First day at Sea

Ellie started the day by reading on the balcony. We visited the kid's pool, the kid center and saw a beautiful sunset.

Cruise Photos

I want to write about our cruise, but for now I'm just linking to the web albums of our pictures. We had a really fun time - I hope we're able to go on a family cruise again sometime.



We stopped in New Orleans for beignets at Cafe du Monde and a carriage ride through the French Quarter, before we got on the ship.

Smart Sammy

Sammy got a note from the school nurse a while back about his vision. These are the new glasses he got from the optometrist. I think he looks quite fabulous in them.

NASA

Here's our herd of kids (Monk kids plus another family) after a long day at the NASA space center.

Memory Lane

Well isn't that clever? After the game, we hung around in Brenham for a while. It's a really cute little town - they have a lake with camping sites and a downtown area with shops and restaurants. We happened to drive by this street, and I couldn't resist.

District Champs

Ben's soccer team was undefeated in their regular season. This weekend, they went to a regional tournament. On Saturday the won two games and tied another, so they got to play in the semi-finals the next day. They played a good game, but lost 2-4. There was a really egregious call at the beginning of the game - a player from the other team was blatantly offsides and scored a goal, but the ref at that end of the field was not paying attention. There were some pretty riled up parents. The boys really turned it around in the second half, and we're very proud of all their hard work.

Sheeple

I accompanied Sammy's class on a field trip to the Health Museum. I don't remember what part of the exhibit this was, but I thought it was a neat picture.

At the Hop

Our neighbor Jay had a really fun 70th birthday party. There was 50's music, a hula hoop contest, rootbeer floats, and an Elvis impersonator. Ellie easily won the children's contest - it's amazing to watch her to it, because you hardly see her moving at all.

Future Gridiron Star

Sammy loves to practice all sorts of sports with Dave in the cul-de-sac. Here they are working on some football moves.

Tiny Dancer

This is Ellie with her dance teacher, after the Christmas recital. They performed at a local church's Nutcracker Market.

Bad mommy, bad blogger

I pretty much dropped the ball this Halloween. I never got the invitations done for our annual neighborhood Frito Pie party, so we didn't have it. Maddie and Ben got out the door before I could get pictures of them. Sam was Jack Sparrow, and Ellie was a brown bat. I did sew the wings on Ellie's costume, and paint her face with the only brownish type makeup I could find at 5:17pm on October 31.

Annual Hoedown

And October always brings the elementary school Hoedown/Fundraiser. Ellie and Ben got cool face painting (Ben's is a disturbingly realistic eyeball), and Sammy managed to win some squirt guns.

You can go home again

The junior high that Maddie attended splits off into two high schools, so some of her friends are not at school with her this year. She went to their homecoming with a group of people, and had a great time.

We're on TV!!!

Our football game against the Katy Tigers was televised on Fox Sports. Their football team whipped us, which was not surprising since they're currently ranked top in the state. They put the band halftime shows on too, and it was fun to watch them later on our DVR.

What goes around . . .

I've been working in downtown Houston for over a month now. This has been such a good change - I have a company provided bus pass, so no more horrible Houston traffic every morning and evening. No more filling up the gas-guzzling Expedition every five days. I love working in a city, as opposed to a random building off the freeway. My office is on the 52nd floor, so I have a really nice view of the city. When they finish renovating our floor and I move to the other side, the view is even better. Anyway, I wanted to blog about some of the odd similarities I've found between Houston and Washington D.C.

1. The Slug Line. I take a commuter bus in and out of work everyday. However, most mornings I have a really hard time getting to the park and ride before 8:30am. This is when the last regular bus leaves - the ones after that run every hour, and stop at some other places before getting downtown. Luckily, I've never had to get on the 9am bus, because there's a slug line. Just like I did 14+ years ago, I get a free ride to work with a stranger almost every day. I generally take the bus home - there isn't a centralized location to pick up riders going home. Plus, I do have a free pass and the buses come frequently in the early evenings when I'm headed home.

2. The Tunnels. During my various stints as a page and intern at the Capitol, I spent a lot of time in the tunnels that connect all the buildings. It turns out that the buildings in Houston are connected by tunnels too. There are restaurants, stores, banks, even doctors and dentists with tunnel locations. Since Houston weather tends to alternate between hot or raining, this is a good thing. Last week I did quite a bit of exploring and found some new places to eat, but this week I'm brown bagging it, in the interest of my wallet and waistline.