Enjoying Houston

You can only unpack boxes for so long! :) We needed a break!

 Loving all the small lizards and geckos!

 Who says boys can't play dress up?! :) Jaden is a ninja!

It's been like Christmas opening new boxes.  They remember toys they haven't played with in a while.  They wanted to teach Beckam how to go through the tunnels!

 I took this just coming out of the grocery store one night.  I just LOVE the color of the sky at night here!

 I came into the toy room one day to see this!  Precious!  Jaden is SUCH an amazing oldest brother!  They were both cheering Beckam on.  They wanted to include him.  Loved it!

 I told the boys Dad was almost home!  They ran outside and wanted to see him right as he pulled up!

 As a family one night we headed to a park nearby.  There were kids there doing football practice.  In 2nd grade down here you can sign up for tackle football.  They have 3 day a week practices and games on the weekend. (Pretty decently priced too!)  Guess we'll see if Jaden wanted to do that next year. But for now, they sure enjoyed just playing on the playground.

 We're getting more settled all the time.  Here's a 360 of Jaden and Kyler's room.

 And here's a view of their toy room.

  One night I promised the boys we could go on a bike ride around the new neighborhood after dinner.  But the weather sometimes changes very quickly here in Houston. When it rains...it REALLY rains!

 So we juggled instead!

 I LOVE these juggling videos!

Within a half hour the rain was done and it was all sunny again.  So we were still able to go on a bike ride.  This neighborhood is AWESOME!!!  We are so grateful and feel so blessed to have found it!

Hello Houston

Not long after everyone that came to help us unpack left, half the power in our home went out!  The kitchen side wasn't a huge deal, since we didn't have anything in the fridge yet.  But the AC!  Seriously!  Rotten first night in our home!  After driving all day, this was not how I imagined sleeping.

 But the next day there was still a TON to do.  Christian got going on the crazy overgrown lawn!  What a job!

 Beckam didn't want to miss a bit of it!

 I think the little geckos and lizards are way cute and cool.

 Yeah, that took him a while.  Maybe we should have just gotten a goat! :)

 The cockroaches were AWFUL!!! Especially in the garage.  So Brian and Christian did a fog bomb after the next night.  And in the morning there were TONZ of dead ones all over the garage floor.  This one was an average size one and a baby one.  We've seem them bigger and smaller too.

 Wow! That looks so much better!

 On our way to the airport we drove around Rice's campus to show Christian's parents where he will be living for the next 5ish years!  Then we headed off to the airport.  On our way we ran out of gas!  Luckily we were right by an off ramp on the freeway. Coasted down the hill, and into a parking lot.  Christian ran inside and told the store clerk we'd run out of gas.  The clerk, who spoke hardly any English said "gas can?"  Immediately Christian was running down the street with the can.  Right away someone else honked and pulled over and drove him a mile down the street to the gas station. (He too was on his way to the airport!)  He not only took Christian to the gas station but brought him back to us too! What could have been a disaster with getting his parents to the airport late, turned out to be alright!  We sure are watched over by little miracles all the time!
It was sad to say goodbye!  They sure made this move easier!  From taking Jaden and Kyler to play for a few weeks so that Mommy could pack, to helping us pack, driving here with us, and unpacking!!! WOW!  We love you guys!

 Thanks Oma for the pool!  The boys are loving it here!

 There is a definite rush hour here too!

 We quickly got a lot of the essentials out, but moving takes time!  Here are some pics of the home, with lots of boxes to still unpack!

 Formal Living/ Dining?! I think not!  Toy room baby!

I'll put more pics up once it all looks more "homey!"

Day 3- Houston!

We ate breakfast and quickly got packed up and back on the road.  We were determined to be to Houston before too late!  Beckam naps pretty well in the car as long as he can cuddle his bear! :)

We saw a lot of fields of these oil rigs.  The "cow fields" are different here :)

A couple of hours outside of Houston Beckam wouldn't calm down.  I figured he was just sick of being in the car.  He let us know he REALLY wasn't feeling well as he began throwing up.  We got off the road and pulled into a gas station to get him and his seat cleaned up.  The clerk wouldn't even give us any paper towels, and got upset at Christian for taking some TP from the bathroom!  We bought a roll and got out of there.  We spent the last 2 hours of driving "dealing" with that.  No fun!

Sam Houston even welcoming us in.

Welcome to Houston!

Shenna's cousin from the Woodlands area came down with her son to help us unpack the truck.  Along with several members of the ward.  The truck was empty in just an hour!

A pretty blurry picture, but here we are in front of our new home!

Jenny even brought us dinner and cute kitchen hand towels as a welcome gift!  So great to have family to help out!

Most of the rooms looked like this...or worse.  But we were able to get Beckam's pack 'n play set up and the rest of us on mattresses.

Sadly, the AC and half the power in the house went out!  It was a long night of 84 degrees in the house, but eventually morning came and we got to work. (Although with no power for half the home, it was more difficult, and no AC just sucked!)  Apparently the power company had misunderstood and turned OFF the power instead of just transferring the utilities into our name.  Just a small mess up :)  Once that got figured out, we were pretty set.  SO glad we didn't have to wake up and drive.  That made me happy.  Glad we made it to Houston safely.  We feel so blessed to have this experience and are so grateful for ALL that made this trip, packing and unpacking possible!  We're already feeling welcome in Houston!

Driving, Day 2

We were all so exhausted when we got to Christian's aunts house.  Heather and Merritt were so great to let us stay.  Kyler is such a cuddle bug.  Even with us getting ready in the morning the boys just slept!

 We went to sacrament meeting with the family then headed over to some friends that Christian has kept in touch with since his mission.  They had some amazing lunch for us and it was fun to hang out and catch up.  The girls did NOT like Beckam playing on their toy!

 Beckam didn't mind.  He was in his own world loving it!

 I met Paul and Brandi and their family like 7 years ago!  They are still the same great couple.  Boy have theirs kids grown up!  They thought Christian had gotten skinny!

 It was hard to get out of there knowing we just had a lot of driving ahead of us.  It would have been a lot more fun to just stay there the rest of the day.  But eventually we did have to go.

 A lot of straight road ahead too!

 Around dinner time we stopped at a picnic area where the kids got their wiggles, energy, jumps and whatever else out!  They loved jumping from the wall to the table and back again.

 We've heard it our whole life...Everything is bigger in Texas!  Check out the size of that grandfather grasshopper!

 More driving!  The stickers were a great idea for the box of stuff to do in the car!  Poor Beckam wasn't liking be strapped in all this time.

Those stickers kept them entertained for quite some time.

 No more mountains ya'll!

 Can you see the moon in the gorgeous blue sky?!

 We got to the hotel pretty late.  Again, everyone was exhausted!  I put a couple of pillows between the boys so that Jaden wouldn't be woken up by Kyler hanging on him :)  Seems to have worked because this is how they were in the morning!

 OUT!

Houston here we come...