Sad, sad, Broncos

Erin and I went to see the Broncos v Texans game this past Thursday. We showed up in full Bronco regalia.... unfortunately the Broncos didn't bother to show up for the game.
This is the view from our seats. It seemed like there were lots of Broncos fans around.When we got home from the game we spent some quality time playing with the dogs.
It's been a little cooler outside this weekend. Battlecat likes to curl up in a ball when she's cold.

More Battlecat naptime
Kelsey really likes to cuddle....due to a 'shaving incident' I am currently beardless.

Preaching and Running

This weekend was pretty busy. On Saturday night Erin and I went to my company party.
We had a really good time and sat next to people from my team at work. Erin spent a lot of time talking to one of the newer members of my team from Tanzania - he had a lot of stories.... anyway - there was a raffle for prizes. Our number was called and I went to claim my prize. A guy at my table won a digital camera, someone else won an Ipod, and another person won a portable DVD player..... I got this:

A Juan Pablo Montoya diecast car..... I don't know what a Juan Pablo Montoya is.... I'm not sure if this post qualifies me for immediate dismissal from the state of Texas... but I'm just not into racing. Maybe someone can comment and tell me why I should be honored to have this thing sitting somewhere within my cubicle.

Anyway - the party was actually a lot of fun.

Sunday morning I preached from Matthew 3:1-12 which is the Gospel reading for the 2nd week of Advent. The sermon can be downloaded from http://www.kaleohouston.com/podcast or you can find it here directly:

http://www.kaleohouston.com/mp3/advent_12_09_07.mp3

Immediately after service ended I had to run home and get changed for the Jingle Bell Run - a 5 Mile run through downtown Houston to support the YMCA. As the race was sponsored by Chevron Deep Water, I got roped into running with some guys from my team at work. Lots of people ran in costume..... my main goal was survival..... I finished the race in 55 min and never stopped running so I feel good about that. Sometime after the 5 mile race started there was a 3 mile family walk.... and they shared the return leg of the course with the runners.... so for the 5 minute mile people I guess that wasn't a big deal... but with about 1.5 miles to go I ran into a large mass of families.... strollers.... dogs... and little kids which really crushed my momentum.... but I powered through. I'd like to get the time down a bit and keep running. I had a good time training for the race. I've never run longer than 1.5 miles before that....

Pre-race photo of The Salt Monkeys (that's a little depth-imaging geophysicist humor for ya): Errol, Tim, Fan, and me

The beginning of the race

Daniel helping his dad cool off after the race

Agony...but finished

Post race team photo

Anyway - that's all for now. I have a picture of Erin from the Christmas party looking gorgeous with her new haircut and pretty dress... but the colors get distorted when I put it in blogger..... strange.... Erin has 3 exams this week so she could use prayer for her sanity.

Turkey Day

Erin and I have had some visitors over the past couple of weekends. First, we had the Carpenter's. Chris and Martha are our favorite neighbors who moved to TN. They have two dogs and a very cute daughter named Abby G. The Carpenters were in town for the weekend and we had a good time hanging out with them. The dogs loved Abby G. Battlecat wanted to give her lots of kisses.

For Thanksgiving, my parents came to visit. On Thanksgiving we went to the Strom's house. Their 94 yr old neighbor made the turkey and it's clear that the last century has really honed her skills of turkey cooking... it was delicious.

As is our custom - we got up at the crack of dawn to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving. Erin and my Mom both wanted to be at JoAnn's when it opened. Being asked to help color coordinate fabric at 6 AM is one of life's great joys that only married men really get to enjoy.

We had a great time with my family. It was 80 deg or so before they got here, but as soon as they arrived, the temperature dropped to the 40's. It was beautiful.... although I think my parents were hoping to escape the cold weather. It was really nice to get to go on walks with my Dad and the dogs and to hang out with my Mom. My Mom helped me make a turkey on Sunday!

This past weekend Erin and I re-arranged our bedroom.... and a couple of weeks ago Erin and I re-arranged the living room and the rooms upstairs. It's like a brand new home..... except it's not. We also went to the Behold the Lamb of God concert with some folks from church. That was pretty amazing. I really like Andrew Peterson's music. This weekend is going to be pretty busy. Erin's got one more week of Family Medicine after this one, so she'll be studying. My company Christmas party is Saturday night, and Sunday morning I'm preaching. Sunday afternoon I'm running a 5 mile race with some people from work to benefit the downtown YMCA in Houston. 5 miles is the longest distance I've ever run in my life.... so here's hoping I'm still alive after the run.

Erin got a pretty significant haircut this weekend and she looks beautiful. This gal who cut her hair cuts the hair of basically everyone that attends our church so she came highly recommended and did a great job. We may post pictures in the near future (sometime before 2009). Until then I leave you with some pictures from my parent's visit.
Battlecat and Kelsey really liked laying on our futon upstairs and hanging out with my parents. (Battlecat is wearing her Broncos collar... but to no avail... the Broncos totally suck.)
Battlecat likes to find warm places to curl-up.... my Mom and Erin were spending some time reading on the couches in the living room so the dogs joined them.

Here's proof that my Mom, deep down inside, actually does like dogs.

And this is my Dad in his natural habitat... fixing a computer. He helped me get all the files off of Erin's old PC and transfer them onto our new(ish) one so we can donate the old one.

New Post!

So.... you may be wondering why we haven't posted for the better part of the last millenium.... there's a good answer.

Erin has been on Surgery rotation for the past 3 months - which basically means she's been crazy. Surgery seems to consist of really long hours where Erin gets to observe other people doing things while she stands there. Granted - she's got to see and help out with some pretty cool things including a heart transplant. It's just not what she's into.

I've been out of the office for basically two months doing campus recruiting, training courses, a technical conference, and a week on a drill ship in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. It's been busy times in Umbriacoville.

A couple o' highlights from the last month or two:

Jonathan and Christina came to visit us for their Fall Break! We had a great time just hanging out with them. We went down to Galveston and walked around the beach, we went to the Holocaust Museum which is phenomenal, and they introduced us to The Office.

We also got to go camping in Huntsville State Park with Kaleo (our church). Pictured above is the family Strom (Jody, Kyle, & Clara).

After we packed up our campsite we went for a hike with the Stroms and the Crocketts. We tried to take a family picture.... but the dogs were focused on other things.

This was the very first campout for our Pastor Bill, and his daughter Mirabelle.... Shannon has had previous camping experience. I'm also pretty sure this is the first time Bill has donned a hoodie.

Collin Crockett is hanging on to his dad's (Aaron) leg. I think Charlene was still asleep and for some reason we don't have a picture of all of them together. Collin is the chief user of our gumball machine. They live across the street (Charlene and Erin are in the same year at Baylor College o' Medicine) and Aaron will walk Collin down for a visit. Every time Collin comes over he goes straight for the gumball machine. Collin also enjoys running around our living room and being scared of the dogs. I think the camping trip helped him to become one with our canines - perhaps now they can co-exist in harmony.

The beautiful man (not the one sitting) is Clint Adams. Clint and I are basically the same person - except that he's wearing a mesh Bass Pro Shop hat.... and for some reason he's still single.
Clint speaks canine fluently - I think he's Battlecat's favorite human houseguest.

So that's basically what we've been up to.... work has been crazy - surgery is crazy... and we're looking forward to my parents visiting for Thanksgiving.

Erin and I are going to the Western Conference Finals to see the Houston Dynamo take on the KC Wizards..... if the Dynamo win they're on to the MLS Cup for a rematch with the New England Revolution. The game is going to be crazy and we're really excited for it!

A new post is coming

Fear not faithful reader - a new post is coming.

(Josh and Jua)nita + Preaching

On Sept 2nd - I had the opportunity to speak at church on the book of Philemon:
Here's the link:
http://www.kaleohouston.com/mp3/Philemon.mp3

The weekend before that Joshnita and Juanita came to see us. They got in on Friday afternoon and Friday night Josh and I went to an Astros game.... even the Astros are 7000 wins away from being competitive against a league of one-legged elephants - there were only standing room tickets available. So Josh and I wandered from section to section sitting in all the empty seats - we had a pretty good time.... we didn't stay for the whole game.... the Astros lost in 15 innings to the Pirates after having the bases loaded in basically every inning......

On Saturday we all went down to Schlitterbahn in Galveston... mostly because Joel & Karen had such a good time there. There's a lazy river (that's more like a moderate exercise river.... it moves pretty fast) that goes around the whole park..... there's a little diversion off the river where you can go through some rapids so we did that a bunch. Part of the challenge with the rapids is that you go through a mini loop and then through a tunnel that shoots you out into the lazy river..... but if you are already in the lazy river and are trying to get to the entrance to the rapids you have to get across the really fast portion of the river (with tubes in hand) to reach the entrance.... this is a near impossibility so we had a good time doing that.....

Perhaps the most fun we had at Schlitterbahn was in the wave portion of the river where Juanita channeled her innner-otter, donned a pair of goggles, and took to the waves...... Juanita loves her some waves... I had no idea. When Erin and Ihave kids... and they have kids.... great grandnita Juanita will be taking them to the Surf N' Swim for some wavepool action.

On Sunday Josh and I went to a Derek Webb show which turned out to be Derek Webb + Caedmon's Call.... it was Caedmon's Call's CD release party for Overdressed and for at least this album Derek is back with the band. They put on a pretty good show and played at a lot of old tunes that took me back to my early days in Salt Company........

What were Juanita and Erin doing during the time that Josh and I were hanging out..... we don't know... and we'd like to keep it that way.

In other significant news - the dogs have a dog door now! They are pumped. They honed their dog door skills at Brandy's place and now they can use a dog door to their heart's content. Battlecat loves to go outside and bark at things that may or may not be behind our fence. A lot of times she'll just issue a pre-emptive bark should anything decide to make a noise within 20 yards of our home. I came home the other day to take the girls for a walk, and Battlecat didn't hear the garage door because she was asleep outside sunbathing...... Kelsey views the door as more of a need-based tool..... she'll go outside to do her thing or to see what Battlecat is barking at.... generally she just decides that Battlecat is crazy and comes back inside with Erin and I.

Erin has started her Surgery residency.... 3 months of craziness. She started out working for a cardio-thoracic surgeon (she's working 7PM-7AM at the public hospital's ER Surgery service right now so she's not here to edit this portion.....) who is world famous. I guess the guy makes artificial hearts and valves and things like that. Erin got to be part of a heart transplant - which I think is pretty cool.... but the hours are horrendous. Today she starts two weeks at the public hospital's ER Surgery service. She has several days in a row where she works the night shift and then switches back to the day shift - so her sleep schedule is going to be awful and we won't be seeing each other much over the next few weeks so please pray for her. While surgery is interesting - it's definitely not what she wants to do.... so 3 months of craziness is proving itself to be a difficult challenge.

As for me - my free preview of Setanta Sports just ended.... so I have returned to a period of soccer darkness and gnashing of teeth......

Speaking of soccer darkness..... the men's U-17s, U-20s, and full national side have disappointed recently (although the men's team played quite well against Brasil....) in high profile tourneys.... fortunately for the US.... our women rock! The Women's World Cup just started.... the US plays tomorrow morning at 3:45 AM CST and they don't disappoint..... of course Germany opened the tournament with an 11-0 victory over Argentina..... I can't think of an appopriate superlative for that type of victory.... usually I would call 4-0 a thrashing.... so 11-0 I don't really have a category for.....

Anyway - Utes football is done for the season..... the men's basketball team sucks again too.... RSL has won four games all season (they played Houston on Saturday and Erin and I went.... final was Houston 4, RSL 3 - I wore an RSL jersey and Erin wore a Dynamo shirt).... so they suck.....the Broncos won on an insane field goal against the haven't been decent since Jim Kelly Bill's so Men's sports provide no hope for me.... which is why I'm so stoked for the Women's World Cup.... The US team is always amazing - they play with a lot of flair and usually put up a lot of points.... so let's go USA.... and let's go Lady Utes.

Joel & Karen, Joshnita, Texgiving 2007

A couple of weekends ago, Joel & Karen came to visit - they toured all that Houston has to offer. We went to the Houston Shakespeare Festival's production of Romeo & Juliet - set in the 1930's. We saw it at the Miller Outdoor Theatre - which is a cool open-air theatre located in Hermann Park near the zoo..... we also went to the zoo which is currently undergoing renovations so they were missing most of their African exhibits... Anyway - for some reason we didn't seem to have our camera with us so we don't have many pictures of our travels together.....

A week after Joel and Karen left, Erin and I got see Joshnita. He had a long layover in Houston on his way back to SLC from a mission trip in El Salvador. The dogs came with us and we all hung out in a mall parking lot enjoying some of the fine fare from Wendy's while we waited to take Josh back to the airport.

This past weekend we took the dogs on their longest road trip yet.... we all went to Dallas to see the Patricks for Texgiving. Texgiving is a holiday that Brandy's mom made up.... but as we found out this weekend Marylin and Doug are moving to CA so we were present for the first... and only Texgiving. Sean and Rachael were in town for the festivities so that was nice to see all of them. Kelsey and Battlecat had a really good time.... Kelsey even took the liberty of hopping into Doug and Marylin's pool for a morning swim. Brandy hung out with us all day Saturday.... we went to the Village Church and hear Matt Chandler preach.... it's the first time I've ever seen him preach... he looks like Chad Whitehead... pre-emo phase.... so maybe he looks more like a taller Matt Whitehead..... Brandy made us some delicious brownie dessert and we watched Bride to Terabithia.

Our camera was also having issues at Brandy's... so we basically have no photo record of that last month.....

This is Joel and I in front of the giraffes.

This is a baby elephant!

This is a full-grown Sean

Brandy and her beloved singing canine 'Daisy'

Kelsey and I

Battlecat in her natural habitat.... lounging on Brandy's bed

7-7-7 Wedding in Cabo

Many pictures from our to Mexico for my cousin Dawn's Wedding last weekend...

the wedding party

jake, josh & i at the rehearsal dinner--where we enjoyed excellent food

my mom with her mom & 2 sisters
jake, josh, & richie the arch at the southern most point of this part of baja califonia where the sea of cortez meets the pacific ocean





the resort where we stayed


"lover's beach"



other random cool rock & water pictures

We had a great time! The wedding was very beautiful and it was fun to hang out with all of my family...though it was a very quick trip.

A bit of advice for beach weddings...with an open bar, it's only a matter of time before someone ends up in the pool...if you wish not to get wet...never stand too close to it. Jake and I were making bets about how many people would end up in the pool by the end of the night...when it came time for the cake (which was positioned right beside the pool), the groom went first and smeared cake all over the brides face and hair and then immediately took off. The bride patiently waited next to the cake with her hands full of cake while the crowd chanted for the groom's return. Suddenly the groom came running through the crowd--wearing nothing but his underwear--and tackled the bride into the pool. Luckily, she took it well...after that people started jumping and being pushed, most of them fully clothed, into the pool...it was craziness.

One other fun feature of the beach wedding was the fireworks show at the conclusion of the couple's first dance.

Half-way

My tomato plants have been doing well, producing a lot more than in previous years...here are 2 nice red ones.

During my little summer break from school I was able to fly to Wyoming to visit my grandma, which was very nice. My family was able to come and see me one day also and we did one of my favorite activities...boating at the Flaming Gorge.

My sister and I being silly while water skiing together.

Finally, in other exciting news... I had to go back to work today (that's not the exciting part)...I started my Psychiatry rotation, which should at least be interesting. We have to take evening call shifts in the Psych ER at the county hosptial...so who knows what I will see.

The exciting part is that I am now officially a 3rd year...which means I am half-way through med school. Yay!

San Antonio Pictures

Jake & I in front of the Alamo church- the place the women and children who survived the attack on the Alamo hid.

Shamu doing cool Killer Whale tricks...

Jake with his love- the penguins...who prefer the dark

Jake & I at Sea World...waiting for a Shamu show