June 30, 2008

The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

We are back from trip #1. And we are tired...had some really long days and it started with our first day there.

3am waking up call by the buzzer.
4am leave the house.
4:45am checking bags.
6am take off
8:45 am EST landing
9am picking up car and driving to metro station
10am getting on metro after figuring out how to get the passes
11:15am arrive at Union Station to look for bus tour
1:30pm end tour
1:45pm finally eat lunch
2pm meet my Uncle Joel at Brook Brothers
2:30pmfind out way back to the metro to head back to car
3:30pm get in car to go check in at hotel in Annapolis
5pm get in car to go back to DC for Nationals ball game
7:10 game starts
9:30 leave for hotel
11pm fall on bed in exhaustion.

only to get up at 8 the next day to go bck to DC for sightseeing again...


Seeing the guys from my hometown was awesome and getting to hang out with Rene before the wedding day was much needed. We had a grand ole' time overall even though it was tiring.

Here are the pics from this weekend.

Thurs. we leave for trip #2 in two weeks.

June 20, 2008

Eat, Sleep, Repeat

Nothing new has been going on over on our side of the US. We do have a big two weeks coming up though. The next 2 weeks we will only be working 5 days!

We fly out next Wed. morning for Maryland where I will be in my good friend Rene's wedding in Annapolis at the beautiful chapel at the Naval Academy. I am honored to be there to celebrate Rene's special day. So we are taking advantage of the wedding a week from now and spending a few extra days in Maryland. So we'll see the sights in D.C. and Annapolis and maybe hit up Balitmore for a bit.

It is so crazy that in the Northeast all of the cities are so close together. When we are in Annapolis we could drive and be in NYC in 4 hours. That's like a trip i used to make from HPU to my parent's house in Rosenberg, TX. Not bad at all! I know any trip in TX takes half a day but even here in TN we aren't really close to bigger cities...cities of NYC caliber. Well we are about 3.5 hours from Atlanta. We've just been to Hotlanta one too many times now, so its yesterday's news.

But either way we are excited to just be going to Maryland. My favorite part of the trip will be going to the Nats game at the first ever "green" baseball park. The only reason I want to go to Balitmore is to tour Camden Yards since I cannot catch agame there I at least want to tour the ballpark that Larry King says is "the most beautiful park in the nation." I only know this b/c Larry King is a huge baseball fan and I read a book he wrote on baseball. And yes, Amy is OK with doing these few sports related things...it's only two things. And she actually is looking forward to going to thw ball game at the new Nationals park. yes!

Other things planned...sight seeing in D.C., renting bikes to tour around D.C. on our own (there's so much alone to do in D.C.). We are not driving into D.C. by the way we will be riding the Metro in b/c we don't want to deal with parking or parking fees in the city. Taking a sail boat ride out on the Cheasapeake Bay. Touring the Naval Academy and seeing the famous formation before lunch. And just taking out time taking it all in.

We are really looking forward to just seeing the older colonial type homes up there.


Oh and then the following week we are flying out back to Texas to spend the 4th of July holiday with Amy's mom in South Parde Island. woohoo!!! So that trip is just goign to be spent relaxing on the beach, reading a good book, and taking on some sun. That trip will be our vacation from our Maryland trip to recover.

I'll mobile post some pics during the trips to let you all in on our endeavours.

June 09, 2008

Drop The Hate

Since we have bought our home, we now live in a suburban subdivision where we have a homeowners association. And these committees are in place to prevent the lazies from not taking care of their houses and yards and keeping everything looking pleasant.
It is a good thing so that there is not that token house that can hide a car in their tall grass or people adding a non matching room to an outside wall of their house with every kid they have.

With our dues the entrance to the subdivision always has nice flowers and well trimmed trees and shrubs. The dues also helps maintain our walking trail and the playground and the trees and shrubs in that area.

Overall they keep the peace with the neighbors worried about their property value and those who would rather shoot the people who care about their property values. But all in all they keep the place looking nice and for that we are thankful.



yet here comes the but...

BUT whenever we are even going to add a simple flower bed to the side of the house...we have to submit a request to be approved by the board. Really? For real? Yes!
I understand when we needed to submit a request when we built our fence...I totally get that. And when we get around to building the pergola we want in the back yard...yea...I'll submit the request to be approved. But just a flower bed to make the earth a little greener, to have plants that will breathe the CO2 we exhale b/c we can't inhale it again, to simply make the house look more pleasant. Nope...We can't just wake up one Saturday and plant a flowerbed b/c we have to wait till Monday to submit a request and wait for approval.

for the love...

June 04, 2008

A Question Mark

Every Tuesday we get together with our community group and have discussions. It is one of the best parts of our church the living life together outside of the 'organized church' aspect of it. Given that the small group is organized for the most part but it's great to meet in a home, as the early church did, and have discussion in a comfortable setting.

Well our small group has grown a lot and we all have a great time together everytme we get together...b/c on top of our scheduled weekly gathers we have spontaneous gathering through the week and weekends.

We always start off our gatherings with an ice breaker to ease into discussion and I was always trying to think of clever questions and what not to ask everyone. Well then I learned of the questions in a box...called Table Topics.
And it is simply a little box full of questions for dinner parties, cocktail parties, and in our case a small group. I found a place in town that sells them and went to pick the original box up instead of ordering it online.

And our very first question led to a lot of discussion...probably more than we needed...ha!
Be here it is...
Would you rather like to meet
your great great grandparents
or your great great
grandchildren?
Any thoughts...?