Christmas

Robert and Judy arrived on Friday the week before Christmas to bring us Dopler and help with setting up the house. It was nice to have their help and spend some time with them. Dopler was excited to see the new house (and eventually us). He checked it all out and then found his pillow and was content. He has adjusted remarkably well to the new house and has continued to eat like a champ. We have our fingers crossed that he is all better.

The week before Christmas was filled with unpacking, cleaning, trips to Lowe's, grocery shopping and a lot of hard work by the men. Jason and his dad finished the media room the day before Christmas and it looks great. I will get some pictures up soon. The room has a huge screen and projector and it truly rivals going to a movie theater. They worked really hard to get it just right.

We decorated for Christmas but it was hard to get into the Christmas mood since it felt more important to get settled but we managed to finally get in the spirit.

The stockings by the fireplace- I got a super cool Advent calendar - I have been wanting one for two years!

Dopler's stocking had treats...

We discovered that Dopler had found this present sometime before Christmas (lucky he can read and it was for him already)

Dopler after opening his present

Jason in man heaven with his new drill

Of course some baking had to be done

From the beginning

Okay so I owe a couple of posts- lets see if I can get caught up. We closed on the house on December 8. We thought it was a bit weird that the previous owners were at the closing, but I guess that is how they do it here. Closing went well and we spent the next two days cleaning and painting. I was surprised how dirty the house was and was not too pleased with the amount of cleaning necessary. It makes me want to never clean a house when I move out again!(though I was raised better). We painted the largest guest room a nice blue color. The weekend after we closed we headed to New Orleans to spend the weekend with our friends celebrating Bekah's birthday- it was a good time (maybe a bit too much of a good time).

On Monday December 13 our furniture arrived. What an interesting day! When we left Norway one of our movers wore a "utility kilt" and our Louisiana movers all had gold teeth...see all the fun cultural differences? They were nice men and moved us in quickly. It was pretty hilarious to be asked where to put boxes from storage since I had no idea what was in most of them. We did have some troubles though. Our king size mattress that was stored in Houston for 2+ years was not wrapped and boxed properly so it was exposed to the elements for who knows how long and damaged. The bolts and support legs for our bed were nowhere to be found so it was a bit of a pain to not have a bed for a few days until the moving company sorted it out. In addition to that it turns out that our Norwegian movers used a plastic based product to wrap and protect our leather sofa and chairs. Well evidently leather and plastic coupled with temperature and humidity changes in a sea container don't mix. Thankful our moving company has been pretty good and has given us cash to replace our mattress and leather furniture. So we have a new mattress which is uber comfortable and new leather chairs and sofa on the way.

This is the worst of it but the whole sofa and both chairs had this pattern imprinted on them

I spent the next week unpacking. I knew it would be weird to unpack the boxes from storage since I hadn't seen that stuff in so long. It wasn't quite as bad as I expected but I did have a few surprises of things I didn't remember. I was pretty happy to see my KitchenAid mixer, rice cooker and a few other kitchen items. I have also found that the kitchen is a bit smaller then I am used to. I am using both my pantry and one guest bath linen closet for kitchen storage- lucky we have room there. The goal was to get as much unpacked and cleaned as possible before Dopler arrived with Robert and Judy on Friday!

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)