Nice Houston

Lately its been one of the nicest times of year in Houston, with weather in the 70s and low 80s with some clouds and the occasional cool front blowing in from the north to keep things from getting too hot. We're now reaping the rewards of all of the gardening we did last spring. Here's a few shots to enjoy.

Here's Neil coming around the corner of house (pay no attention to the goofy look on his face). Here you can see the greenhouse with the orchids, and the back trellis with some carolina jasmine. the orchids haven't started flowering yet, as a matter of fact it was only a few weeks ago that we could keep them outside regularly overnight, because they're not supposed to get too cold. The jasmine is popular around here, growing on pretty much every fence in the neighborhood.

Below Neil is admiring some of the climbing roses. Behind the roses are some blueberries. We had to put netting up around them (that's the soccer goal looking things) so that the birds wouldn't eat them. We had them last year and they started growing blueberries but we never got any because the birds got them first. Pretty cool huh? The look on Neil's face that is . . .

Here Neil has just finished posing for the camera and getting a round verbal thrashing from Raquel for looking so silly . . . hence the laughter. Behind him you can see the blueberries again, and the climbing roses. All the way in the back is the orchid house from before.

This is the Rangoon Creeper. Scary huh? Raquel grew up with this flower in Brazil.

It took us a year and a half to figure out what kind of flowers to put underneath the pecan tree in the front of the house. Someone finally suggested impatients to us and we figured we'd try that. We planted these ones about a month ago and they're going nuts with pink and red flowers. Really cool. Below is a shot of Neil reflecting on the patience required for flower cultivation.

The life of a photo model is a hard one.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter Everybody,

Hope everyone had a good Easter weekend and a blessed service celebrating the resurrection of Christ. In Brazil the tradition is not to hide the Easter eggs, but make them very big and chocolate. Raquel enjoys them. We get to enjoy these two now that its Easter. Pedro brought these to Argentina last month when he met Raquel there on her business trip. I hope you had a sweet Easter just like us.
Here's a few pictures of some flowers in the yard. We worked on the yard most of the day yesterday. Cleaning, weeding and planting a few. Its been spring for a little bit here in Houston, but we've been behind because of Raquel's injury. In the picture below we just planted the impatients along the edge of the flower bed in the front, and the palm is a transplant from a pot in the back yard.

Below are the flowers of the passion vine that grows up over the gate to the front door. Pretty cool huh?

Here we are in the back yard. Things are growing along well, most of them didn't die over the winter (guess we don't have much of a winter here in Houston.)
Here is an up-close shot of the climbing roses. This variety is a Texas native and does well in the heat. They were supposed to be yellow like the ones we had in Austin, but the pots in the nursery must have gotten mixed up, because we ended up with white ones. Either way, they're still pretty.

Ameeeeerican

Raquel became an American citizen on Wednesday March 5th.
(If you look closely, you can see they made a mistake on her height. She's actually 5' 8").

We got up really early in the morning for the ceremony and had to wait a long time until it got started.

By the time they were ready to swear her in, she was
awake though . . .
. . . and all smiles when she was done.Here is the judge presiding over the proceedings. It is official.

Don't Cry for Me Argentina

I had to go to Buenos Aires for a week long business trip. My father and his wife decided to join me since we would be so close. We enjoyed the weekends together and got to do a lot of exploring after work. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city full of monuments, parks and classic architecture buildings.

Americans have the White House and Argentinians have the Pink House - Casa Rosada - where the president works. The building is pink because of their national stone Rodocrosita.
Argentina has recently elected its first female president.

Here is a shot of me, Cassia (Dad's wife) and Kevin (co-worker) in the L'open Tour bus.Here is my Dad at Evita Peron's Grave.Dad wanted to show Kevin a good Brazilian style meal, so we found an excellent Brazilian Rodizio house. We were really surprised at how affordable good food is in the city.We also had an opportunity to watch a professional Tango Show.

On our last day, just before we had to catch our flights back, we decided to explore a place north of the city of Buenos Aires called Tigre. We had a great time exploring all the shops, but didn't have enough time to try the amusement park, casino and boat tours up the river Plata.
Oh well .... I sure didn't mind all the shopping. Just my style with lots of stalls selling local goods and a great atmosphere to watch people. I am thankful for all the wonderful opportunities my job has given us.

Starting the year with a bang!

About 2 weeks after Christmas, while helping a friend move, Raquel twisted her ankle. That was painful enough but nothing like what was coming.

One week later, while touring some old churches in San Antonio to get the blog started again, she threw out her back and was confined to bed for one week. I got the chance to be the best husband ever and worked from home that week to be able to take care of her. By the following week, Raquel was able to be alone and I returned to work. Thanks to a great boss, Raquel was able to work from home for three weeks and work 1/2 time in the office and 1/2 time at home on the fourth week.

This was a good wake-up call for us. We are getting old! X-rays found that Raquel has compression and degeneration of 3 disks on the lower section of her spine. There is nothing she can do to help it, but she needs to be very careful lifting things since the nerves are being squeezed and any muscle inflammation can trigger the problem again. But, all the recovery time and trips to doctor and chiropractor paid off and she was able to go on a business trip to Argentina on the 5th week.

Check out her trip pictures.

Snowboarding in Seattle

Neil got to go to Seattle last weekend to go snowboarding with John. While there he got to catch up with family, seeing Mom and Dad and Grandma, as well as meeting Grace for the first time. You can see some more pictures from this on John and Amy' s blog.

Here's a shot from the parking lot of the Mount Baker ski area. This sure doesn't look like Houston.

Here's John and Neil in the car afterward, sore but happy after a day on the mountain.

Here's a shot from the visit with Grandma Hanson on the way back down from the mountain.

Here's Grace having fun with Neil and her new duckie.Thanks for the great weekend John, Amy and Grace! It was a lot of fun.

Transition

Since it has been so long since we posted anything ... we thought that if we posted February pictures it would be too much of a jolt forward in time.

Here's a shot of Raquel (when she still could stand) enjoying her Christmas gift from Dad. I think this was her favorite gift last year.

Here's a shot of Neil enjoying Christmas breakfast. Blueberry pancakes (Rebecca's muffin mix trick) and LOTS of whipped cream. Mmmmmmm . . . Goooooood.