Family Visits & The Flight of Battlecat

Long time no post...... sorry..... we've had some visitors and things have been quite busy.

My parents came to visit the 2nd weekend of the month! They got in Thurs. night and left Sunday night (their flight wasn't scheduled to leave until after 9 which is quite late for my mom!).

When they got in, we went to eat at Golden Corral - as is the tradition of my people. On Friday Erin went to get her haircut with my mom while my dad and I hung out at Borders and read books.... My dad was flipping through Horton's Intro to Covenant Theology and I was reading Knoll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind! After haircuts and dinner, we went to an Astros game... it was Astros - Rockies... my mom was rooting for the Rockies..... the game was pretty blah until the 6th or 7th when I donned my rally cap and the Astros went on a 6 run tear in response. My mom (who was rooting for the Rockies) was mortified that I rallied the Astros with my Denver Broncos hat..... I fear that I am something of a Colorado traitor to her......

The Astros have sucked since that game so perhaps God (who is a Broncos fan) is punishing me for abandoning a Denver-based team in their time of need.....

On Saturday we went to IKEA in the morning and to NASA and Kemah (www.kemahboardwalk.com) in the evening. We ate at a restaurant called The Aquarium which has a lot of....get this.... fish tanks in the restaurant. There were some pretty cool sharks and eels. On Sunday we went to Kaleo and then paid our homage to Katy Mills.... the largest outlet mall around.

Apparently Continental had some issues leaving on time as they were waiting for travelers coming in from the port in Galveston after arriving late from a cruise... my parents didn't get back to Layton until 3 am.....

I really miss my parents! My mom - who is petrified when approached by anything with more than two legs was excellent with Battlecat.... she petted her and never once was she (my mom) compelled to dive onto the couch in fear! My dad got me an early birthday gift - The Mel Brooks Collection on DVD!!!!!! We got to watch cool movies together including The Blues Brothers. My parents also got Erin and I an armoire as a house-warming present. The cool thing about the armoire is that my dad and I got to put it together.... and we like putting things together and watching cool movies (cool movie is defined as any movie that my mom would deem as inane or otherwise contributing to the death of my brain cells). As an aside I did watch Robin Hood: Men in Tights two times in a row the other day!

Two weeks after my parents came, Joshnita came for Memorial Day weekend. Josh arrived Friday morning and after lunch, he and I dug up our backyard. We loaded our garbage can and wagon with grass and dirt and smoothed out the rest.... we tried to get some dirt bags to even out the backyard the next day and quickly realized that we needed a truck to do the job.... perhaps I will get that done this weekend if it stops raining.

On Saturday we went to Nasa and the Aquarium restaurant in Kemah (sound familiar..... there's not a whole lot going on in Houston.....). The strange thing about the Saturday adventure was that there was nobody at the Aquarium....... two weeks before we waited for at least an hour and a half to be seated but this time we walked in and were seated immediately.....Erin and I had bought three tickets to a water park to use for the weekend... we'd planned to go Sunday but alas... it was raining so after church we went to the Galleria..... the Galleria is a huge mall right near our house.... and again..... there was hardly anybody there... the whole thing was kind of eery..... After the Galleria we took Erin home to study and Joshnita and I went to see X-Men 3.... which was an OK action flick, but I really enjoyed the first two better.....

On Monday Joshnita and I went to look at cars... we looked at Cobalts, Corrolas, and the Yaris which we were both impressed with! Then we went to the Body Worlds exhibit at the musuem of natural science (www.bodyworlds.com). This is an exhibit of real human bodies..... an anatomical exhibit... there was only time where I really felt compelled to vomit......it involved a trapeze. We also got free tickets to the Ur exhibit.... Ur is where Abraham (you know... Father Abraham.... he had many sons... and many sons had Father Abraham.... I am one of them.... and so are you... so let's all praise the Lord ________ insert motion). Unfortunately the Ur exhibit was more like a pottery collection...which I guess is cool if you're into that... I was hoping for a bit more history......anyway we rushed through it to get Joshnita to the airport for his 5:30 flight.

After we dropped Josh off we were on our way home when he called to say that his flight had been delayed.... to 9:30..... so we decided to go back and pick him up to take him to dinner..... unfortunately the airline wouldn't let Josh leave.... they made it sound like at any moment they were going to pull an aircraft from the hangers and head to SLC.... Erin and I got temporary gate passes and had dinner with Josh inside the airport. After we got done with dinner (around 8) the departure board said the flight had been delayed another hour.... Erin called the airline and the told her that the flight which was taking Josh to SLC wasn't going to arrive in Houston until 10:27 if it left on time..... so there's no way the flight would leave by 10:30..... so we decided to try to get Josh on standby for the 9:05 at another gate..... we went to board the tram to the next game only to find out that the tram was temporarily out of service.....

Long story short... Erin and I enjoyed 4 hours at George Bush Intercontinental with Josh and he was able to get on the 9:05 and arrived in SLC around 11:30.......

The Flight of Battlecat.....

Battlecat has been growing in her rebellious efforts......she seems to be incapable of heeding the command: Come. She will sit from a mile away but if you tell her to come she just runs..... Erin and I have been letting her roam free on our gated street so she can frolic, eat wood chips, and poop! Two days ago I was walking out the door to pick up some groceries when Battlecat met me at the door looking quite distraught. She pleaded with me to go outside.... and I acquiesed. Battlecat ran to the end of the street..... I went to the end of the street and she bolted to the front of the street... coincident with her sprint, our neighbors were loading stuff into their trucks outside the gate.... Battlecat seized the moment and ran into the street.... I followed her....walking so as not to make her think I was giving chase... she ran up to another man with a dog and stayed there barking and hopping until I arrived and she bolted down another street and into a cul de sac. There are two homes with no fence dividing the backyards..... after 10 min of chasing her from one side of the backyard to the other I enlisted the help of a man who was at the used car dealership across the street.... the plan: to chase Battlecat from one side and have her cornered by my accomplice. Unfortunately Battlecat realized she was cornered and sprinted past me before I could pounce. Back up the street she went..... by this time Erin had decided to come see where we were.... and Battlecat went right up to her.........must be a chick thing....

This morning Battlecat tipped Erin's study table over as she was goofing around and Erins cereal tipped onto her laptop.....bummer #1.

Erin called me on the way home from school while she was on the train.... and that's the last place she remembered having her phone. So Erin is having a sad day..... we're hopeful that someone turned her phone into a train operator. When I got home from work, her laptop seemed to be in working order (other than some sticky keys....).

Well.....I will post several pictures this weekend....

That's all for now.