lifeTTL

This are pics from our pre-thanksgiving trip with my Mom, my Berkeley cousin Isabel, and the rest of the family to San Antonio (not again!) and Fredericksburg (when do we go again?!). We love Enchanted Rock, the town of Fredericksburg and the wineries, and yes we can forfeit the looong drive.

We rented a minivan that I’ll never buy. My next minivan, a Mini Clubman :)

Cheers

PS: It is still 9am!!

This are pics from the Christmas songs that Marta and her peers sang some days back. You cannot hear it, but they are singing from Mary Poppins “With a spoonful of sugar”, French Can-can and “Who is making all that noise”. But now that you know the titles, you can point to the appropriate song, every time :)

Marta was sort of moody at the end (no pics shown), but it was so looong, and Pablo and Marta drank so much soda the previous night at Anne and Hugo’s birthdays, that some tiredness was about to show sooner or later.

Anyway, ahead with the holidays. Tomorrow, inshallah, a Mini will hit the garage.

Cheers and happy holidays

The kitchen has a new counter top. I have complained long and hard about putting it, but it does look good.

I’ve been working as a plumber, under the sink and I am not that bad.

And today, I went to the gym, the CVX gym, and it’s good. So the endorphin rush might have something to do with the title. Or not.

Silly, really.

And only took her [5 years and] 30 seconds!

Of course, Pablo is unstoppable, behind her, to the point we have to be outside all the time so we can track them down full time.

Proud Papa!

Pablo has started riding his bike, training wheels and all. On Sunday he
knew how to brake and start in any position. He has been following
Marta, Sophie, Wilemein, Lo and Gwen everywhere. Pablo and Marta have
been playing with the neighborhood kids all weekend… Our place, Lexi’s
place, Gwen’s place, Lo’ place, Clay’s place!

In the meantime, Eulalia and I have painted the garage, walls and
ceiling, and sort of re-organize the place (meaning I’ve been relegated
to the western side of the three place garage, for my experiments).

After four weeks with Eulalia working weekends, we have done a lot for
our first free weekend. Working for Chevron is giving me more free time.

Marta has been behaving above average. She eats everything, she does her
school tasks, she helps around and she is less moody.

I’ve been commuting with the woodlands express, a bus from the woodlands
to downtown. 45 min early, one hour late. But I can read, write (like
now), sleep, think… It’s awesome, even though sometimes crowded.

Volvo sucks. After 50000 miles, I have a leaky camshaft. It sucks big
time, since the warranty expired 10000 miles ago. Arrgh!

Anyway, pics of Pablo and Marta riding together will come soon.

Carlos

Dos anhos y poco y ya 80,000 kilometros. Commute is so boring that I look at the miles roll by. My podcasts are not cutting it anymore. I am planning on putting a tripod inside the car so I can take pics on the run, all the time!

We have decided to do a little bit of spring cleaning, ok, fall cleaning in the garage. The weather helped a lot, with cool temperatures, but we spent all the weekend at home, so we did get a lot done. Two haircuts, half a garage cleaned, one car detailed by the whole family, one oil change, tire rotation, and concrete clean up from oil spill :( and finally, last but not least, a dual boot machine, Vista 32, Ubuntu 64, twinview and with all the disks available :)

So, no pictures but a lot of work done, and we feel good about it. Now I am thinking on building a table for Pablo and Marta’s computer using my old and slightly broken snowboard (extremely cool), but if the don’t like it, it will make a nice shelf for me :)

Cheers

Este fin de semana estuvimos en la fiesta de estreno de Carolina y Juan. Carolina y Juan se acaban de comprar una casa en el centro del meollo, downtown houston, que es una envidia.

Yolanda, Pilar, Jose, Bill, Carolina y Juan… una fiesta de miedo!

Esperando otras…

I was darn busy trying to keep a dozen kids under control, while Eulalia was drowning the grown-ups in alcohol, so Hugo took up the challenge, and in between beers, he was able to get this awesome pics, and Hugo never got hit by a bunch of sugar-hungry kids beating on a pinhata :)

And yes, in the end, I had to hit the pinhata too… Who says that products made in China are not sturdy? This pinhata was bullet-proof!!

You can see more pics of Hugo at Hugo’s Picasa site. There you can see the things Anne and Hugo do when not around kids :)

Cheers

It works!!

This is how you reset the annoying message in your car:

Put your key in the ignition and turn it to position I
Press the odometer reset, and hold it there
When the odometer resets, turn the key to position II, hold the odometer reset until the i of information starts blinking.
During the 4 seconds that the i of information blinks, release the odometer reset first and turn the key to the 0 position.

You are done :)