JAMODI!

Basketball: a game of agility, strength and really tall people. Yes, this commonly known sport is one of my favorites. Definitely not to play...just to watch. The thought of me being any sort of usefulness on the Baskeball court is absurd, but I have been known to win a Blackout round or two in my prime. : ) I have been fortunate that this last little bit has been filled with fantastic basketball. And it’s almost March which means the start of March Madness and the NBA playoffs! YESSSS! This is also when I suddenly become very unavailable to do anything besides watch basketball. I remember the last couple of years (sadly) whenever the Mavs were out of the playoffs, I felt like they broke up with me or something. I felt sad, lonely and suddenly my schedule was a lot more flexible. Maybe not so much on the lonely side, but you get my drift. :) Don’t get me wrong. I still watched the interesting games but having less games to watch per week frees up more time than you’d think. Either way, I’m quite excited for March to be here. I don’t know how far BYU will make it in the bracket, but I feel good about them getting further along than they have in the past. Of course, I’ll still probably have them winning the whole thing like I usually do. I feel like I should have Duke in the finals as well. I don’t really have many allegiances to them at all aside from the fact that Amy is a crazy Duke fan and last year, they helped me win second place in the ward bracket (Amy got first…take that Elder’s Quorum!) haha. I do feel like I owe it to them, in a way. Good times. If that's what it takes to win, then sign me up! :)

But, before I talk more about that, I'm going to do a short recap of our recent Houston trip :).

The trip itself was really good. We all had so much fun! Although, I will say this: never book a hotel using priceline, hotwire or anything like that. Absolutely ridiculous! They didn’t end up having the type of rooms in our reservation. It still worked out fine, but the hotel was super ghetto compared to what they were rating it as. It was SO dirty, but we had a great laugh about it. There's nothing like a group of chill friends in a lame situation. Definitely something to look back at and laugh about. I wish I had pictures, but I’m still trying to get the images out of my head. For example: The bathroom door was warped so that when I was occupying the facility, I look at the door and I could see out into the rest of the bathroom area. And yes, the door was closed. :) Good thing everyone else was hooked on the Food Network! Haha. When we walked into the room, my first thought was, oh no…is this one of those places where you have to pay extra for clean sheets? Siiiiick, but so funny. I’m so glad I had the thought to grab a blanket for each of us before we left. They didn’t have those either. Just a little ‘table runner’ thing going across the bed. And yes, that was nasty too. Oh man, good times. We did get to go to the Houston temple which was awesome (despite the fact that I only got about 45 minutes to an hour of sleep…I was SO tired). I loved it! It was definitely a lot smaller than it looks on the outside, but still amazingly breathtaking on the inside. That reminds me…I need to add Houston to my temple scrapbook :) I’m determined to fill that thing up!

After the temple, we met up with Renee’s brother and sister-in-law for lunch and then high tailed it downtown to see what Houston had to offer, aside from ghetto hotels and Red Robin. They had this fantastical community park thing that we walked around in and then just sat and people watched for a while. It doesn’t get much better than that. Plus we were all so tired from the severe lack of sleep that I think to just sit and zone out was kind of a welcomed activity. Jen and Derrick came down to visit as well! It was so awesome to see y’all! I can’t believe how big Caleb and Zach are getting. They are the cutest! I sure miss getting to hang out with y’all more often. Thank you so much for venturing downtown to see me for a bit. It meant a lot!

[Insert Mavs vs Rockets game here] Booyeah!!!

We were on the VERY LAST ROW, but it was still great. This does mean, however, that we were definitely closer to the nachos than I've ever been before, which made it hard to resist. You know I was all over that business. I still submit that I do not like the Rockets very much. Especially since our tickets cost almost $40 for last row seats. I’m pretty sure that’s due to the fact that they were playing the Mavs tho. :) LOVE THEM

My other new love from this trip is Buc-ees. We decided to stop there to fill up with gas, both ways, and it was actually quite a fun environment. The bathrooms were insane! It was the best, darn truck stop I’ve ever been in. Hats off to you, Buc-ee.
But, enough of that. Let’s get back to basketball!

The next game on the itinerary is the Mavs vs Kings game. Sandy took me as a belated birthday gift. I will love her always for that! :) Our institute teacher has season tickets and couldn’t go to the game so he handed them off. ELEVENTH ROW BABY! I’ve never been that close to Dirk before in my life. It was the absolute best thing ever. I had SO much fun! The game is much more exciting when you can see the sweat on their faces! Look at this! Granted, Sandy was using her zoom, but I don’t care. That’s so awesome. Thank you for having such an awesome camera, Sandy. And thank you for taking me! Someday, I’ll have season tickets like this. *hopes really hard*

Last but not least; the BYU vs TCU game. HA! What a joke. TCU held their own for about the first 5 minutes haha jk jk. They put up a good fight, but we still won by 20 points or something like that. Jimmer Fredette is the MAN. I can’t believe how well he is doing this year. It’s absolutely amazing. People start chanting “SHOOT IT!” right when he walks across the half court line. Mostly because he has before and he’s made it a lot of the time! so insane and I love it! Oh how I love basketball and yes, I have been Jimmer'd :) Have you?

On a side note, I have successfully decorated my abode for St. Patrick's Day. So happy and so excited for one of the best holidays ever!