Day 25, Turkey and the Grassy Knoll

It’s been a long time since our last blog post, and I am sorry for the long delay, but honestly we have not been doing anything worth talking about. Madelyn went through a long stretch of hives, which kept us at home most of the day. Luckily for us, the hives have subsided, and the turkey has digested, and it’s time for an update.



Thanksgiving was a busy family-a-thon tour of Texas. We went down to my grandma’s (outside of San Antonio) for a Thanksgiving lunch. It was nice to see the family, especially those we did not see at our Texas wedding reception. It was a genuine Scheel family Thanksgiving, with Jell-O and Cool Whip as dessert. That’s fine country cooking! We made it back in time to watch the traditional Thanksgiving Cowboys football game, and eat one of the best Thanksgiving dinners I’ve ever had. Kevin’s mom and dad came down for dinner, and we were treated to an Elaine Spencer Thanksgiving dinner. Everything was so good, and up until yesterday I was still eating at least one meal of leftovers.

On Friday we went to Dallas to visit my grandparents and my dad who flew in for the holiday. On Saturday Madelyn and I decided to take in some US History, and we went down to the Grassy Knoll. Not only is this an important place in US History but it is also the most famous Knoll in the entire world. I don’t think I could name any other knoll…… I was also trying to figure out if “grassy” is a word….. Who came up with the name Grassy Knoll? Are there knolls that are not grassy? What a strange name……

Anyway…… Madelyn and I took two pictures to commemorate the event. The first picture is us standing in the place where JFK was shot, with the window where Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly shot from. The second picture is of Madelyn in front of the spot the conspiracy theorists say the second gunmen was standing. Oooooooooo……. Conspiracy! This is a kind of a morbid tourist destination, but you have to visit at least once in your life!

Day 11, The “Wurst” birthday ever.

Sorry for the long delay in blog posts, but there really isn’t much to report from Austin during to work week. Being unemployed is a double edged sword, on one hand you have no obligations and are free to do whatever you want—like a vacation! On the other hand you have no money, and can’t afford to do anything fun. Madelyn and I have been spending our time looking for jobs, and getting familiar with the city. A blog entry from last week would have read like this: Woke up, looked for jobs, went jogging, ate lunch, looked for jobs, watched Law and Order, ate dinner, watched more TV, went to bed…….rinse and repeat…. In other words, you haven’t been missing anything.



This weekend I had two days of birthday celebrations. On Friday Madelyn took me out to dinner to the Oasis, which is a restaurant on Lake Travis. It was really nice to sit outside and eat in the middle of November. We have had record high temperatures this week, Friday it was in the upper 80s. This restaurant says it has the “Best Sunsets in Texas”, so we had an early dinner and enjoyed the view. Here are some pictures:







On Saturday we went to my aunt’s house in New Braunfels and had some lunch with the whole family before heading over to “Wurstfest”. For those unfamiliar with Wurstfest, it’s a big German festival also referred to as “The 10 day salute to sausage”. It’s held in a giant old warehouse and it was packed! It took us a while to find a table and then we literally had to fight people off who were trying to steal our chairs! Lot’s of polka, beer, sausage, and Germans. We both had nutritious, balanced meals for dinner that night—one sausage on a stick and one giant turkey leg. I think that any food that is served on a stick is high class.

Day 3, and I'm wearing Burnt Orange!

Day 3



I thought it would take a little longer than three days to purchase my first Burnt Orange paraphernalia, but I was wrong. Madelyn and I scored free tickets to the University of Texas football game last night versus Oklahoma State. I finally got to experience what life in the Big 12 is like, versus life in the Mountain West. The crowd was 89,000 and everyone was on their feet the entire game. The crowd was loud, sang all the songs, and new all the choreography. You could tell these were fans that were still pumped from their championship last year. The atmosphere reminded me a lot of the year the Utes went to the Fiesta Bowl. But I got the feeling that this is how these fans always act, whether they are winning or not. There was a cute old couple sitting behind us who were big UT fans. The only words that came out of the man’s mouth were “Come-on Horns” in a raspy voice with a strong Texas accent. The lady would say things like “Well bless his heart, he sure did try!” The Texas Football Stadium has the largest video screen in the world (That’s what I was told, I have no evidence to support this), it was HUGE, but then again, everything is bigger in Texas right? (see below)



Unfortunately I did not have my camera at the time, but Madelyn and I did have a chance to meet the University Mascot. The University of Utah has a stuffed Eagle, the University of Texas has a live Longhorn named “Bevo”. This animal stands on the field the entire game, I just wish he would have thrown out T-Shirts….. that would have been impressive.



In preparation for a nightmare for parking we got to the game early, and in order to make it to the stadium we had to walk through the tail-gating area. This was tail-gating on a scale I have never seen before. Most groups had brought a big screen TV, a satellite, and a generator so that they could watch all the other football games throughout the day. They also all had a bar-b-que that was welded to a trailer, so that they could pull it behind their cars. It was pretty insane.


Anyway, the University of Texas won by a large margin, and it was a really fun game. The University Texas lights up their clock tower after a win, so I captured a picture of that.

Day 1

Madelyn and I decided that keeping a blog would be a good way to keep everyone updated on what we are doing.

For those of you who do not know, we are now living in Austin. After a grueling three day road trip we have arrived, unpacked our moving truck, and settled into our temporary residence.

The road trip was pretty uneventful. We left Salt Lake with the intention of "seeing the country", and using our move as a little mini-vacation. Unfortunatly there is nothing worth seeing between Utah and Texas (we did make one stop, but I'll talk about that later).

The trip started out on Halloween, which was a perfect day to be driving a 16 foot moving truck and pulling a car behind us. This was officially the scariest and most terrifying Halloween I have ever had. The truck and trailer cannot seem to agree on the same direction, the truck would pull one way, and the trailer would pull the other. I can now cross "Trucker" off my list of possible occupations.

After the most horrible driving experiences of our lives we made it to Denver, CO, which we have started to call the "Fraud City". It's a fraud because it is nowhere near the mountains as advertised, infact I did not see any mountains in Denver. I realized that people in Salt Lake are spoiled with their proximity to the mountains.

Day two was much more enjoyable (because of the straight, flat roads), but their wasn't much happening on our drive across Kansas. The highlight of our day was making it to McDonalds by 10:30 so we could have breakfast......we were worried that we might be too late. When the highlight of your day is McDonalds, its a pretty uneventful day. But thankfully, we were able to push through and make it all the way to Oklahoma City for the night.

Sometimes, when its late at night and you are desperate for sleep you don't seem to realize things that you may usually notice. When we stoped at the hotel in Oklahoma City I didn't think twice about the bullet proof glass with the metal slide seperating me from the lady behind the counter. I didn't really reconsider our choice of hotel after passing a buisness called "Club XXXtasy", I was just ready to stop driving. It was the morning after, when everything was light, that I realized we may have picked the worst possible neighborhood in Oklahoma City to stay in. So after a quick shower (with a soap dispenser instead of a bar of soap), we were on our way.

The last day was the best day of the trip. The area near the Texas border in Oklahoma was really cool, and the fall colors were just as bright as up in the mountains in Salt Lake. We also were able to start out the day with the correct words to the song "Oklahoma" (thanks to Kathryn). When were we ever again going to be able to sing the song "Oklahoma" in Oklahoma? So, we sang it about 10 times at least. We sang the song so much that we even made up a little dance, which ended with our new sign for Oklahoma (See Picture Above).

While we were driving in Oklahoma I saw some billboards for a place called "Arbuckle Wilderness". This is a place I visited frequently as a little kid, and that I've told Madelyn a lot about. So when we saw the signs, we knew we had to stop. Arbuckle Wilderness is a Zoo but you stay in your car, and you drive in the animals cages. You are also given food and you are allowed to feed the animals from your car. Its a bizarre concept to grasp, and I think that's why Madelyn wanted to go. I think deep down she belived I was making all of this up. Madelyn learned two things that day: One is that as bizarre as something sounds, don't doubt it, because the South is a weird place. And Two, Madelyn is terrified of Ostriches. Here is a picture:

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/2431/dscn0486bs6.jpg

Before we knew it we were pulling into Austin and our three day long road trip was finally over. Thats about all there is to report about that, but we'll post something soon. Leave some comments if you would like!