including that of a statue of President Roosevelt. Some of the views were beautiful. When we got back that day, we went to Nancy's brothers house to chill at the pool, like we did last year. Only I was minus my friends. Regardless, it was fun!
We met up with friends of my mum and dad from when they were just recently married ( whillllllle ago) We went to a sea food restaurant for dinner where - no mum, i didn't eat more fish - I had a chicken salad. It was goooood! I was kinda gutted I didn't get to eat more gator, however unexpectadly we did get to see one in the swamp close by. We had dinner and then got a photo outside the restaurant :)
On tuesday we travelled to New Orleans. I have never EVER seen swamp land - well, as far as I'm aware of anyway. But for a couple hundred miles, that's all we saw.. Either large tree areas - in swamp - or massive empty areas - in swamp. It would be very common for hundreds of gators to live in these areas, so I certainly wasn't keen on stopping. 
after a lot of driving round the same block over and over, we got our luggage in and decided to go out for dinner and also ready to see some other sights. I had my camera at the ready :) Though, a lesson I learned very very quickly was don't ever wear long sleaves in this kind of weather. I had expected it to be a bit cooler, but no, it certainly wasn't.We went to a really popular restaraunt called Molates! Would HIGHLY reccomend it if you're even New Orleans.. It's popularity shows by the 45 minute wait we had before we were seated! However, I could tell the waiter had a soft spot for me as he got us seated as quickly as he could, recognised we were the folk who had phoned in earlier and had also got us a table as close to the stage as possible. It was 
cute. There was little kids up on the dance floor at one point and the band played the birdie song and everyone danced to it. It was funny. We ordered a platter full of rank sounding food; alligator, craw-fish tails, meat pies, stuffed mushrooms, frogs legs, tilapia, calamari. However, it didn't taste all that bad. Yes mum, I ate fish by choice, be proud! But that doesn't give you authorisation to make me regular dishes of fish, it was a one off. But anyway, the
alligator was my favourite. It tasted kinda like pork.. I think. We stayed for a couple hours, enjoying our meal and listening to some original Cajun music by the live band. It consisted of a a couple fiddle players who also played accordion and guitar, a drummer and a bass player. As i was saying earlier, I definitely think the waiter had a think for me, especially when I look like this. As we walked back to our hotel I couldn't help but feel ever so slightly conscious of the people walking among us. I knew I was safe, but I still felt anxious walking past certain streets at lanes. It was a warm walk home though, with some nice views. 
On Wednesday we spent the day travelling to Mobile, travelling through down town Mobile We saw A LOT of down towns here's and down town theres. where we stayed with a couple we met ten years ago in Elgin (where I used to live) They were on an outreach team from the University Cecile is the dean at. I spent most of my day by the pool at the university. It was surprisingly less boring than I thought it would be. i'd forgotten my book so had been lazing on a lounger for about an hour when a whole bunch of kids came to the pool. They were from a camp that was running at the university. Around 500 kids from churches in America. Suddenly, I felt a splatter of water jump onto my warm skin. As cooling and relaxing it was, when I realised after the second blow of cold water, that these weren't accidents I sat up and threw back the bean bags of water. Only to get back into position and be hit by another. I laughed and tossed the bean bag back at them until it happened again. One of the camp councillors stepped in at this point and gave them into trouble. Shortly after I was hit by a large red ball, this time apologies were thrown at me, I accepted, laughed it off and returned to my lounger. I jumped in the pool shortly after to cool off and then went home with my dad. We lounged about at home, ate dinner and then I went to bed, with THIS staring at me. It's a lovely doll, don't get me wrong.. But I hate when you get the feeling they are just staring at you.
Okay, I guess we didn't do NOTHING on Monday.. We travelled.. A good few hours we travelled and arrived in Houston, tx where we we stayed with some of my parents friends. They had a son and daughter, who were younger than me. All three of us didn't do much chatting, we all sat on our laptops 
I amen't very good at travelling lightly, or tidy. hen we left the Tolemans I borrowed a number of Adventure in Odyssey cd's to play in the car. I also had my book & bear to accompany me on the long drives we were about to encounter. No matter where I go, a mess always get organised in the areas around me. We were only in Houston one night so we didn't do much site seeing. We did go to a BBQ restaurant which was goodddd. We were given our 2 glasses" in mason jars.. they were mahoosive! I also had my usual mayo to eat with my chicken burger. & chips. YUMMMEEEE. Also tried a few hot sauces.. safe to say I didnt put them on my food.. I'll just stick to medium hot at nandos thankyou very much. For our drinks, 
