A beautiful day to fly...

Paul just got checked out in a Piper Warrior 4 seater... so we decided to hop in, test out both of our new headsets, and fly down to Galveston. When we got there, the friendly airport gas station dropped us off at the beach, and after a picnic and swim, picked us back up and sent us on our way. The Piper flies beautifully and was a great ride.

Around the House...

Here are some updates around the house...

Just before we left for Peru we had our siding completely redone with hardiplank... This is a great shot of all the excitement:



This weekend I finally planted an herb garden... although it's really a basil garden (4 basil plants)! The plants are cheaper than the both fresh or dried basil at the grocery store. The other supplies may have added up to be more - but we won't have to trim around the trellis anymore!



Thre rest of the yard is looking good too. Here's a picture of some blue flowers from our plumbago plant. Paul helped me out one day by weed wacking the flower garden's overgrown weeds... he had accidentally also hacked my three baby plumbago plants too. But - to my surprise they all are coming back & blooming!



We also got our new organization system down - a whiteboard in the kitchen with calender and note section. I absolutely love it! And I also found a way to keep our collage of pictures that used to be on the tack board:



Last, we hung up our Peru tapestries. Still not sure if we should put them on slates to straighten them out or leave them in their imperfect form... let us know what you think!

Inc 16 Montage

I was honored to receive an Increment 16 Montage at work from the lead Flight Director & ISS Commander of the expedition for appretiation of my work last October-April!



Isn't it cool! I took it home to share with Paul and eventually frame...

Overnight Canoe Trip

There aren't many places to go camping in Texas in the summer - but we did find one! An overnight canoe trip the Big Thicket... during the day, whenever you get hot you can jump in the water, and in the evening, the temperature gets down to 75 degrees (which is a degree cooler than I keep the house).

The only issue, was that the river level was low (I mean very low) and the section we did had a ton of downed trees we had portage under, over, & around. It turned out to be a fun obstacle course.

Other than that, the bugs weren't out, the moonlight was beautiful & an evening dip was fun too!

(more pictures to come - Kristin has them on her camera)

4th of July

For the 4th of July we went to visit Paul's family in LA! The weather was awesome - and we spent the whole time being over-indulgent Americans :) Playing with a puppy in the swimming pool (yes that is a puppy life vest) and throwing 22 lbs of meat on the grill!



Ah to be American!