A Weekend with Erika

My old roommate Erika drove down from Dallas to spend the weekend with us! It was so much fun. Erika is leaving on a mission to Brazil in 3 weeks.
Erika got here Friday afternoon. We met up with Ann at the quilt show downtown. I must confess I was expecting a small cultural hall-sized show, with a few quilts. I was so wrong. The quilt show was huge. It filled up the whole convention center! There were tons of people there and lots of really incredible quilts. It was really neat. Thanks again Ann.
After dinner, we decided to try out the Kemah Boardwalk, as Steve has seemed really excited about it. We enjoyed walking around in the beautiful weather, fun atmosphere, and watching street performers.We also enjoyed the shark benches and catfish feeding spots. We didn't feed them (unless you count them trying to eat Mark's spit). We topped the adventure off with a ride on the Boardwalk Bullet roller coaster. It had been so long since any of us had been on a roller coaster so we forgot what to expect. and we all still like them.Saturday morning Mark ran the Company Cup, a Baytown 5K for the employees of sponsoring companies. (I'll post about this later).
The afternoon was pretty calm. We went to a Vietnamese noodle house for lunch. Thanks again Erika. After lunch we attempted to make caramel apples. I've been craving to make these for a long time, so thanks Er for doing them with me. The caramel turned out really well, just a bit soft. Instead of dipping the apples in the caramel, we drizzled the caramel over the upside-down apples. We had problems with the chocolate. It wasn't runny enough to drip, so we had to put it on like frosting. So the apples don't look very professional but still taste good!
Saturday night we went to the ward talent show. It was very long but entertaining. There were skits, musical numbers, poem readings, story-telling and our favorite- the "elastic man" (he was super flexible and kicked himself in the back of the head while standing up. pretty sweet.)
It was awesome to have Erika in nusery with us on Sunday and hang around for the ward linger longer, before she went back to Dallas.
Thanks again Erika for coming to visit. Mark and I were glad we got to see you again before you leave. We will miss you.