December 16th - Santa through the years

December 11th - Space Shuttle Endeavour

Today we were incredibly fortunate to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour on the back of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft do a few fly-bys over the Clear Lake area. It flew (with T-38 photo chase) over Johnson Space Center and Ellington Field. What a thrill! It was beautiful!

Even the kids watched from school. The first thing Jack said to me when I picked him up was, "I saw the Space Shuttle today!" He was so excited. The day started with playing in the snow, then his room watched Frosty the Snowman, and then after lunch they watched the Endeavour fly over. I asked Jack if it flew right over his head. He said, "No, it flew over Nona's head."

Many thanks to the NASA photographers for the great pictures - including Robert Markowitz in the backseat of the T-38 who took the pictures over Ellington and JSC.

December 10th - Snow in Houston!!!

I couldn't figure out why I could hear kids playing outside on the coldest day of the year. Then we looked outside and found out that it was snowing. I've only seen real snow twice in Houston. The first time was on Christmas Eve 2004 when Jack was just 2-months-old. He wasn't too happy that Mommy wanted pictures with snow pelting his face. Now he loves it!


Snow 4 years ago...

This is what the snow looked like in our backyard the next morning. It actually stuck around for most of the morning. Thank goodness we live close to work. There were lots of accidents on the Houston roads.

A coworker of mine who works the evening shift in Aircraft Operations took this picture of a snowy T-38. Thanks Don!

December 6th - Helping with the laundry

This is how to help Mommy with the laundry: Dump it all on the floor and then pretend to take a nap in it.

December 4th - My little marsupial

Charlie took this position around the table leg and said, "I'm a koala bear!" Too cute!

November 27th - Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a nice simple Thanksgiving - just the four of us. The boys watched parades (Macy's and Houston's) while Mommy made the big meal for lunch. Unfortunately Charlie had some early effects of the tryptophan and fell asleep even before the turkey was ready to eat.

November 24th - 3 months along

November 22nd - Fun with Play Foam

For their birthday, the boys got this great stuff - Play Foam. It is made of little beads of foam that stick together. Apparently it doesn't dry out, which is pretty neat. Of course it came in 6 beautiful colors, but it wasn't long before they were all mixed together. It is just as fun all mixed together, though.

November 2nd - Charlie's Birthday

Today was Charlie's big day and he was blessed with a visit from Nana and Papa, who brought gifts of books and tractors for both boys. The boys also spent time playing with some of their other birthday presents.

November 1st - Portrait time

October 31st - Halloween Evening

For Halloween, Ronny broke out his rock-n-roll wig from the heyday of Spastic Hippo 2000 along with a concert t-shirt and some tattoo-sleeves. Everyone had to take a turn with the wig. It was pretty amusing. We went trick-or-treating at our usual 8 houses around the cul-de-sac before returning home to host the visiting ghouls and goblins. We had TONS of trick-or-treaters this year. We even had to dig into the candy that Jack collected at NASA this morning.

October 31st - Morning trick-or-treating

This morning Jack's class took the bus over to the office buildings on site at JSC. They trick-or-treated at 4 different buildings until they couldn't even carry the bags anymore. They got TONS of candy. Jack was thrilled to see Daddy had come to trick-or-treat with him. He was a little uneasy about the witch with the long grey hair, though. Once he was thoroughly convinced that it was me, he kept telling his teachers, "My Mommy's wearing a witch hat!"

October 30th - Trick or treating with Charlie

This morning the little kids at the JSC childcare center got dressed up and went trick-or-treating in the big kid rooms at the center.

October 29th - Halloween Party at Space Center Houston

Tonight we went to a Halloween Party at Space Center Houston that is put on my NASA's Employee Activities Association. It was a lot of fun and we saw our favorite face painter who painted the boys at the childcare center Fall Festival last week.