Visiting Houston

We spent most of the Thanksgiving weekend (Friday-Sunday) visiting Houston. Here are a few highlights:

Above: Stella and I during a stroll outside The Woodlands Mall in the northern Houston suburbs.

Above: From our jaunt to Houston earlier this year, I knew Amani would get a kick out of a ride on the merry-go-around. And he did: He was grinning the whole time!

Above: Viola with Cecilia, our gracious host for the weekend!

Above: What a way to take in a mild Saturday evening (70 degrees): ice skating at the lovely Discovery Green park in downtown Houston! From what we can remember, this was just Viola’s third time on skates (2004, 2006). She was tentative at first, but was skating on her own–and not holding onto the outside wall, either–by the end of our 45-minute session.

Above: Love this reflective photo of Viola in the Discovery Green fountain (the water was low at the time)

Above: Amani’s never seen a puddle or fountain of water that he didn’t like or want to splash in! His pledge around the time of this photo to “not gonna step in it” didn’t exactly hold up in the end, and he wound up soaking his socks and shoes. He had to sit barefoot with Stella as Viola and I skated.

Above: We wrapped up our Houston trip on Sunday morning by catching up with the Texada Family, taking in an uplifting, music-filled service at Lakewood Church and then wolfing down a delicious IHOP breakfast!

To see the rest of our photos, check out this Houston set on my Flickr photostream.

Scary moment

I don’t have a photo to document it, but we had a close call on the drive to Houston on Friday afternoon. On a back road some 30 minutes from our final destination, a car and an RV collided right in front of us and then spun around and off the road on our side. The RV flipped completely over, too. I managed to avoid the serving car–but not by much. Fortunately, the drivers and passengers in both vehicles seemed to have escaped without serious angry. We were certainly counting our blessings after that.