I considered myself to be a decent cook and baker. However, candy making had been unchartered territory until I recently cracked the code of a favorite—chewy Texas Pecan Pralines. This culinary epiphany came only days before I left my home sweet home in Austin, Texas, to return to CU Boulder after an epic hiatus to wrap up my bachelor’s degree in journalism. When I was a little girl, I remember tasting heavenly, creamy homemade pralines, bursting with pecans, handcrafted with love by my mom. She only whipped them up a few times, but I just couldn’t get the memory of those buttery, sugary treats out of my head. They were that good. I asked her if she still had the recipe, but I knew it would be hopeless since my mom wasn’t one for keeping track of her down-home style cooking. I married my college sweetheart, a guy with the same first name as me, and began teaching myself to cook. Becoming “Kelly Times Two” was amazing, and I had ...
Leaving to begin a whole new adventure, here's Lindsey getting one last hug from her "little" brother until December.
Dad hugs his daughter and wishes her the best for college.
Lindsey and I flew back to the States on Eva Air, the same airline that we arrived in Taiwan on. It's a fairly new company and our flight was fine, other than a lot of turbulence. I have a really hard time with my feet getting extremely swollen on these long flights, and couldn't wait until it was over.
The first photo above, you'll see an interesting map of the island of Taiwan as a wall sculpture. The leaf-shaped country is only about 245 miles long and about 89 miles wide, roughly the size of Maryland and Delaware combined. 
Regardless of my heavily swollen feet, I was relieved to step off the airplane and arrive back home in the United States, even though I was only at the Los Angeles airport at this point. The cool breeze of the California air felt wonderful on my skin after feeling hot and muggy every day in Taiwan the past few weeks.
We still had to fly to Austin, and I never took any more pictures that night, but it was good to get back to Texas. I made sure to stop by Krispy Kreme donuts the following day and indulge. I should have gotten all chocolate because we only ate one of the glazed ones. The donuts were quite tasty and I made sure to stop at some of my favorite places to eat while I was in town, including Rudy's, per Lindsey's request, to watch the tail end of the University of Texas football game and enjoy some barbecued sliced brisket sandwiches.
I'll end with one of my favorite lines, "There's no place like home."
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