houston

so…this week chris and i went to houston. chris flew into houston monday morning because he had a “lunar and planetary geology” conference he had to be at. he attended lots of lectures monday and tuesday and did a poster presentation for a couple of hours tuesday night. i went to go pick him up tuesday night (I flew in that afternoon) from the conference and i got to see his poster presentation. his presentation was awesome – i was very proud of him and his hard work. apparently he got to meet with a bunch of geology celebrities, including the director of NASA. whoa…big stuff.

wednesday:
my mom, chris, and I went to brenham to visit mandie and see the bluebell factory. it was a wonderful day. the drive to brenham was gorgeous! all the bluebonnets, indian paintbrush, and other wildflowers are in bloom and they made the highway so enjoyable to drive down. we met up with mandie and went to the bluebell factory. the tour was just ok but the ice cream was delicious.
after the tour we went to visit mandie's mom and stepdad, sandie and lynwood, at their home. i helped sandie plant some tulips, which i enjoyed because i have no dirt of my own that i can dig in. as we chatted outside, the wind was blowing and the sun was shining and i thought to myself, “yeah, I could live here.” the countryside was relaxing and peaceful. my idea of heaven...
mandie and her beautiful baby.

on our journey home we stopped to take some pictures in the wildflowers.


thursday:
heather amd mattie, her dog, came to visit the family. she surprised my mom and i by telling us that she had gotten us massages for our birthdays! so we all got massages that day and wow, was it great! while the ladies were getting pampered, chris was working the 9-to-5 grind. haha, not really. chris woke up early that day to go to the chevron building to meet people and see what he’s going to be doing this summer for his internship. he said he had a good time. "good ol' uncle chevron" bought him lunch and he even gets his own tiny office with a window! :) when he got home we hung out a little bit with the family, walked the dogs, yadda, yadda… later that night heather, sam, chris and i went and did a little shopping. sam and chris checked out the comic book store (surprise, surprise…) and heather and i scouted out some birthday clothes for mom.

friday:
we went to brazos bend state park to visit the alligators. we hiked around a little and saw 68 alligators! we didn’t see any really big ones close up, but we did climb some trees...
see some cool flowers...
and see an alligator cannibalizing another alligator. gross! but amazing!
yep, that was a fun time.

saturday:

chris left saturday morning. he had to get to idaho by saturday night because our nephew was being blessed sunday morning and he wanted to be there for that. plus, he had to be back for school on monday. saturday afternoon was katherine’s dance competition. her group was awesome. they were so dang cute and they performed really well. they scored high in the judging and katherine said she had a great time learning and performing.

sunday i sat outside most of the day while doing some reading and hanging out with the animals. monday i helped my mom in her garden and took her birthday shopping (she got some awesome jeans!).

overall it was a good time. i love spending time with my family (even mattie). thanks, guys! it was great to see you!