Houston, TX

Houston Zoo

Ice cream at our Market Street

So, we have been in Houston (The Woodlands to be exact) for almost two months.  I love it here.  I have already made some excellent friends and am really enjoying the atmosphere.  Gabe and Elyssa started school two weeks ago and I will be doing a little sub work at their school, next week actually.  We bought a blue 2008 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer series back in July.  I love it!  It is not too big, but has plenty of room!  We are renting a house for now so we can get a feel for the area and decide where exactly we want to be.  Gandalf is back with us!  YAY  We really missed our little buddy!

Fountain at Market Street

Happy 5th Birthday!

Happy 3rd Birthday!

First day of school

Gabriel turned 5 in August and Elyssa turned 3 in July. Gabriel is in a transitional Kindergarten class this year since his birthday is so late.  He goes 3 days a week, Tues-Thurs, and Elyssa goes 2 days a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Heading into her first day of school

Outside his classroom

Working on her folder

Okay, Wow!! Been a while

So, it has been a very long time since I have posted anything on my blog.  I knew that I was not going to be very good at this, but this is ridiculous!  Again, I will try to be better...we'll see.  There have been several things that have happened in the last few months.  We went to Hawaii in November, Christmas in December (of course), Australia in January, Fiji and Hawaii (for my birthday) in February.  We are leaving on Thursday for Sapporo, Japan for the Winter Festival they have every year.  I will write a blog for each trip with pictures.

Justin is on the big computer that has our pictures on it.  I will have to get on it when he is not and write the posts for each trip when I can add the pictures!

Soon!!

What We've been doing

 So, my last post said that Gabriel was not going to play video games except on the weekends.  He has been doing very well with that!!  I have also been staying off the computer a lot more, but I wanted to post some pictures on here of things that we have been doing instead of playing video games.  We have been playing board games (sorry, no pictures).  Gabriel's other favorite thing is Legos, so we have been putting together all of his Lego buildings.  This is actually a lot of fun for me!  I don't have pictures of us working on them, just the end product.

Prospector's (Toy Story) Fire Pit

Woody's Town, and behind that Harry Potter's Quidditch Stadium

Woody's Town's Jail/Harry Potter's Quidditch

The Sheriff's (Woody) Office

Place-mats Gabriel made to "serve" us for Cubbies (AWANA)

Gabriel

Okay, I said I was not going to be on here, but I had to share these pictures because I am just so proud of Gabriel.  These are pictures of his school work where he has written his own name.  One of the pictures is his work that he has cut out all by himself!!

Today

So, writing a blog post every day might get a little monotonous since we didn't do much today.   We went to church, then I dropped everyone off at home and went grocery shopping.  Once I came home we ate lunch and took naps.  After naps we went outside to play for a little while.  Now, we have just finished dinner.  That is our day...kind of boring to write about.

Here is what I am going to do.  Gabriel really loves to play video games, but we are trying to limit the amount of time he plays.  We have decided to only allow him to play on the weekends.  With this in mind I have decided for myself to only "play" on the computer on the weekends.  So, I will update my blog once a week instead of every day.  I have updated my blog so much this weekend I think I have pretty much caught up.  So, I will update again next Saturday.  Until then I hope everyone has an excellent week!

Melanie

Halloween

So, we got back from Tokyo on Saturday morning (around 2:00).  We stayed at home Saturday and rested.  I think the pool at our apartment might have been visited, can't remember.   But Sunday was Halloween and we had been invited to some friends house to trick or treat.  They live in a neighbor hood where I think everybody on Guam visits for Halloween.  They say they have about 1,000 kids come each year.  The night started off rainy (seeing a theme here?), but it stopped raining and the kids got to trick or treat.   Elyssa dressed up as Tinkerbell and Gabe was Spongebob.  They filled their Disney buckets up to the top! It was such a fun night!