Talmage is swimming!!

Yes, the buoyancy of his floties might equal more than the weight of his body. But we are counting it!

Recent Texas Adventures

Since we've been here, we've done lots of fun stuff, despite the heat. It was really nice to have 2 weeks together with out little family. no school. no work. Just family vacation time in our new home. It's fun to be in a new spot, too. I feel like there are so many things to do and see. Truston's program is downtown at the Medical Center; a huge complex of hospitals, schools, research facilities, etc.Herman Park is next to the Medical Center, a big downtown park. While Truston was at orientation, the boys and I came downtown with him and took advantage of Herman Park.
One day we went to the zoo. The highlight for everybody was watching Baby Baylor get a bath. Baby Baylor was born earlier this summer, it was super cute to watch him and his mommy with the zookeepers. --sorry for the fuzzy picture. It was so humid and wet that was the best we got.
One day we played at the parks and rode the train around Herman Park. Do we look hot? I was totally ready to spend the morning outside playing, but after 1 hour at the parks, I gave up and determined we would just ride the train until Truston was done. too hot.
We spent a Saturday at Brazos Bend State Park. This place is AWESOME. I'm telling you all right now- to anybody who comes and visits, this is one place we will bring you. Brazos Bend is a huge plot of land that has been left for the alligators, a reserve. We have a favorite lake we like to walk around and look for alligators. It's also a very popular birding spot and we saw a ton of interesting birds, but alas, we don't know anything about birds. We walked around the lake and saw 10 alligators (which is a pretty small number, my family was disappointed in us) and then visited the nature center to see some baby alligators. oh yeah, no fences.
The volunteer working there let us all pet one of the baby alligators. Logan, obviously not attuned to fear, reached out and grabbed this little guys foot, almost ripping it off. haha, sorry baby alligator. This little guy is almost 1 year, same age as Logan.
Here are some pictures we took at Brazos Bend. This little guy was about 2 feet long, which means he is about 2 years old. Pretty cute.
Just in case you are ever enticed to enter alligator-infested waters, you would have to cross the webs of death, as we like to call them. In addition to alligators, we saw plenty of HUGE spiders. One of them was eating a moth before our eyes...gives me the shivers. I took this picture because in between two trees there were at least 10 webs with HUGE spiders sitting in the middle of them. If you have sharp eyes, maybe you will see a spider or two.
This guy was staring right at us, kind of creepy. The people walking around before us, said this guy started coming out of water towards their little rat dog. Scary. Seriously, who would bring a rat dog to an alligator preserve? You are just asking for it to be eaten.
We watched this guy swim up the side of the lake and turn around. Apparently, he crossed into another alligators territory because he and another alligator jumped out of the water at each other with their mouths wide open, ready to fight. It was like watching national geographic, I was waiting for the slow motion replay, it all happened so fast.
We've spent PLENTY of time at the pool. This is our favorite pool, the beach club. It has a sandy, shallow entry that turns into a pool. Logan and Talmage have a blast in the sand. There are lots of pools around here and every one has a separate kiddie splash pad. We've visited most of them and ranked our favorites. Nothing beats a good pool!

SLC/H-town Differences

1. All of the billboards/aggressive campaigning for body perfecting procedures in SLC have transformed to lingerie/porn shops in H-town. (funny commentary on both the world and mormon culture)

2. The Toyota Camry has replaced the Subaru as the most common car on the road. We’ve only seen 3 other Subaru’s in the past 3 week, there are only 3 dealers in ALL of Houston. Also, it seemed like there were a bazillion Toyota Corollas in SLC, none to be found here.

3. Lawn Mowing is a booming business here. Every once in a while I catch myself thinking, ‘How can they pay to water all this grass? What a waste of water.’ And then I remember we don’t live in a desert anymore, water is abundant.

4. Speaking of water, it doesn’t taste as good as SLC. But both cities have nothing on Alaska’s water. Best tap water we’ve ever tasted, and the coldest.

5. Also water related- people drive slowly through puddles. Like they’re worried about hydroplaning or something. What a bunch of wussies, if they drove Subaru Outback’s’ they wouldn’t have anything to worry about.

6. In more water related news, it rains a lot here. A LOT. It’s a real rain storm too; no sprinkle sprinkle for a couple of minutes, but a real downpour. Out of the first 10 days we were here, it rained 8. One day the pool almost overflowed and another day it hailed. I thought we were going to be impaled to death for sure. Luckily, our Subaru Outback is built to withstand killer hail.

7. People here are gaga over small kids/babies. I think Utah must be inundated with children; people here act like they’ve never seen a baby.

8. Frogs and black slugs abound, especially after rain.

9. The trash can got really stinky, really fast. There must be some chemical reaction between trash cans and stinky diapers that is super catalyzed by heat.

10. Back to lawn mowing, we’ve only seen 2 neighbors mow their own lawn. There doesn’t seem to be a child task force here. Maybe that is why people are so excited about babies? They see future lawn mowers?

11. The biggest difference is the heat. SLC is hot. H-town is HOT. In SLC, people don’t carry hand towels to mop up their faces. They don’t publicly pour water over their heads. They don’t wear bathing suits like it’s going out of style. SLC has hot days, Houston has hot months (April –October). Also, SLC is a dry, dusty desert. Houston is a wet, swampy forest. Good for alligators, frogs and rapid grass growth.

Well, that’s it. Love, Truston, Brittney and FLMA (Future Lawn Mowers of America)

We are here!

We have arrived in Texas. The drive was good, not as bad as I was expecting. I don't know what I was expecting, but there was no screaming, hours of crying or incessant "Are we there yet?" The boys slept half the way, literally. And the other half was peppered with surprises from the 'trip bag'. A couple of fruit roll ups and matchbox cars went a long way. The most exciting part of the 'Cars' car was the little paper that had pictures of the rest of the 'cars' collection. Talmage studied these for hours.


Logan was pretty happy, took long naps and watched Talmage play with his cars. Eventually, he did need a little entertainment and that came in the form of crazy parental antics.

We moved into the house that my parents bought and will be moving into shortly. When we were packing up our stuff, all I could think was, 'We have SOOO much junk'. But now that we are here in a normal sized house, I don't think we really have that much. Literally everything we have could not fill two rooms of this house. Hence, the next video.
The other day, Logan was crawling around the kitchen, which is essentially empty, checking out the cupboards and he found the bag of bags. This bag of bags provided hours of entertainment. Hours. And Talmage has asked me every day since, "Mom, where are my bags?" Which I have hidden, because sometimes I don't want to pick up 500 bags 500 times a day.
...oh, just kidding, this video is taking forever. Imgaine Logan, the speediest crawler you've ever seen, crawling through a huge pile of bags over and over again while Talmage collects the bags and bellly flops into them like a pile of leaves. Why buy toys when you have bags?