Foggy morning

Well, apparently I didn't like the blogging thing very much since I never wrote anything after I "tried it out" again back in September.  Oops.

We did go on our trip to California and barely survived the beautiful bike ride (for real - it was HARD for people who are as out of shape as we are!). At the last rest stop I nearly plowed Levi Leipheimer over on my way to the glorious bowls full of M&Ms that I had spotted.  I only recognized him after I heard someone asking to have their picture with him, but I was so tired and ready for the ride to be over, I wouldn't have cared if Jean-Luc Picard was standing right there.  Nobody was going to get between me and chocolate.

Half-way done - blissfully unaware of the upcoming pain...

We're not yet building our house (we were hoping to break ground in December).  We were set to start construction by the end of the year and then found out that our plat was wrong and that we need to request a variance in order to build it as-designed. We're in the process of getting signatures from our neighbors and a letter of support from our neighborhood association.  If we're able to get them and get the variance approved, we might be able to start construction in May or June.  *sigh*

The husband and I have been trying out the Paleo diet for the last 3 weeks, just to see what it would be like.  It's been good for me - I'm eating much more healthy and I've lost some weight.  I'm hoping to keep it up for a little while longer, but this coming weekend of Mardi Gras is surely going to kill that.

I went for a bike ride yesterday morning and it was FOGGY.  I took a couple of pictures - it rarely gets foggy like this so it was kind of a treat.  :)

My favorite bicycle bridge

Bicycle bridge in the background

So, judging by past history, I'll be back again in about 5 months...

Back in the Saddle

Quick update to see how I like this blogging thing again...

1. We've been back in school now for 4 weeks.  Marxo was sick for almost an entire week, but other than that, it has been fairly uneventful.
2. Fellan has decided that he's really interested in riding his bicycle more, and that has given both the husband and me the kick in the pants that we needed to force more family bike rides on the kids.  :)  Plus, we finally invested in a roof rack for the car and we can now transport all 4 bikes on the car more easily, so that has opened up a whole new host of possibilities for quick trips to parks and such.  I hadn't realized how limited our riding had become due to our bicycle rack situation.
3. Work is work.
4. House planning continues!  We're in the last phases of design, then we'll move on to permitting, and hopefully, we'll be able to break ground by the end of the year. (crossing fingers)
5. The husband and I are celebrating our 20-year anniversary tomorrow and as a gift to ourselves, we're going to head out to California for the weekend of October 5th to ride in Levi's Gran Fondo!  It's going to kill us.  Thankfully, the 103-mile distance was sold-out by the time we registered.  We're only committed to a maximum of 65 miles.  (but we reserve the right to wimp out and only do the 32-mile route...)

And that about catches you up!  What have you been up to?

Marxo's Masterpieces

Our elementary school participates in a program called "Writers in the Schools" during the 2nd grade year and now that school is finally over, Marxo brought home all the work that she did during the program.

As I read through her writing, I got more and more impressed and, being a proud parent, I just can't let these masterpieces languish in a folder at home.  :)

Here are a few of the best (not corrected for spelling). The first two were written during a field trip to The Menil Collection - I think they must have been prompted by something there...

Hiding
I'm hiding I'm hiding
and no one know where
behind a red flare
flash of lightning
clouds that are clearing
I'm not in the constalation
I'm not in the building
or vases of difference carved wood stamps
or a marble pieces of glass or a kite
I'm not in a match box
I'm hiding I'm hiding
and no one knows where
can you guess where I was?

I'm an old man. My name is Fred. I'm holding a walker. It broke away as I got older. Now I'm only holding the handles. It's hard for me to stand up. As I'm hunched over my back starts to crack. Soon my body will fall off. If it does I will have no way of telling my parents, brothers, and sisters that I am broken. I will be dead as soon as I brake. The end of my life is near.

I dreamed
I was the sun
In the sky
Dancing with the wind
Happily

Ode to the Animals
Thank you peacock for your beauty and royalty.
Thank you flamingo for your balance.
Thank you ox for your strength.
Snake, your length is my love.
Giraffe, thank you for making me tall.
Mighty elephant I never forget where I came from.
Thank you pig for your bacon.
Cat, your love is my love.
Thank you dolphin for your intelligence.

Love is
Love is my family coming to visit me.
Love is spending time with my teacher.
Love is spending time with my family.
Love is my big teddy bear that I caught at Mardi Gras. His name is Theodore. I call him Teddy or Theo sometimes.
Love is kindness and care.
Love is aebelskiver that we eat at Christmas time.
Love is Mardi Gras that we only go to once a year. We catch doubloons, beads, and stuffed animals.
Love is the earth.
Love is everything.
Love is a birthday.
Love is my Jean K's gumbo.
Love is a sunny day.
Love is a hug and a kiss good night.
Love is a drawing that someone gave me.
Love is having a play date with my best friend.
Love is my cats.


Jumping on the couch
I have jumped
on the couch
that was in
the living room
I know
I was not
suposed
to do it
Forgive me
it was fun
so awesome
and so cool
I felt
like a bird
floating
in the sky

Funny Flamingo
Funny flamingo looks like a yoga bird.
Funny flamingo makes me feel flexible.
Funny flamingo sounds like a graceful goose.
Funny flamingo makes me feel like I have to sing.
Funny flamingo tastes like a burnt chicken.
Funny flamingo makes me feel like I lost my apetite.
Funny flamingo smells like sweet bubble gum.
Funny flamingo makes me feel hungry
Funny flamingo feels like a soft feather.
Funny flamingo makes me feel warm.

Map of my heart
The map of my heart tells a goal. My goal is to love every pet, thing, activity and family member.
There are spcial places for everything I've ever loved and owned. I love my family and pets and everything I've ever owned like my American Girl Dolls and my ipod touch.
I love games, designing art, coloring, drawing, singing, music, school and everything else that I love. I enjoy doing those activities.
Magically my heart has room for everything I love.

Something that made me laugh today

I've been really busy at work lately, but thought I'd at least share this picture today.

I'm working on a project that is for a big company who really takes employee safety seriously.  It's nice, but this sign in the stairwell of our parking garage made me laugh this morning.

Oh, Pioneers...

When I was growing up in the 1970's, Little House on the Prairie was going strong and I felt so proud to have grandparents who were farmers and who had lived that story.  I even grew up in the town where the first homestead was filed under the Homestead Act of 1862, and I've visited several times throughout my life.

What makes you want to leave this? (Norway)

My view of history has naturally changed quite a bit since then and I can't help but feel some guilt about how the white men drove out the Native Americans and killed almost all the buffalo and helped to create "the most extreme natural event in 350 years."  Even the Homestead National Monument now has an "Opportunity and Displacement Exhibit" about the Native American culture that we destroyed.

...or this? (Germany)

But the thing that astounds me the most when I think about the pioneers is how desperate they must have been to leave beautiful places like the Northeast and Europe to come to the flatness of the Great Plains just to have a chance at a new life.  So many of the pioneers died on their way to find land, and if they made it and weren't able to build a house and get some provisions set aside for the first winter, they weren't likely to make it, either.

To come to this?

It takes some really hardy, no-
nonsense people to survive and flourish in a place like that.  As Garrison Keillor says, it's a place, "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."  Well, I definitely think of it as a place where all the women are strong, at least.  :)

This flat, unforgiving place.

On one of our most recent car trips, I read the first book of the Little House on the Prairie series out loud to the kids.  I don't remember it being so interesting when I read it as a child, but I was fascinated by the description of everything it took to live off the land and sustain themselves over the long winters.  Surprisingly, the kids were mesmerized, too - they loved it!

I'm not sure what got me to thinking about this today, but it's something that I think about often.  I'm still extremely proud of my ancestors, but I can't help but think, "Oh, Pioneers... you're crazy!" (and amazing)

Amazing

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Origami Valentines

Fellan has an amazing ability for doing origami.  He first fell in love with making origami after getting an origami flapping crane from his school Librarian.  She gave him one and he opened it up and taught himself how to fold it again.  From then on, he has checked out every school library book on origami and has taught himself how to fold all kinds of things.

This year, he decided to make little boxes to hold Hershey's kisses for Valentines for his classmates.  We noticed that he didn't put his name on them, so we asked him if everyone in class would know that they're from him.  His response: "Oh yeah, I'm known for doing origami. I get in trouble a lot for folding paper when I'm supposed to be doing work."

At least he's honest.  ;)

Beauty of Houston

As I was taking pictures last Sunday morning, I stopped and took a picture of the path I had just ridden up and then turned to discover this spectacular sunrise through the bridge structure.  Who says Houston is ugly? ;)

Sunrise through the bike bridge

Wow, they finally finished the bike path!

After we were awakened on Saturday morning with the news of our friend's death, we felt it would be appropriate to take a family bike ride in his honor that morning.

As you may recall, the bike path has been under construction for several years and we've been having to find alternate routes to avoid all the mess for that whole time.  But we haven't tried the bike path for a few months, so we thought we should go check it out and see how close to completion they were.

We made our way through Hermann Park and over to the "tunnel to nowhere" that we discovered about a year ago next to the path around the Hermann Park golf course.  At the time, it had a fence across the entrance and it wasn't connected to anything.  Lo and behold, though, a path has finally been installed leading to and from the tunnel so, full of optimism, we rode through it and set off to see if we could make it all the way to U of H again.

Happily, there are only a couple sections of dirt that we had to negotiate, so our bike route has finally been given back to us!

I was so inspired to know that we finally have our bike path back, I woke up early Sunday morning and got in another bike ride before the rest of the family got up.  This time, I took my phone and got some pictures.

No longer a tunnel to nowhere! Path from the golf course to the tunnel

The tunnel (left-hand side of pic) leads to the Braes Bayou path and cool new bike bridge

The path now runs along both sides of the bayou, connected by this bridge

Bike bridge!

A funeral

Today I'll be attending the funeral of a friend of ours.  We met him through the preschool our kids attended together and I was the assistant coach on our sons' T-ball team that he sponsored and was the head coach for.  I have gone to many "Girls Night Out" evenings with his wife and our families tried many times, but unfortunately, only once were able to actually pull off a family bike ride together on a Saturday morning.

He was absolutely one of the nicest people I have ever met and his life was cut short in a horrible tragedy for which we still don't have any answers.  The viewing was last night at a funeral home and several people spoke about their memories of him.  Every single person talked about how infectious his love of humanity was and what an amazing gift he had for helping other people.

I've been trying to figure out what I can do to help his family get through this devastating event, but I know that his wife has been surrounded by her closest friends since it happened.  She is well-cared-for and she seemed to be holding up fairly well last night.

As we were leaving from the funeral home, I realized that it's going to be the help during the day-to-day living in the next few months and years that will be most useful to her and the kids as they try to accept this new reality.  And it made me really glad to be living where we do and to know that our tight-knit school community is ready and willing to help, just as he would have done if he were in our place.

Triathlon Training

A couple of weeks ago, we got an e-mail from our YMCA informing us that there would be a free Kids Triathlon Training Program that would be offered for members this spring - which, for us here in Houston, is early February!  The triathlon is in mid-April.  Since we've talked with our kids about how good they would be at triathlons, we thought this would be a great thing for them to do.  Luckily, they agreed.

This kids triathlon involves a 100 yard swim, a 3 mile bike, and a 1/2 mile run.  The only thing I thought might cause them a little bit of trouble is the running part.  I'd been out running with our son a few times last year and it seemed like he needed to stop several times during a run of only about a mile.  So, this past weekend, I figured we'd better get the kids out and running ...and get our parental-selves off our ever-expanding rear-ends, too!

So, both Saturday and Sunday, we went running with the kids.  I ran with Fellan and my husband ran with Marxo and we ran from our house to our elementary school and back - about a 2 mile run.

Fellan surprised me.  On Saturday, he wanted to stop and walk about three times during the run, but on Sunday, I think we only stopped once.  Then again last night the whole family went running after we got home from work and school and he again only wanted to stop once.  Truthfully, though, I think he doesn't actually need that break, so we'll have to cut that out soon.

Marxo's running abilities have also been a pleasant surprise.  I expected her to whine and complain about doing this training, but it turns out that she's motivated and excited about doing this triathlon!  I feel like she might be the one person in our family who could probably be running faster than everyone else, but her endurance is a little lacking.

The husband and I are the ones who are really feeling beat up by this family running thing.  By the time Monday came around, I could barely walk and after last night's run, my legs still felt like jello.  It's good for both of us parents that we're starting this training with a fairly short distance.  Hopefully this will help us to start getting ourselves back into shape, too.  :)

Beauty of Houston

Ok, in an effort to make myself believe that Houston is not the Armpit of America, I decided I should take a picture of something beautiful about Houston this past weekend.  This is a view of our street in the pretty part of the neighborhood.  We live not too far from here, but don't have the full canopy of live oaks.

Canopy of Live Oaks

Why Houston?

So, a little over a year ago, we bought the empty lot across the street from us with the intention of building a house on it.  Actually, we want a pool and if a house comes with it, that would be great, too.

I didn't mention anything about it because I never felt like it would become a reality.  Turns out that I was sort of right about it not becoming a reality - the design that our architects have come up with is so super-cool and spectacular that we can't afford it.  So we're having to delay the project to come up with more money.  We're not giving up, but we've had to accept the fact that we will have to wait one more year for our pool.  *sob*

While we were in Colorado, we visited with some friends who kept telling us that what we really need to do is move to Colorado and build a new house.  It's always a tempting thought, but we just can't imagine doing it.  While we hate the Houston heat and humidity, we've gotten to the point that we love our neighborhood so much that we can't imagine living anywhere else.

I just need to stop looking at pictures from anyplace else in the world because they put Houston to shame!!  I mean, look at this.  And this.  And this picture has been my wallpaper for the past few weeks.  Every time we return from vacation and drive from the airport or the outskirts of town, I'm struck by how ugly this place is.  It's too bad, really.  If you read about the history and culture of Houston on Wikipedia, it almost makes you want to live here!

Actually, that's sort of the point we try to make to people about Houston - it's a good place to live, but there's not much reason to visit.  And as long as you don't mind complaining about the heat and humidity to anyone who will listen, you'll be able to endure.  Houston - it's worth it. (!!!???)  Oh my gosh, if you don't click on any of the other links, you must read this one. It literally made me LOL. :)

Back to work

After 17 days off from work, I had to finally come back to work this week.  We spent a nice Christmas at home and then headed off to Colorado for a freezing-cold ski trip for the New Year's week.

Unsurprisingly, I'm finding it hard to get back into the swing of work and that apathy has taken the place of any eagerness about blogging.  Too bad, too - on Monday, I was this close to posting a snippet about our vacation that I'm sure would have been engaging and cute in its brevity, but that enthusiasm seems to have gone missing sometime around 4:00 Monday afternoon.

Ah well.  I'll leave you with a picture of our Christmas Eve Aebleskiver instead.

Aebleskiver - worthy of a King, of course!

Cultural Heritage Project

Marxo had to do a cultural heritage project for school this week.  It's due today, in fact.  She had to answer a bunch of questions about our family and then do the "art component" of the project. (It's a Fine Arts Magnet School, which means that they actually get to do art in school like I did when I was growing up, unlike a lot of schools now who have cut everything extra out of their curriculum.)

For the art component, she was supposed to choose a medium (in her case, she chose playdough), make the project, and then write a two-paragraph essay about it.  The first paragraph was supposed to describe why she chose her medium and the second was to describe how it relates to our family culture.

Being of basically mixed-breed ancestry on both sides, or in other words, "American", this type of project is always difficult for our kids.  But we have a couple of traditions in our families that help to save the day.

My mom's heritage is the outlier in our case - she was born and raised in a town that was settled by Danish people and she therefore happens to be able to trace her entire heritage back to Denmark.  I bet she's in a small minority of 4th generation Americans who can claim only one country in their heritage.  Hmmm...

Anyway, as I was saying, my mom's heritage is Danish and when I was little, she decided to introduce a delicious custom to our family: eating Aebleskiver (pronounced, in my mom's hometown, as "Eb-a-skyoo") on Christmas Eve.  Back when she did this, the only place to get an Aebleskiver pan in Nebraska was her hometown hardware store.  I think they're a little more common now, but mine also came from Ace Hardware in Minden, Nebraska.

(As an aside, there's also this card game called Some R Set that I'll have to tell you about sometime - those cards could only be bought in one special store, too)

Anyway (again) Marxo loves Aebleskiver and she looks forward to Christmas Eve so she can eat her fill of blueberry Aebleskiver.  Soon, we may have to start tripling the recipe to keep up with her!

The only other "tradition" our family has is that we are sort of required to attend Mardi Gras in New Orleans every year because the entire husband's side of the family gets together for that.

So, Marxo decided to combine these two traditions into her art project.  (drum roll, please...) Presenting King Aebleskiver riding his Mardi Gras float!

King Aebleskiver on his Mardi Gras float

Thankful

Our church has a "bread ceremony" every November where everyone brings bread that they either make or buy that has some sort of personal meaning to them.  One of the ladies at our church grew up in Brazil, so she brings a type of "cheesy bread" (can't remember the name!), another lady brought cinnamon raisin bread this year because it reminds her of her mother, and every week, I bake bread for our kids to use for their sack lunch sandwiches, so I just make a half-loaf of that and take it.

The people who brought bread then bring their loaves up to the front at the beginning of the service and tell about their significance and leave them in the front, then some people up front cut up all the bread while the minister is talking, and then everyone in the congregation files up to the front and takes a piece of bread and gets a cup of juice.  Sort of like communion, but since it's a Unitarian Church, they don't call it that.

Anyway, this year, they also wanted a child from the congregation to stand up front and say what he/she is thankful for.  They originally asked Fellan if he would do it, but he didn't want to. Marxo, however, enthusiastically volunteered to take his place and started rattling off a list of things she was thankful for.

She wrote them down on a piece of paper and then memorized it  (but took the paper up with her, just in case).

Marxo's "Thankful" speech

It says: "I'm thankful for my mom and dad because they give me food and a home.  I'm thankful for my brother because if I didn't have him I'd have no one to play with.  I'm thankful that we pay taxes so that me and my brother can go to school."

The original version of this said that she was thankful that we had money to pay for school, but we had to explain to her that everyone who owns property pays taxes and that's what pays for school.  I love that she just incorporated that right into it and didn't try to find something else to change it to.  Proud of my little socialist. ;)

Chick Flick(s)

This past weekend, the boys had a Cub Scout campout, so us girls were left to our own devices for Saturday.

I talked Marxo into going shopping with me because we needed to get some Christmas shopping done for my family.  (Every year we trade off which family we spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with - this year, it's Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with the husband's family.  And, as long as we're up in Nebraska for Thanksgiving with my family, we also celebrate Christmas while we're there.  Which means we have to have our Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving for my side of the family.)

Anyway, we headed off to Walmart to get some shopping done and afterwards, we swung by IKEA to get a late lunch.  I actually left from IKEA with only one purchase for less than $4. I was impressed with myself.

By the time we got home, it was getting towards late afternoon and Marxo wanted to use the computer to look up some information on a school project she's doing for dance class.  She's supposed to answer a bunch of questions about Gene Kelly.  We (or at least I) had a lot of fun looking up videos of Gene Kelly dancing. That guy was good!

Then it was time to figure out what to do for supper (turned out that some leftovers needed to be eaten) and then start our evening of movie watching!  I figured now would be as good a time as any to introduce the concept of the "chick flick" to her.  I wanted to watch Steel Magnolias, but figured that would be too sad for her.  Then I was torn between a couple of different movies, Sleepless in Seattle and the original Footloose.  We finally settled on watching both of them.

We popped some popcorn, and ate some candy (that we had gotten earlier in the day at Walmart), and popped some more popcorn and had a great time watching the movies.  And then we ate some more candy.  :)

Marxo thought Sleepless in Seattle was just "OK" and I have to say that I agree with her on that.  But she really liked Footloose.  I had a hard time watching a young Kevin Bacon taking out his frustration by dancing his way through a warehouse.  It seemed a little melodramatic to me, but I guess as a teenager in 1984 when it came out, that must have been really cool because I remember everybody loved the movie back then.  (while watching it, however, I realized that I had never actually seen the movie!)

It was a fun evening, though, and most of all, I enjoyed just hanging out with my little girl. My mom will be sure to tell me that "before long, she'll be off to college!" And more and more, I realize how true that is.

Marxo is Eight!

Today is Marxo's birthday!  This picture was taken while they were walking to school this morning just at about the moment of her officially turning eight.  :)

Eight years old today!

Help, I've fallen... off the face of the earth

I'm pretty sure this happens every year around this time: I seem to completely fall off the face of the earth.

School is back in session and 4th grade is kicking our butts.  I can't believe the amount of work that is required of 9- to 10-year-olds these days.  I remember 4th grade and I most definitely was NOT expected to spend time outside of school doing anything like homework.  The reason I remember this is because I desperately wanted homework!  I had a brother four years older than me who got homework every day and I wanted some, too!  (yes, I was that kind of a nerd-kid...)

But anyway, as I was saying, we've had some trouble getting transitioned into 4th grade with Fellan.  The first week of school was awesome.  The second week of school was abysmal.  The third week of school was only slightly better, but we seem to have been getting a little better every day since.  At this rate, though, it will be Christmas break before we get back to the high of the first week.

I can't remember if I mentioned that we had some educational testing done for Fellan again this past summer.  It was the same testing that we had done last year - we wanted to see if getting his eye problems corrected did anything for him and his dysgraphia.

We finally got the test results back a couple of weeks ago.  She confirmed again that he has dysgraphia, and had some good news and some bad news for us.  The good news is that his overall IQ score has gone up quite a bit over the year and that's mostly due to the fact that his eyes are working together now and he's able to process some things better.

The bad news is that he's still having the same troubles with writing.  And since he has gotten older but his writing ability hasn't matured, it's actually considered to be worse this year.  This is particularly bad news because the standardized tests for 4th grade include two hand-written essays as part of promotion requirements for him to go to 5th grade.  (Damn you, George W. and your standardized testing!)

We've met with his teacher and given her his test results and the recommendations from the woman who did the testing.  Luckily, his teacher this year has had kids with dysgraphia before, so she's familiar with it.  And she has no problem with modifying his work so that he can physically write less.

She also told us that she knows there are ways to allow a student to type the essays for the standardized tests and then have a teacher/counselor transcribe them onto the official paper.  But we need to get him classified as ADHD to have that type of accommodation.  The school district apparently doesn't recognize Dysgraphia as an official diagnosis.  The hoops we have to jump through...

In other news, I have pictures from our trip to Colorado (which includes pictures from the US Pro Challenge bike race!) and pictures of a science project that has already been done for this year's Science Fair.  So there's more to come, hopefully soon!

Mugging for the camera

I didn't intend to leave that sad post up at the top of my blog for so long, so I'd better post something to lighten the mood.  Which means, it's time for a kitten picture again!

I think I've finally decided that the orange and white one in front here is my favorite...

So Darn Cute!

Goodbye, old friend

This past weekend, our neighborhood grocery store closed.

Fiesta was a great grocery store.  Our neighborhood is quite a mix of ethnic backgrounds and monetary income levels and the store did an amazing job of catering to everyone in such a small space.  The produce was always fresh and varied, there was a Hispanic section with everything you could imagine, an additional "ethnic" section with all sorts of imports, and one of the managers was the self-appointed wine steward for the entire neighborhood, getting awesome deals on really good wines and passing his knowledge and savings on to the customers.  I could run to the store, grab milk, wine, grapes, flour, and parmesan cheese and be back home within 10 minutes.  Plus, they played "oldies" music from the 50's and you couldn't go shopping there without singing along with the tunes.

Last year, though, the abandoned old apartment complex across the street from Fiesta was bought by another grocery store chain, HEB.  They made quick work of tearing down the old and putting up a brand-spanking new grocery store.  It opened in November last year.

Now, don't get me wrong, the HEB is a very nice store.  They had a web contest where neighborhood people could choose from three different architectural designs before they started construction and they built the winning design.  It has a large organic produce section, a bakery, a cheese section (complete with cheese expert who will help you find whatever you want), a big wine/beer section, a pharmacy, and an outdoor patio where they regularly have live music playing.  It's pretty much everything you could ever want in a grocery store.  They even built the parking lot around the huge oak trees out front and they have a permanent "food truck" in the parking lot.  Very fancy and very politically correct.

So when the HEB opened, everyone started wondering when Fiesta would go out of business.  I mean, who would go to such an old, run-down store right across the street from such opulence?

Me.  That's who.  And apparently everyone else who ever frequented the Fiesta.  Every time I went to the store, the HEB parking lot was full, but the Fiesta parking lot was just as full as it had ever been.  And I would run into the same people I used to run into at the store.  After the initial fear wore off, we all became confident that our beloved Fiesta would be able to weather the storm.  It seemed that the people who shopped at HEB were not former patrons of Fiesta.  We weren't sure where they were coming from, but don't question a good thing.

And then it happened.  It was rumored that a developer bought Fiesta's shopping complex.  But no announcements were made and business continued as usual.  Then it was confirmed that Fiesta's shopping complex had been bought.  But no announcements were made and business continued as usual.  Then suddenly, at the beginning of July, Fiesta announced that its last day of business would be July 15, 2012.  They're going to build a big apartment complex on the site.

Trying to look on the bright side, I told myself that at least now I wouldn't have to feel guilty about the little shopping that I had already started doing at HEB.  I mean, when you have a cheese expert available to you, why not take advantage of that?  And if the organic section is as big as the whole produce section in the little Fiesta, doesn't it make sense to go there to grab the ingredients for your salad?

So, this past weekend, we stoically made our last shopping trip to Fiesta and bought several things we didn't need - as a sign of solidarity.  And even though I was sad to see the rusty old shelves peeking out from the last of the canned goods, I thought it wouldn't be all bad to have a bright (naturally-lit-through-skylights!), fresh environment to add to my shopping pleasure.  Here I come with my guilt-free conscience to HEB!

But last night we needed to run to the grocery store for milk.  Like we end up having to do about three times a week because our refrigerator is so small (don't get me started about our refrigerator...) and we were struck with the sudden knowledge that we wouldn't be able to just run into the store, grab some milk and be back to the car in the span of about two minutes.  We wouldn't even be able to make it to the dairy section in the span of two minutes after parking, walking through the parking lot to the store, and then walking through the entire store (with intentionally mis-aligned aisles, which must somehow either make the store not seem so cavernous or make people buy more stuff, but end up just pissing me off), and a wave of sadness and regret washed over me.

New is nice, but our friendly neighborhood store, that timed their over-buying just right and ran extension cords from generators to their cash registers during the power outages of Hurricane Ike to make sure nobody went without staple foods, will always hold a special place in my heart.

RIP, Fiesta