Sea World

Sunday after church, we headed to San Antonio so we could spend Monday at Sea World San Antonio.

The day was overcast and started out kind of cool, so Julia was all bundled up.

Preparing to go in and (sshhh!!) sneak in some drinks for the kids.

Here's a video of Emily and Alaina feeding the dolphins.

It warmed up after a while and Julia was able to get out of her wrappings.We had lunch at Rudy's, the worst BBQ in Texas, and Rebecca really loved it.After lunch the kids rode some rides (except Rylan and Grace, who are still a little small for rides).

It was a great trip.

More Hansons and Franks in Houston

Rebecca and John, Neil's sister and brother and their families came for a visit for a week earlier this month. We had a great time with them. You can see more pictures of their time here on posts on both of their blogs (see links on the right). There were 13 people in all, 6 adults, 5 children, and two infants (Julia and James, John's youngest, who is just a month older than Julia). It was great to have so much family around, the house was full of children playing and having fun.

We started the trip slowly, just hanging out for most of the first day, although Rebecca and Ryan took their kids over to the Museum of Natural Science, where they had a good time. The second day John and Amy treated all of us to lunch at Fogo de Chao, a great churrascarria restaurant (Brazilian barbeque) and we got family portraits taken and some prints made.

Saturday we got out of the house, going out to the park by Lake Houston for a barbeque. Here are Rebecca, John and Rebecca's youngest, Rylan serving themselves lunch.

Lila is enjoying the end of her hotdog.Emily (the oldest cousin) and Alaina enjoy hanging out with Raquel and Julia.The girls broke out the play dough after lunch.Lila was proud of her . . . fish?
Thanks to all of the napping, at the end of the day when it was time to go back into her carseat, Julia was a happy camper (or is that picnicer?).

Visit to Austin

At the beginning of October, Neil had some meetings in Austin for work, so we took the opportunity to visit with some of our friends there.

Here we are with Bill and Kathy Wilson and their youngest, Joy. Raquel and Kathy went to school together at UT.

Here's our friend Steve from our church in Austin. He's busy making a point about rocket surgery over breakfast (see his shirt). As you can tell, Julia is hanging on every word.

Visits with Friends

We had two nice visits from Raquel's friends that she has met working with Exxon and then with Chevron. Here are some pics of their time together.

Raquel's friends from her current office came over about a month after Julia was born to have lunch and meet our newest family member. They had a great lunch, but Julia slept through the entire thing.

First Month with Julia

We celebrated Julia's first month with Raquel getting back to making and decorating cakes, something she hasn't had time to do in quite a while. Raquel found a 3D rubber ducky cake pan and couldn't resist the temptation so we had rubber ducky cake to celebrate the first month of Julia's life with us.

Of course, our little girl had to pose with the cake some . . .

Mom had to clean off her fingers after the photo shoot. They were pretty tasty fingers.We had to eventually start eating the cake though, and he lost his head.

Return to Brazil

At the end of Labor Day we said goodbye to Pedro, Cassia and the kids, as well as Renata, all of whom visited for a few weeks after Julia's birth.

Pedro took the opportunity to spend some final time with his first grand daughter.

Labor Day at the Park

Before everyone went home to Brazil, we spent Labor Day with a picnic in the park.