Christmas Eve

Here's a shot of the house lit up for Christmas. We had our Santa Claus out front with a spotlight on him, but unfortunately the wind busted him right off the post that held him up. If you look closely, you can see him imprisoned behind the front gate. Its Christmas Eve and we're all set for the big day tomorrow. Sleep tight and dream of many gifts.

Thanksgiving in Chicago

Finally sitting down to catch up on the blog, we should start with our trip to Chicago for Thanksgiving. We went to visit Neil's Aunt Jeannette and Uncle Dave. Grandma flew out for the holiday as well, so we had a good group for Thanksgiving dinner and football. Between the turkey and pumpkin pie, we had a good time catching up with each other and taking it easy. The day after Thanksgiving we went downtown to walk around in the park and on the "Miracle Mile" a little bit (although I'm guessing we didn't burn off all of the pie, we certainly didn't walk a mile).

Here is a shot of part of downtown behind "the bean". The bean was cool. It was fun walking around looking at the reflection of everything.

Here's Dave giving Neil some instructions on where to go to see some cool stuff around downtown.

Raquel and Grandma in front of the bean again on the way back to the car.

Dave is thinking hard about whether to break out the pumpkin pie again while we watch the University of Montana game on the internet.

Here is the whole crew at dinner the evening before taking us to the airport to come home. It was a great trip. Thanks Dave, Jeannette, and Grandma!

Anniversary

Last Sunday was our 12th anniversary. Yep, I finally broke down and bought a dozen roses . . .

The plan was to pick-up Raquel from the airport Friday afternoon (she was coming back from Kuwait) and spend the weekend camping. We had a great weekend .... we had clear days with great cool weather, she slept a lot because of jet-lag and I read a lot as she slept .... very romantic.

Thank God for my wonderful wife of 12 years.

Kuwait

Raquel just came back from a week and a half in Kuwait. The arrow by the coast shows where the hotel was. The arrow close to the Saudi border shows one of the oil fields she worked on. Yup, its pretty close to Iraq and Iran. Exciting stuff.

On the way to the office everyday . . . driving 140 kilometers per hour on these long straight highways through the middle of the desert . . . she got to see all kinds of fun stuff.

Raquel arrived the first day of spring, where the cool breezes start blowing from the ocean into the desert. That starts the camping season for Kuwaitis. They leave their homes in the city and pitch white tents in the desert and live in the tents for extended periods of time. She tried to take some pictures while driving in the car, but they didn't turn out very well, but she says that by the time she left, large sections of the desert had turned into small cities of white tents.

At Chevron they work hard, but they make sure you're comfortable too. She stayed in a hotel/resort by the Persian Gulf and really lived it up. Can you see her by the sign?Here she is in the hotel courtyard (that's not courtyard by Marriott either :-)

Here she is at her favorite dinner restaurant at the hotel (it had two restaurants).Here is a shot from her balcony. The hotel was pretty empty during the week, but on the weekend it was packed with Kuwaitis enjoying the nice spring weather. Despite being the desert, it wasn't hot. It was actually cold in the mornings and late evening. It got kind of loud and roudy over the weekend, all she could do is think, "Goodness gracious! I can't imagine if they were allowed to have alcohol." Here's a bit of culture for you. The hotel had 3 outdoor pools, and one indoor women's pool, so they can swim without their burkas. Because she was there over the weekend, she got to go check out Kuwait City and practice her favorite sport - shopping. Here is a shot of the Kuwaiti towers, you might remember these from TV coverage of the first Persian Gulf war. While they were visiting Kuwait City, they came across a mosque at the time for prayers. You can hear two other mosques also calling at the same time.

She had a great time and brought some cool stuff home. She even got offered a job, but I don't think I'm up for that. I think it would be too much action for me!

California

Raquel went to San Jose for a couple of days for a work conference. (Can you tell they got a lot of work done?) They stayed in a beautiful hotel on the water with lots of sea lions around.

The last night they had dinner inside the Monterey Bay Aquarium. She had lots of fun on the way there and enjoyed the beautiful wild life displayed at the aquarium.

She even got to pretend to be Forest Gump.
This is behind the aquarium.
Here's a special video for the nieces, nephew, brother and sister. Check out the neon colors on these jelly fish

More Flowers

It is staring to get cool here and the garden is putting up its last show for the year. Check it out...

"Lady of the Night" - Brassavola Nodosa

"Margaret" & "Lenette x 02" - Doritis Pulcherrima

I lost the tag for this one...

Austin - Newsboys

Last weekend we went to visit our friend Steve in Austin and check out the Newsboys concert (part of the Go Tour - now we can say we "went to the go"). We had a great time praising God and catching up with Steve.

Thanks Steve for the great weekend!

Make sure your volume is set on high... afterall that is the only way to hear the Newsboys!

The weather next day was great! Cool and Sunny.

Do you think these cool dudes had anything to do with that?
Of course, since we were in Austin, we had to take the opportunity to make John jealous.

Here's Neil and Steve yucking it up Sunday afternoon.
As we said ... awesome weekend!

Washington DC

This last week Raquel went to Washington DC for a conference. The night she got there she toured the mall.

She tried to stop in and see George, but he was busy (probably sleeping - it was pretty late when she stopped by.)

The World War II memorial is great at night time. The pictures don't do it justice, but hopefully you will enjoy these.

Thanks Grandpa, and all others who served.

Althought she couldn't see George, Raquel did get to see another president, and even got a picture with him.

Friend's Retirement

Last Saturday we made a trip with our friends Martin and Ellen Haskett to Tyler, Texas for Terry Edwards' retirement luncheon. Terry worked over 30 years for Exxon and just retired in September. Terry and Martin worked at the gas plant in Katy, Texas when Raquel first started with Exxon almost 5 years ago now. Raquel got to know them while she was there and now we're good friends with both Martin and Ellen, as well as Terry and Donna. It was a great time to catch up with Donna and Terry, since we haven't seen them in a while, and meet their family and friends. Congratulations Terry!!!

Below is a picture of (left to right) Martin, Donna (Terry's wife), Terry, and Raquel.

The best part of the lunch!

Non-Labor Day

Well, we thought we ought to post a couple of pictures from our weekend last weekend. We couldn't quite decide where to go, Raquel wanted to go to SeaWorld San Antonio, and Neil wanted to go to South Padre Island, which is just out from Corpus Christi. So since we couldn't make a decision on either one, we did both. We drove to San Antonio and spent the day there Saturday. Then late that night drove to Corpus, and went out to South Padre Island for Sunday.

Here is Raquel at SeaWorld.

After SeaWorld, we had dinner at Rudys (sorry John, I forgot to get a picture) and then walked on the Riverwalk in Downtown San Antonio.

It was gray and rainy all day at South Padre Island. A little dreary, but the clouds were interesting to watch and we didn't have to worry about sun burn.

Plus there was a beach babe under the umbrella.

Just for good measure, here's a shot of the OTHER beach beauty (no not Neil). The workhorse that made it all happen. Pedro - the blue beats the "pretinho".

We just couldn't resist getting this shot on the way back down the island.

Hope everyone else had a great Labor Day too.

Cruising . . . on a Sunday Afternoon

We can't get too far down the blog without writing about our most recent vacation to Cozumel and Merida, Mexico on a cruise ship, so here are some cool pics from that trip.

Here we are leaving Galveston.

Cozumel was the first stop.
Yes, this is one of the million cheesy pictures they take of you.
This is the only one we liked.

Snorkeling in Cozumel.
The fish will swim right up to you if you keep your hands at your side!

Check out the cute girl at the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza.

Raquel loved the little towel animals, every night was a different one.
The dog was her favorite.