Silly Brenda. She thought all I really wanted was for her to watch my cats while we were on vacation. Little did she know I purposely left dozens of unpacked boxes lying around the house to drive her crazy, so she would feel compelled to unpack. Bwahahahah!

*Honestly, I had no evil plan. Brenda is just nuts. She’s unpacking the rest of our house (with our permission) while we’re in Texas. It’s not my idea of fun, but she claims she is loving every minute.

And now she has our undying gratitude and and endless supply of crocheted projects and homemade birthday cakes for as long as she wants them. She also has an open invitation to come help us unpack anytime we move!

P.S. Thanks to Sarah for the inspiration.
P.P.S. Are you wondering what the heck “pwned” means?

I have so much fun when I’m traveling and take so many pictures that I’m always behind in uploading and posting. Oh well. I guess I am on vacation after all. So I’ll just catch you up to this past Sunday.

We left OMSHville on Saturday morning and headed for Houston. In case you didn’t know, Texans pronounce it YEW-sten. I did not know that myself till I heard Heather pronounce it that way. And that suburb of Houston next door to IAH, Humble, is correctly pronounced without the ‘H’ sound. I don’t know about you, but I like to know these things when I travel so I don’t sound like a total ignoramus.

Anyway. We drove to the airport to pick up Troy and there was much rejoicing. Then we went to see some friends of ours who live in Houston. Chris and Angie both went to UNL around the same time we did, but we didn’t know them back then. Erin and Angie became good friends when they did a study-abroad semester in Spain together, and we’ve gotten to know them through Erin over the years.

Chris and Angie have two kids, 3-year-old Isabelle and 6-month-old Tommy. They are both totally adorable. Annalie and Isabelle renewed their acquaintance over the backyard swing set and, minor squabbles over a toy laptop aside, they got along well. Everything Annalie did, Isabelle wanted to do too. Annalie wanted mini-corndogs? So did Isabelle. Annalie wanted the pink cup? So did Isabelle. Annalie wanted french toast? Isabelle too, please!

Tommy, meanwhile, just sat around looking cute enough to eat and smiling at whomever came into his line of vision.

He’s such an easygoing baby that after his evening feeding, Angie put him down on his playmat in the living room, gave him his pacifier, and he turned onto his tummy and unceremoniously went to sleep. As the parent of a child who has only voluntarily put herself to sleep three times in four and a half years (every time, she had a fever) I found that amazing.

Saturday after we arrived Troy got to watch the Nebraska game on a big-screen HDTV with other Husker fans. And Nebraska beat Iowa State, 35-7. So he was happy.

After going to the park in OMSHville the day before and watching the big kids on the swings, Annalie did her first-ever flip on a swing without any help from me. The mom in me was thinking, Eek! Careful! Don’t hit your head! Are you old enough to be doing this?! But the 10-year-old in me who used to spend all her recesses inventing new and better ways to jump and flip off the swings was thinking, Wow, she figured it out on her own, that’s awesome! And I’m right here taking pictures of it!

Motherhood is weird sometimes.

We had originally wanted to leave early Sunday morning but Troy had only gotten about two hours of sleep the night before, thanks to his crack-of-dawn flight, and I was getting sick. So we let ourselves sleep in a bit and didn’t rush. Thank goodness because Angie cooked us a delicious breakfast of french toast, hash browns, and scrambled eggs with sausage, peppers and onions. I helped with the hash browns a tiny bit and I also managed to make their coffeemaker overflow. Don’t you all want to invite me over now? I bring disease and break appliances wherever I go.

This is Angie explaining why she never wants to see me in her house again. Just kidding! They were extremely gracious about the coffeemaker, insisting that it overflows all the time. And since Isabelle was already sick when we got there, I don’t think they could blame us for that.

After breakfast for Annalie and Isabelle snuggled adorably up on the couch and watched a little Disney Channel before we left. We said thank you and good-bye, promised to come again and stay longer next time, and headed down the road to Mom & Tom’s.

Many more photos of our weekend visiting with Sarah & B, Rebekah, and Kristen & her family are on Flickr in the photoset MD friends in TX. Most of them are friends & family only.

We’re in OMSHville now and having a blast!