Thanksgiving Week in Houston, 2009

Sam & I just got back from 9 great days in Houston for Thanksgiving (and Christmas)! We had such a good time, it felt like we were there for weeks...but not in a bad way, ha. I got to spend so much time with my family and we hung out with our friends plenty too. Somehow in 9 days we managed to have a wild night at our friend's playing Rock Band drinking lots of wine and having lots of laughs, went to my nephew's baptism, did all of my family's Christmas shopping, went to the houston zoo, hung out for monday night football, celebrated Thanksgiving day at my Aunt's house, Sam & I checked on our Houston house (it looks great by the way, real weird seeing all the baby stuff our tenants have everywhere!), went to Ren Fest and camped out, and finally celebrated Christmas with my side of the family since we'll be in England for the real Christmas. We got to give Harrison his first Christmas presents - including his first Elmo of course! I probably gained 5 pounds eating amazing food all week but it was worth it. I am feeling kinda homesick now, but at least Vancouver has given us beautiful blue skies so far this week - though it doesn't get above 35 degrees! Hope everyone else had an awesome Thanksgiving. xoxo!

Sam's Fall Photography

Sam is taking a photography class here in Vancouver. These are a few favorites of mine from a cold Fall day out and about town with his class.

A Saturday at Vancouver Aquarium

jellyfish

very talented dolphins!

i love these creatures!

2-toed sloth, reminded us of a blonde Marley, ha

parrots!

I've been to the aquarium here several times but Sam hadn't been back since we got our membership in March. Started out rainy but turned out to be a beautiful day, oh and we got to see the new baby beluga whale too!

Pumpkin Carving!

I think I've fallen in love with fall! The air is so crisp, the trees are gorgeous changing from green to gold to orange to RED, the streets are covered in these amazing colors from all the fallen leaves, I get to wear fun boots and jackets, but most importantly you get to carve pumpkins! I haven't done this since I was a kid and Sam had never done it! Of course he's super creative as you'll see and showed us it's not all about 2 triangle eyes and a mouth, ha. We did it last week with our friends Kathy & Patrick and all of us couldn't help ourselves and did more pumpkins last night too! I'm pretty proud of my "deep in the heart of texas" pumpkin! It has gotten pretty wet here and a lot colder so it's getting me ready for the dreaded winter but if we can keep carving pumpkins and drinking red wine then I'll be fine!

My Trip Home

This past weekend I went back to Houston for about 5 days. I got to see pretty much all my friends but the best part was all the time I got to spend with my family & fast-growing baby nephew. He turned 9 months old while I was home, I was shocked. He's such a big boy now, has 6 teeth, says mamama and dadada among other ramblings, crawls everywhere and is standing really well! We took him to Greek Fest, I got to feed him, I got to bathe him, I got to get him from his nap, I loved on him as much as I could to try to hold me over until I'm back for Thanksgiving. Oh, the pic above is me skyping with Sam who was back in Vancouver and Harrison kept crawling up to the laptop and touching the screen, and also trying to slam the computer shut, haha. Ugh, I just love him and my family - so glad to of gone home for a few days...steaks, bbq, mexican food, margaritas, bud light, guacamole, heat and humidity! Now I'm experiencing my first real Fall - the leaves are changing up here, it's cool and crisp outside, blue skies...this is all leading up to a miserable depressing winter, but I'll take what I can get in the mean time. Love to you all!

Labor Day - Squamish, BC

Just wanted to post a couple pics from our last little road trip. On Labor Day weekend it had been pretty rainy and Sam was suffering from a cold. But Monday we really felt like we needed to get out and explore. We hit the road and only about an hour later, up the Sea to Sky Highway, we were in Squamish. It's half way between Vancouver and Whistler. It was a sleepy little town, didn't help that it was Labor Day so must stuff was closed for the day. But there were great views and Shannon Falls was a big gorgeous waterfall that we just happen to drive past. I love how easy it is to get out of Vancouver and into a whole other world in just an hour. The drives are always gorgeous too...I think many more road trips are in our future!

England in August, Part 3

Puzzlewood and Highland Cows

Sam on a swing in the Sculpture Trail & "Cathedral" stained glass in Sculpture Trail

Big chair in sculpture trial and the River Wye in Forest of Dean

Winchester Cathedtral & me and Chris @ his party

Just now remembered to post some more photos. These are from the last week of our trip to England in August. We went to a B&B in the Forest of Dean with Sam's parents, went to Puzzlewood (which is this like super mystical area of Forest of Dean that is really rich in iron and they think Tolken visited it while writing the Hobbit novels), went on the Sculpture Trail, visited Winchester Cathedral, and finally ended the week by going to Chris's "leaving Afghanistan and moving to DC, dress up as your favorite American" party...as you can see, I dressed as myself :)

England in August, Part 2

Some of Sam's family the day after the wedding & Monty the puppy!

Sam with Sebastian & part of Warwick Castle

Trebuchet in action & me with the chicken!

Couple of the horses on the estate and our sunset stroll

Here are some more pics from another few days in England. We spent the day after Esther's wedding in the Fisher garden with family, coffee, and Jemima's new springer spaniel puppy Monty, he's adorable!! Later that afternoon Sam's friend Kate & Mark came over with their 3 year old and their 3 month old! Sebastian is such a good quiet handsome little baby. Sam and I are much better with babies now that we have a nephew! The next day Sam and I went to the medievil Warwick Castle with his parents. They made it really fun by having wax figures in certain parts of it to show you what different rooms were for and what people dressed like back then. We paid extra to go in the dungeon which turned out to be kinda scary - they had real actors down there and special effects...it was pretty dark and I kept a hold of Sam's hand the entire time while different people popped out at us to explain the different torture devices, etc. We also got to have a demonstration of a real live trebuchet (catapult) which is cranked up by men running in a huge hamster-type wheel and then it throws a huge flaming ball hundreds of yards away. I thought it might be lame but it was pretty dang cool, ha. Later that day we went to visit a family friend (she was actually our very first overnight visitor here in Vancouver in May)...her and her boyfriend live in a tiny town and have chickens that lay eggs for them! We went on a gorgeous walk with them around the estate that their house is on the edge of. I really feel blessed being able to walk around these little parts of England that probably 98% of tourists would never see or even know existed. The rolling hills, green pastures, sheep, cows, horses, sunsets that I got to see this past trip were truly amazing! Well...more pictures to come later of our 3 nights at a B&B in Forest of Dean which is near Wales and was Beautiful!

England, Part 1 - Esther's Wedding

Esther & Roo Miller..........all the Fisher siblings and their spouses!

Dancing the Gay Gordons....the Fisher/Lindley family

Sam & I just spent 2 weeks in Witney, England for his little sister's wedding. On August 15th, Esther married Andrew "Roo" Miller in a beautiful ceremony followed by a fun reception. They met at St. Andrews in Scotland and Roo's dad is Scottish - thus the theme & kilts! Sam was an usher and looked so cute in his kilt I loved it! The picture of us dancing is the traditional first scottish dance, it's called the Gay Gordons...it was the wedding party and the newly married couple and was actually so much fun. Thank goodness Esther taught us what to do before the big night! I'll post more pictures of the rest of our trip soon...we went to Warwick Castle, Forest of Dean for a few days with Sam's parents, and our friend Chris had a "leaving afghanistan, back in england, but moving to Washington, DC" party! It was a full and FUN 2 weeks, it's surreal to be back in Vancouver for some reason, it's never easy getting use to being back in the "real world".