Bringing it to a close

I know I know I owe a post on how things are going here with the house and move etc. But I don't have any pictures since they are all on Jason's camera and I can't find my cable to transfer photos! But in a nutshell things are moving along- we have had a few hiccups but overall things are good. Christmas was very nice and we are enjoying the house. I will post more details later.

I thought I would recap 2010 though since it has been quite a year.

It was the year of the never ending winter and record cold temperatures in Norway

We saw the Northern Lights

I had a great trip to New York to see Brandi, Chris and Austin

I got the opportunity to see Copenhagen (and assist with a school trip)

We had an amazing 10 days in Italy with Chris

We said goodbye to a friend who holds a big piece of our hearts

We had a relaxing trip to Egypt

We had one last Norwegian adventure

We packed up our lives in Norway and returned to Houston

I got to spend some time in California catching up with family and see some beautiful sites

We had an amazing weekend at the Texas State Fair with some great friends

We tried to enjoy all the perks of living in a big city

Then we moved to Covington (pictures to come) and are excited for what the next chapter of life will bring! Happy New Year!

First Impressions

We moved out of the apartment in Houston last Tuesday and then spent Thanksgiving weekend with Robert and Judy. It was a nice relaxing weekend - Dopler enjoyed having us all together and getting some turkey. Tuesday we left behind being "Texans" and drove to Louisiana to become "Louisianians". It was very strange to think that this is now home. We are staying at a very nice Residence Inn until we close on the house (12/8) and get furniture (12/13). The hotel is within walking distance of Jason's office (and seems to be home to a lot of roughnecks) but the best part is they offer the traditional free breakfast AND free dinner! Pretty cool.

We haven't been here long but as usual I have a few observations already. So here are they are:

• The State Troopers are everywhere and seem to love to pull people over (and gun in ridiculous spots like the clover leaf off ramps where you can't see them). And no we haven't been pulled over :)
• There is lots of fun Cajun and french words and signs to try to sound out- my favorite so far is the river in town named Tchefuncte
• The grocery store is filled with 100's of choices for frying oil, fish fry coating, Cajun spices and a whole section for roux but they only carry 3 types of refried beans on a bottom shelf (one of those types is the store brand)
• They have roads called "frontage" roads - now I am used to this concept since Texas loves frontage roads. But I have already gotten lost since these so called frontage roads aren't quite the same since they ohh don't run along the frontage of the highway!
• You can buy LSU and Saints items anywhere! Grocery stores, gas stations, Home Depot, restaurants - literally anywhere. You can get Saints plastic forks at the grocery store but no vegetarian refried beans
• New Orleans is kinda scary (we don't live there- we live on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain). The news this morning reported 4 murders overnight in the city. New Orleans metro area is about 1.2 million and seems to have the highest murder rate in the US.

We are looking forward to getting into the house and getting to learn more about the area!

A New Home!

I drove to Covington, LA two weeks ago to house hunt. I looked at 38 houses in two days and narrowed the list to 7 houses for Jason to see. It was a pretty exhausting process but thankfully it was due to the fact there was a lot of good options. After Jason saw the 7 houses we narrowed it down to three and made an offer on our favorite- which we thought might be a long shot. They countered once and we were able to make a great deal! The next day we had the house inspected and it got a clean bill of health. Evidently after Hurricane Katrina there was a big problem with Chinese drywall so we had to make sure our house didn't have it. So we are currently under contract and set to close on December 8th! We are really excited. Here are some photos:

We are excited to have a fenced yard for Dopler- it will be quite a new experience for him! Though Jason it not too excited to mow a yard. The house needs blinds throughout, the carpets cleaned and a bit of painting but other then that it is in really good condition. It is 3 years old with 4 bedrooms and a bonus room for Jason to use as a home theater room. We are moving out of the apartment in Houston today and spending the long Thanksgiving weekend with Jason's parents. Then we are off to live in a Residence Inn in Covington for 10 days or so until we can move in to the house. Jason's first day of work is December 1st. Dopler will stay with Robert and Judy to avoid too much change for him and his sensitive nature. He is doing better but we don't want to back track at this point. We saw him excited for food for the first time in almost 6 months last week!

Polo

After a morning of Ballooning we went to the Houston Polo Club to enjoy some polo. Neither of us had ever seen polo so we were excited to see what it was all about. It was a lot less posh then we expected though the sponsor ads were for boats, champagne and vacation homes so it was a slightly different demographic then other sporting events. The game is broken down into 6 chukkas (which are 7 minutes long), there are four players per team and each must trade horses after each chukka and a horse can only ride during two chukkas (but not consecutively)- so there are a lot of horses! At half time (after the third chukka) every one is invited onto the playing field to stomp divots and drink free champagne - count me in! The horses were beautiful and so amazing to watch them be controlled so quickly and boy do they run fast! Like hockey you can "check" in polo and throw your horse into someone elses and you can hook the mallets as well but only a certain way to avoid hurting the horses. We learned a lot and it was a really fun afternoon.

The opening of the match- the players were introduced

Notice the horse has no mane and it's tail is either wrapped or braided so it doesn't get caught in the mallet swing

Checking the horses

Horse protective equipment

Stay tuned for exciting news on our recent trip to Louisiana....

Ballooning

On Sunday our good friends, Natalie and Gavin, invited us to go down to NASA to attend a balloon festival. It meant an early start to our day but Natalie made it worth our while with hot chocolate and sweet treats. We arrived at NASA just as the sun was rising and picked out our viewing spot. The balloons took off in a field near NASA and then had to fly in and throw markers into two different locations. The winner was the balloon with both markers closest to the target. It was pretty interesting to see how the balloon navigated. Did you know there are more then one type of hot air balloon? We learned a lot about the "sport" of ballooning and had some amazing views. It was a wonderful morning.

This balloon was set up in front of us to carry the flag for the opening of the competition- we were surprised how quick the set up happened.

This balloon is throwing their marker on the target (see the bean bag with the red tail?) They could get as low as they wanted but couldn't touch down- though some threw the bean bag from very high (and they were really bad at it)

Texas State Fair in Pictures

Our trip to the Texas State Fair in Dallas was really an excuse to see our dear friends from Norway Matt and Kathryn. For those that aren't following along- they are Americans we meet our first year. He was studying at the local university and she taught school with me. They happened to live about 2 minutes away from us so we spent quite bit of time with them (mostly playing cards and eating pizza). They left Norway to return to Minnesota after a year and we have been planning our reunion ever since.

We picked Matt and Kathryn up at noon on Friday. We bummed around and ended up at the Southern Methodist University campus to wander through the beautiful old buildings. Then we showed Matt and Kathryn what real Tex-Mex was at Chuy's - margaritas, chips, queso and delicious food.

SMU campus - learning about it from the smart phone

Our night ended with our tradition of a few rounds of Pinochle

Bright and early Saturday we headed to the Texas State Fair! It was a beautiful sunny day and we were excited to see the sights and eat all the fried foods.

First up on the fried food extravaganza- fried Texas caviar (or black eyed peas)

Us with Big Tex- he talks!

Next we headed to the livestock barns to see some animals- only in Texas are the sheep dressed in camo

Texas Longhorns- fact of the day- female Longhorns have horns too!

Beautiful brown cows were the cows showing this day- I got to pet one

Then it was off to the kids petting zoo- that's a water buffalo with the sweetest face

Next came lunch which started with the original Corny Dog and ended with dessert of fried Oreos and fried Snickers

After wandering the car show and some other areas we headed to try what we heard was the best fried thing at the fair- fried waffle covered chocolate covered strawberries

Do you think we liked them?

No trip to the Fair come complete without a ride on the Texas Star Ferris wheel - the biggest in the US

The picture before it starting moving and Kathryn wanted to throw up

Our day ended with some Fried Frito Pie and a Funnel Cake and a silly picture

We headed back to the hotel for some college football, cards and pizza. Nothing could have been better.

These pictures started nice enough but ended in serious giggles. It was an amazing weekend with some great friends. We look forward to another fun weekend in the future. The Texas State Fair was pretty good too.

The Houston Zoo

Jason and I visited the Houston Zoo two weekend ago on Sunday morning. It was a beautiful day and gave Jason a good opportunity to work with his camera. Here are some images from our trip.

The very rare red panda- there we pretty cute but kinda looked like big raccoons

The 5 month old baby elephant that was trying to copy everything his momma was doing

The star of the show- the 7 day old baby elephant! He still was wobbly on his feet which was so cute.