"Don't worry, before I joined the Church I was a drunk"

I never thought those words would be reassuring but they were. Dan and I flew to Houston this past weekend, alone! We were asked to participate in a wedding and baptism for an amazing family we met in our Spanish Branch here in California.

We got to the airport and learned that our American Airlines flight was delayed a few hours. They quickly put us on a Continental flight that departed within an hour. We were excited because it was a direct flight and put us in Houston sooner than our original flight. However, we couldn't get too excited because we were selected for additional screening. Yes, that's when you step aside and they pat you down to make sure you don't have anything that will harm the flight. Luckily I left all of my dangerous stuff at home and we were cleared to go. We arrived in Houston and picked up our rental car and drove to The Woodlands. There we had dinner at Brio Tuscan Grille. We really enjoyed this restaurant and were sad to learn that they are not located in California.

We got to the church the next morning to help decorate and set things up. The wedding was scheduled to start at 2 and the baptism was scheduled to start at 6. Dan and I joked with the sister missionaries that the wedding wouldn't start until 3:30. Well, true to Latino fashion the wedding didn't start until 3:30. I was concerned because the baptism was in another building and they still had to go and change. But apparently Dan and I were the only ones concerned with the schedule. After the wedding we learned that nobody really knew what to do with the food that had been brought. Everyone thought that somebody else was taking care of things so in the end nobody knew what to do. Luckily, I'm married to Mr. Efficient so he took it upon himself to warm the food, warm the tortillas, take out plates and stuff, and get the dinner started.

So this whole time, Dan and I were kind of unsettled with the organization of the whole wedding thing. (If I had it my way I would have made an itinerary with 15 minute increments.) We were concerned that it was getting late, the cake hadn't been cut yet, and we still needed to clean up.

The couple had brought some bottles of Martinelli's for each of the tables. However, there wasn't a bottle opener. I thought that you could just twist the caps off but that didn't help. We searched the entire kitchen for something that would open up the bottles. Then I started panicking that we were never going to be able to finish things up in time for the baptism. That's when one of the men we met earlier, while waiting for the bride to show up, came into the kitchen and said, "Don't worry, before I joined the Church I was a drunk." He then got a bread knife and hit the bottle cap with the handle, then he put the blade on the cap as if he were going to slice it in half and then he turned in clockwise and the cap flew off! Hurray! He saved the day. We quickly passed out the Martinelli's, Dan helped pass out the wedding cake, and started the clean up process. After a long search for the bride's car keys, we finally made it to the other church building. The baptism started at 6:35. Not bad.

The Escobar Family

We truly are so grateful that we got to go. Thank you, Sister Cortez, for watching our boys. Even though it was a crazy trip and I got sick, it was fun to travel without children. We were truly blessed to witness these ordinances and we look forward to next year when we'll be able to go to the temple with this amazing family.