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!