Henna Hands

About 10 years ago, a woman with whom I worked showed up one day with orangish brown swirly patterns all over her hands. She told me that she had just gotten it done for fun over the weekend - I think she said something like it was a good excuse to have a cup of tea and relax while she was having it done - but that it's typically done for brides of Indian heritage right before their wedding.

I thought it was really pretty, and that's when my desire to have my hands henna'd started.

Finally, this past weekend, at our Fantasy Football draft, a friend of ours brought her henna. I had mentioned to her that I really wanted to have that done sometime, so she spent the entire afternoon giving almost all the women and little girls henna tattoos.

Here are my hands. I thanked my friend profusely and she said that I should have gotten it done by her sister - apparently her sister does this for brides and is very skilled. Here are some pictures of some really fancy ones. But I still think mine turned out beautifully!


Lucky for me, I work in a very international industry and nobody has really thought it was too strange. Everyone at work just keeps asking me if I was in a wedding over the weekend. I have to admit to them that I had it done just for fun at our Fantasy Football draft. That gets some strange looks.

They've already faded quite a bit. And by next week, I'm sure it will all be gone. But it was good while it lasted and I can finally say that I've had it done. :)

Freedom

Since I last posted, we pretty much went through summer and the school year started. Wow. That's pretty bad.

Well, I'll just fill in with the highlights. We went on a trip up to Nebraska to visit my parents, we went on a trip to Chicago to visit my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and to celebrate our niece's second birthday, and we went on a trip to Colorado to visit the cool weather. It was a great summer.

And now, the school year has already started. Here are the kids on their first day of school. It's the second week of school now and they're still excited about it.


The husband and I are still excited about it, too. We feel this sense of freedom that we haven't had for the last 7 years - and it's not because both the kids are out of the house. It's because we've reclaimed our house to be our own!

I should explain. For the past 7 years, we've had a nanny/babysitter that came to our house every weekday to take care of the kids. She's wonderful with the kids, but, as I think I've talked about before, she's not as detail-oriented about putting things away as we might have hoped.

However, since both the kids are now in elementary school, we decided that we don't need her babysitting services on a daily basis. We're still going to have her come and babysit every other week so that the husband and I can have a "date night", but other than that, there will no longer be someone at our house every day.

And so we have this overwhelming sense of freedom suddenly. I don't have to worry that my cleaning up and organizing will go to waste. I have cleaned up a few containers in the kids' room so far, and they haven't filled up with miscellaneous stuff again. I can't describe the sense of peace that I get from thinking about getting our house back in order again. I'm taking it in baby steps, but at least those baby steps are not going to get wiped out every day again. *sigh*

Marxo's new bike

Last weekend we partook in the REI sale and bought Marxo a bike! She had only gotten hand-me-down bikes before, so she was extremely excited about getting a bike specifically for her!

We knew that it was going to be a little too big for her, but took her to the park with it that afternoon anyway. Well, we had nothing to worry about. She took off and never looked back. We're now dreaming about the day that we'll head to our favorite mountain-biking ranch with the kids riding their own bikes. Can't wait! :)

Fellan's Sick Day

Fellan got sick on Sunday evening. He ended up with a fever that lasted almost all day on Monday and since you're supposed to be fever-free for 24 hours before returning to school, that meant he had to stay home from school on Tuesday, too.

By the afternoon, he was apparently desperate for some sort of mental stimulation. He and the babysitter went out to "catalog plant species" and he apparently spent some time writing on the driveway and creating recipes in the kitchen. I always cringe when I see that the kids have been making "soup" with my spices because I know that I have some things in there that cost and arm and a leg, but I can't remember which ones! Anyway, here are some pictures of the evidence that he was bored yesterday:

If you look closely you can see the Start and the Finish. And apparently, "if you win you get 100$". I was home before the family got home last night from Marxo's gymnastics class, so I asked him for my $100. It didn't work.

This is a recipe he was creating. He must have gotten interrupted because next to this paper was a bowl full of water, paprika, smoked paprika, some empty pea pods that he must have stolen from the organic garden, and I don't remember what else. I cleaned that up before I thought about documenting his creativity in the kitchen. I'm not sure what you can make with "black barys, flouers, bazle, and res..." but I'm sure it must be good!

Bat Project

The end-of-the-year project for the first grade at our elementary school is to choose an animal and do a research project on that animal. Each child must choose at least three sources (can not include Wikipedia) and must include information from each source in the report. The written report may be either be in the form of a five-paragraph document or in the form of a book with a table of contents included. Additionally, an art/craft project is to be completed for the project. It can be either a picture or a diorama of the chosen animal in its natural habitat.

Are they nuts?! Don't they realize they're giving this project to a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds? And yet... Fellan loved it!

His chosen animal was the bat. This happened to be quite an easy animal for him to do - we have a "Magic Schoolbus" book about bats (Source #1), we found a website about bats (Source #2), and we visited the Waugh Bridge Bat Colony (Source #3).

The husband was in charge of helping Fellan write his report and he, of course, chose the "book" form of the report. (ugh!) Fellan finally completed it at about 8:30 last night, but we still had to do the craft project.

We had originally thought that we would just have Fellan draw some pictures and write some bat facts and put them on a presentation board. However, over the weekend, we heard several parents talking about making their animal out of clay or making some other kind of craft project, so we figured we'd better step it up a notch.

Enter the build-it-yourself bat house kit! The husband went out yesterday morning and found one of these so we could build it last night. Luckily, it was a very quick and easy project. We taped an "actual size" bat to it and called it good.

Man, if this was a first-grade project, I'm dreading what the coming years are going to hold...

7-year-old in the House!

As of yesterday, we now have a seven-year-old in the house! Fellan's birthday was yesterday and it's hard to believe what a big boy he has become.

Sometimes I worry about him because he is such a nice, naive little boy (compared to the other first-graders who seem to already be mean-hearted much of the time), but I think he's finally coming into his own.

He has finally developed his first obsession with an activity. About a month ago, he dug out the skateboard that Santa brought him for Christmas of 2008 and he has been practicing riding it every chance he gets.

There's a really nice skateboard park in Houston now, so we've been there once with him, but the bearings in his wheels were so bad, he couldn't roll very far.

So, for his birthday, we got his bearings replaced, got him a "cool" skateboarding helmet, and got him some "skateboarding shoes", as he calls them. (They're like "Vans" shoes that we found at Target.) He's also taken to wearing a t-shirt with a plaid button-down shirt on top of it. I think he thinks that makes him look more like a cool skateboarder. :)

It's fun seeing him develop this interest. Up until now, he really hasn't had anything to call his own - he likes biking, but that's only because we like biking.

I am a little worried, however. When we go on vacation to Colorado, we like to watch a channel called RSN because they're always playing shows we call "ski porn" - it's not what you think! They show all these semi-homemade videos of people doing crazy stunts on skis, snowboards, and the last couple of years, they've been showing crazy skateboarding stunts. I really wonder what he has in mind to do with his new skateboarding prowess...

Easter 2010

Last weekend, we went on a little outing to Buescher State Park for some hiking again. I think the last time we went there was this time.

The kids are almost two years older now and I guess since they didn't whine about the long hike the last time, they figured they'd better make every single minute of this hike full of whining. It was very pleasant.
After we had done the "loop" part of the hike (and confirmed that the hiking trail map is horrible), we headed back towards the car. Fellan was walking next to me when he suddenly took a funny step and ran 10 feet ahead of me yelling, "Snake!!!"

He narrowly missed stepping on this little fella. We weren't sure what kind of snake it was when we saw it, but I thought that since it didn't have a rattle, it was probably OK. I showed the picture to the people at the ranger station and they told me it was a copperhead. (YIKES!) But, on further review by some guys here at my office, I'm pretty convinced now that it was just a rat snake. (Whew.)

After the hike, our plan was to head up to Austin and check out Mellow Johnny's bike shop and then try to find the original Chuy's for dinner.

But, since the bluebonnets were amazing, we just had to make a stop along the way for the obligatory Texas Bluebonnet picture:


Hmm.... After seven miles of hiking, the kids didn't really seem too into it. Still, it was a fun day! :)

Azaleas

The azaleas in our neighborhood have exploded over the last week or so. I know that this happens every year, but for some reason, this year I'm just more amazed with the amount of flowers and the fact that they're everywhere in our neighborhood.

We walked to a local restaurant for dinner last night and on the way, I took some pictures of them.

Water...

One of the reasons they've been working on our street was so that they could replace all the utility lines as well as fix the drainage in our neighborhood.

However, ever since they hooked us up to the new water line, the water pressure in our third floor (where our bathroom and shower are located) has been severely lacking. We've asked them several times what the problem could be, but they don't know. We've also asked our neighbors if they've had the same problem, but they haven't noticed anything different.

This is not a new problem for us. Pretty much everything that could go wrong with our house has gone wrong. I wrote about it here.

And the problems just seem to continue. They broke our water line on four separate occasions when they were installing it and digging around it, so we think that probably has something to do with the low water pressure, but the workers still seem to be stumped. It's probably time to bring in a plumber.

BUT, we found out one thing that they did do correctly when they built our house. They actually connected our sewer line to the main sewer line that runs under the street. (we must celebrate these small victories.)

You know how I told you that the worker always told my husband "that ain't water" about the mud bog in our street before they laid the concrete. Well, it turned out to be more than true.

As they were digging up our driveway and sidewalks, they discovered a line running from our neighbor's house towards the street. But it didn't connect to anything. And... Get this. It was her sewer line! The ground under our street has basically been a septic system for our neighbor's house for the last 10 years.

The only saving grace is that the two people who have lived in that house over the last 10 years were single women who traveled a lot and weren't home very much. Otherwise, I just can't imagine.

They have since connected her line to our line, which is definitely connected to the main sewer line. I'm sure, though, now that her house isn't contributing to the ground moisture that we're going to have some kind of subsidence problem and our big oak tree will probably die. Imagine all that good fertilizer that has been pumped directly to its roots for years! (ick!!!)

Yep, Houston has got some real winners when it comes to house contractors and inspectors. I sense that we're going to need Holmes on Homes to come to our house someday soon.

Coming up for air

Urgh. I'm on a new project (my old one got cancelled - as are a lot of projects in engineering these days - and there aren't a lot more coming, either) so I'm happy to be on a new project, but I'm now sitting right next to my boss in a cubicle setting and he has his computer facing towards me, so there's no time except lunchtime to write in my blog and since I've been trying to work out every lunchtime, that means I just don't have time to update.

But anyway. I'm on a new project with a really short schedule. And I was also asked to work on a presentation for a training session, and my other part-time project deadline was today with another one next month and then the big deadline the following month. Why does everything have to happen all at once?

I'm also the assistant coach of Fellan's tee-ball team this season and we're having practices twice a week. I think we have something planned for every single day of the week now.

But, in other wonderful news, there's this:

That's right! They poured the cement for our street on Tuesday this week! We're allowed to park on it in front of our house tomorrow!!! (the street is still going to be closed and we won't have access to our garage because they're ripping out our sidewalks - probably as I'm writing this - and they'll pour those at the beginning of next week)

My husband sent me this picture on Tuesday and said, "I feel almost as privileged as when we got power back!" Indeed.