It's a Zoo in Houston!

The Sprinter drama continues... This morning Mike informed me that there was another flat, but he and the guys put the spare on before leaving. Thankfully we found a great tire repair just down the road and had it patched in no time!

Then it was on to Houston! Our first stop was the Health Museum, with lots of exhibits about the human body. We saw a 4D movie about all the gross "bugs" that live on our bodies.

Ella and Celia played a game where the most relaxed brain would push the ball toward the opponent. Celia went into "possum" mode and was unbeatable. It was as if she'd died with her eyes open!

Then it was on to the Houston Zoo. Faith got this amazing close up of one of the bats!

The aquarium area had this tube you could crawl into to be one with the fish.

And also a tube to join the prairie dogs.

We also saw our first raindrops in almost a month! Both Mexico and Texas have had droughts. Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for us!) it was only about 5 minutes' worth of very light rain.

We're now taking an evening swim and then off to bed. Tomorrow we begin our trip home, making a stop or two along the way.

"Houston, we have some Lansers!"

On Sunday we made our final stop along the Texas Gulf Coast. But first, we visited the First Baptist Church of High Island. We about doubled the congregation when we walked in! (Apparently a large extended family was gone and that cut the numbers down to about 1/4 of usual) Sweet people, though, and they made us feel very welcome.

Our goal was to visit all of the Texas Gulf Coast, so we traveled out to Sabine Pass, right on the Louisiana border. This beach wasn't as nice as the others, but Trina and Celia still had fun with the seaweed and sea foam--making cakes and pies.

Trivia--Sabine Pass was one of Texas' 8 corners. Do you know any of the others? :-) We think we've now visited 4 of the 8.


We were a little shocked to step out of our hotel room and see that our van had been hijacked! You have to look closely to identify the hijackers...

Guess Chucha and Lita had enough of the back seat. Of course Lita grabbed the drivers seat--this seems to be happening more and more in their relationship!


Now we're in Houston and were very excited about "our" house! Eight or so Innotec guys are here for a conference so they just rented a big house. We were given the largest bedroom to share, which was larger than any hotel room we had!

First we tried out the massage chair...

Then it was on to the swimming pool...with a WATERFALL!...and a hot tub. (Looks like everyone finally had enough of Ella bossing them around :-)!)

Lita had her first ever swim. It took much coaxing. Well, actually, it took a pretty strong push!

And today we visited the Houston Space Center. What a great time! We found it much more interesting than we thought it would be.

This is the Mission Control room that was used from the beginning of NASA until the mid 90s. We sat in the chairs that the families, president, etc. would have sat in to watch the launches. This is also where all of the Apollo 13 drama would have happened. A new thing I learned is that the Flight Director has complete decision-making power, even over the president of NASA or the president of the U.S., because his highest priority is astronaut safety.

Also, those space stations that just appear to be floating are actually traveling at 5 miles a second! Hard to even fathom that!


We all tried to land the shuttle--and we all crashed!

It's Been Awhile!

We've covered a few miles and had some late nights! Thursday we drove up to Port Aransas, on the coast near Corpus Christi. What a fun little spot! Really wide beaches where cars and camping are allowed. We found a nice hotel right on the beach WITH A POOL!

After a swim in the pool, we drove down the beach and found a spot to hang out. We forgot our beach chairs, but Trina had a plan!

The waves were perfect for boogie boarding! Unfortunately the sun was also perfect for burning. It was such gorgeous weather that we stayed out a little too long and got pretty crispy.

Later in the afternoon we headed out and drove to a little beach further north called Surfside Beach. In the morning we discovered about a mile long fishing pier loaded with "fisherpeople". Ella says "hi" from Surfside Beach!

This was a very simple, non-commercial beach town. It was another wide, driveable beach with mostly beach homes on stilts.

From Surfside, we headed up the coast to Galveston and then took a ferry across to Bolivar Island. This area was hit by Hurricane Ike in 2008. There were lots of signs of damage still. Bolivar Island had many houses rebuilt, but not a lot of commercial business. This didn't help our hotel hunt!

Hey, Mr. G! Did you know there's a street named after you in Crystal Beach, TX?!!

We hit the weekend of the Texas Crab Festival so we paid a visit. Mike, of course, had to sample the hometown favorite--crawfish. We sat next to some locals who taught us how to eat them with a little class!

The girls found a booth that would give them a hair feather for free. They'll have to show you them when they get home!

Tonight we're in a town called High Island, starting to zero in on Houston for Mike's conference which begins on Monday.

Weather Paybacks!

We're now on South Padre Island and, after rubbing it in that many of you had snow, we've had mid-60, very windy, cloudy days!  Thankfully no rain and each day is supposed to get warmer.

We spent some time on the beach, collecting shells and exploring.  Even though it was cool, the girls still got in the water.  This picture was taken right before a wave knocked Trina down and got her soaked.  The laughter turned to tears!

After our beach fun, we headed to Sea Turtle, Inc. where they rescue injured sea turtles.

I know many of you will appreciate this!  Either the club only consists of one idiot, or they demonstrate their idiocy by using apostrophes in the wrong places :-)

Celia enjoyed reading each turtle's story to Trina.

And Trina enjoyed being a turtle!

We ended our day with dinner overlooking the bay.

The girls went down to play along the shore of the bay.  They found tons of hermit crabs and we saw these weird things swimming called Spanish dancers, a type of sea slug.  They look like a blob of jelly when they're washed up but then almost have a bird shape when they swim.

Happy to be Alive!

Monday morning we headed out from Arteaga, making our way back to the States.  We (Mike) decided to take a scenic drive up to Monterrey and then head to the border from there.  It all started innocently enough, with beautiful hilly scenery.  But eventually we were on one lane roads that hugged the sides of mountains, made even worse by the fact that there had been washouts during last spring's hurricane.

We saw lots of warning signs like this one.  We wish we had taken pictures of each one because we jokingly ended each one with "or you will die".  For example, this one says "watch out for falling rock (you take it seriously when falling rock is nearly covering the sign!) or you will die!"  Another had a car shown sliding from side to side--you will die!  Another showed a car on an extremely steep decline--"or you will die!"

You can see how narrow the roads were and then how the edges just fell away during the washouts.  All joking stopped when Mike mentioned how the brakes were acting "a little funky" and I started to smell burning brakes.  Of course this happened as we began the descent from the highest point with hairpin turns and steep declines--and then we had to climb and descend again and again.  At that point I really just wanted to tuck my head between my legs and pray!!  Guess that's why I have no pictures of that part :-)

They were beautiful views!  We would also end up in some low canyons like this where we were basically traveling the riverbed.  This is a big vacation area so we saw lots of fun little cabanas for rent.  Mike thinks we should come back again someday to rent a cabin.  Yeah, right--only if a helicopter can set me down right on the cabana roof!

I kissed the ground when we reached Monterrey and had lunch.  Oh, did I mention we also picked up hitchhikers partway through our ride?  A man, woman and little boy rode with us.  They knew no English but as I was freaking out, they were just sitting there calm as could be!

At the border, Mike had quite a skirmish with the guy who took care of our car registration.  We paid for 6 months so Mike wanted to keep it live, but the guy immediately canceled it and wouldn't/couldn't reverse it.  He threatened to call over the soldiers and Mike told him to "go ahead" and then drew 3 other employees into it who eventually reversed the cancellation.  We think our Sprinter is probably blacklisted now!

We got stopped at every checkpoint throughout Mexico--we think they don't know what to do with a Sprinter!--but thankfully the border crossing was quick and easy.  They didn't search or question the dogs.  Yay!  We're back on American soil!

Meet the Newest Lanser

The Rodriguez Ranch is the birth home of our dog, Chucha. So, does it really come as any big surprise that the girls went there hoping to "score" another dog? There were no border collie puppies, but there were 4 Belgian Malamoise 4 month olds. The vote was 4 in favor, 2 opposed (I'll let you figure out who voted how!) so majority ruled. Meet Lolita...

She and Chucha are choosing to co-exist. They're not best friends yet, but at least they will share the same space peacably. Here they are loaded up and ready to leave the ranch.

The girls had to say goodbye to the other three siblings.

The biggest issue was getting Lolita's papers in time for our departure tomorrow. Since it was a Sunday, Senor Rodriguez pulled some strings to get a vet he knew to come in and vaccinate her.

And, continuing with the animal theme, we went to the Arteaga market for a while tonight and came across these dyed chicks!