General chit chat...

Can you believe we are nearly in the 6th month of being away.  Amazing how time flies!!!  Everyday seems to fly by and I am certainly never bored - in fact so much so that I don't think I will be sitting that exam in June! Haven't had a huge amount of time to study.  So I bet you are wondering what exactly it is that I am doing well I can tell you!

Monday to Friday I get up at 6am and leave the house at around 7:20 am with the boys.  We walk to school and Rudy comes with us.  Rudy and I then go on and do a loop around our neighbourhood.  I am finding he needs to be walked first thing otherwise it is too hot.  I no longer take him with me to collect the boys as it really is too hot for a big black doggy to be out there!

I took this photo on one of my dog walks.  Check out the super green grass in the distance - those people have a wonderful lawn - I always feel like I want to stroke it - weirdo huh!!

Once home I tend to have breakfast and go through email etc.  Some mornings I go off and do vibe and others I bake or clean this enormous house of ours.  As always there is tons of washing and putting away as well as grocery shopping.  I have been doing quite a bit of gardening at home and also have been up at the school garden quite a bit as we have had a couple of garden tours - one for the Master Gardener interns to come and see what we are doing and the other for the Grapevine Gardening club.  I am now officially the PTA liaison for the garden so can feel myself being sucked into the vortex of the PTA!

By the time I pick the boys up we are all pooped but still have homework to get through every night.Generally, the boys go to bed at 7:30 and then I am in bed not that long after if Steve is away. Then it's up again for another day!

Pooped boy and his dog!

The weekends are very chilled and we spend all of it together as a family.  The boys have their tennis lesson on a Saturday (mine is a Wednesday). This weekend we are doing Parents Night out at the gym where you pay $15 per child and can leave them there until 10pm.  They get to swim, play basketball, rock wall climb and have pizza with a whole load of other kids.  It's a really nice idea and much cheaper than a babysitter!  Tom enjoyed rock climbing so much he is going to do it as a sport.  William is going to be doing more tennis as this is the only thing he wants to do right now.



These shots were taken quite a few weeks ago.  Generally, the temperature is now between 25 and 32 degrees.  We are also in official summer time now with the clocks changing a few weeks back.

Both boys are still enjoying school and their new found freedom - both now have mobile phones as they disappear up the road for hours and I want to be able to track them down!! Here is William cooking for his school Spanish project - he learnt how to make empanadas - a Mexican pastie basically! Here is his mate from up the road, Derek or Dessa as we like to call him.  Derek is in William's year and his sister, DLS is in Tom's year - get it? DLS??? Derek's Little Sister.  We are so funny Steve and I!!!

Derek doesn't normally look so startled - not sure what was going on there!!!!

I am meeting more people and am now part of a ladies that lunch group! Next week I am going for a coffee with a lady from Berkshire who I randomly met in a supermarket.  She heard me talking on my phone and came and said Hi as British accents are obviously not that common here!!  It turns out she lives in a house right behind us, on the right hand side! We can wave to each other over the creek!!  She knows a number of British people here so I am looking forward to having a really good discussion with them!

I have been doing lots of planting and am growing beans, tomatoes, courgettes, squash and onions.  I would love to grow more but there isn't much planting space in this garden.  Basically, keeping busy as my lack of blogging shows! It's great catching up with various folks on Skype and I really appreciate the connection to back home it gives me.



William at one of our local parks

 Here are some shots of the school garden I work in.  The gentleman in one of the pictures is Bob one of the Master Gardeners who works there.

From looking at the garden it all looks kind of bare but if I had taken some closer shots you would see that all the 'bare' area is actually planted up with heaps of things like lettuce, potatoes, carrots, leeks, broccoli, beetroot and many other things.  I will take some more photos in the coming weeks and hopefully it will look a bit more alive.

Well, that's it for now.  Hopefully, my IT guy will stop doing his day job so much so that he can fix this blogging software! We live in hope - I am sure beer and the pool have more influence than I do!!!  Take care one and all and see most of you soon!!!!!

Love,

Bex

Tom's birthday photos...

Tom's 8th birthday...

An afternoon spent at Adventure Landing in Dallas...

Tom's first go in a petrol Go Kart - I think he rather liked it!!!

  These next photos were taken after we did battle on the bumper boats compete with water pistols!!!  I think I came worst off!!!

 Most of the rides were pretty busy so we decided to have a go at baseball.  Steve, William and Tom  all did the 50 mile an hour balls and 80 miles an hour ones - I think this easier if you are wearing gloves as the bats are metal!!

Tom had a great day and thank you for all the birthday wishes and presents he got!!!



San Antonio - Spring Break 2011...

March 12th - 20th is Spring Break here - it's like our half term I guess and was certainly well needed by us all!  Those 6am mornings are hard work!!!  Spring Break is the last holiday before we break up at the beginning of June (no time off over Easter - even Good Friday is a school day!!).  We will certainly be ready for our UK break!

We had planned to go to New York but decided that it would be better to explore what's on out doorstep first.  Plus, NY would have still been really cold and I don't think we are ready for that yet!

It all worked out for the best though as Steve ended up having to fly out to Virginia on the Wednesday so just as well we hadn't booked anything.  Seems that when you book a week out from work that doesn't mean much here. 

Steve has been away A LOT recently.  I am beginning to feel like a single Mum but wouldn't trade places with him for a second! At least I get to sleep in my own bed every day.  We are hoping this will change now and I believe he may even be here most of next week - watch this space for that to change!!!

So, we went down to San Antonio on the Monday stopping off at the monument cafe in Georgetown.

One weird thing to note was that it remained dark here until nearly 8am! I can tell you that once you find a bit of Texas countryside, and it's still dark, it is really dark!!!

You can tell that you are getting nearer the border just by the architecture!

As we were driving down I took a few photos of the Austin skyline, the countryside and the roads...

We arrived in San Antonio around midday.  We took Rudy with us and so ended up in a B&B called O'Casey's which was just lovely set in the historical area of SA.

We didn't stay in the big house but had a converted stable at the back with our own little deck.  It was great as we could come and go as we wanted.

On our way to downtown SA for lunch.

Unfortunately, Steve was working most of the day (yabbering on his phone that is) but he did manage to come and have lunch with us along the river walk.  Whilst he took a call the boys and I went into one of the SA museums/shop/restaurant.

I thought this sign was funny as I know two boys who could be termed that!

Tourism seems to be the order of the day in SA and you could get carriage rides around but we decided against it as those horses were pretty stinky!!  The roof in the entrance to this place was pretty spooky too - not sure that will catch on somehow!

Not sure who is scarier - the big cat or me when I am grumpy!!

Once Steve finished on his call we managed a very pleasant lunch at the Omni hotel on the river walk.  Not many places would accept dogs but we sat outside at this place and Rudy became quite a star with loads of people stopping to make a fuss of him - something he is liking a lot over here!

In case anyone is wondering - the water is dyed that colour!

The next day the boys and I did a boat trip on the river which was good fun.  Steve got bitten in the face by some kind of insect and his face swelled up so he ended up staying at the B&B with Rudy.

It's a hard life!

Here are some of the shots of SA I took on our boat trip...

One final shot of the all important Alamo...

That afternoon we walked to a local Mexican restaurant where we had a lovely relaxed late lunch/early dinner.

  Yes, Steve is now with beard - well goatee! He has grown one because our tennis coach has one and he wanted to look like Lance - hence we call his goatee, Lance!

That left only packing to do and we were up and gone by 6am the following day to get back to Grapevine so Steve could fly out to Virginia. 

It was fab to get out of DFW but I have to say it was certainly not restful! We will now have to wait until we get to the UK to have a holiday which is a break!

It is now 1:50 in the afternoon and I have been trying to set this blog up since 11am! I am very frustrated with how long it takes and how many times it crashes as I am trying to upload photos.  This has been something that Steve and I have been hoping to fix but with his work pattern at the moment it is not a priority for him.  So, I apologise once more to all those people who have been visiting this page only to find no updates.  As my Dad pointed out, there is no point having followers if there is nothing to follow!

Hopefully, we will get things sorted.  It is just so frustrating that it takes so long and whilst I could type reams of stuff I always think a photo is much more interesting.  So, now it's nearly time to get the boys from school so I will end here.  One more update to do for Tom's birthday but will attempt that later.  It is 29 degrees outside and I have furniture to stain and seedlings to pot on so I have better get shifting!

Hope all is well with you and yours, love Bex