Shopping

After classes today, Martina and I headed out to some western wear stores. Martina has her red hat, but she was wanting a pair of boots, maybe a shirt or two, a belt, and a hat for her mom. So, we spent a greater part of the afternoon looking around and she ended up getting the boots that she was crazy about. She also got a few shirts, but couldn't find a hat for her mom that she liked very much.
Nice boots, huh?

Two birthdays

On Friday, Guillermo and I drove Martina to Mom's house again, she will be spending Friday night there. On Saturday, we drove back over to the south side, picked up Mom and Martina and then we all went to Kathy's house to celebrate her birthday. We enjoyed getting together with everyone, and Samantha has a little ferret that was so much fun to watch! We gave Kathy a potted Gerber Daisy plant, and that little ferret would not stay out of that pot!! One time we all left the ferret in the house while we went into the garage, and when we walked back in, the ferret had had a field day in the dirt of that plant. As long as that plant was inside the house, the ferret could focus on nothing else, so Kathy had to place the plant outside on the porch.

Downtown on the river

Martina and Guillermo had car service to SAC again today. After dropping them off and getting some stuff done that needed doing, I brought the car back to SAC when their class was over. Martina and I had lunch there in the building, and then we walked to the bus stop. Today, after getting off the bus downtown, we didn't immediately go to the next bus stop. Instead, we walked up to Houston St. and then made our way to the Riverwalk. The weather was beautiful and we sure enjoyed being down on the river. It was so pretty. We looked around in a gift shop for a little while and then we went to a chocolate store where Martina bought a REALLY good Chocolate Turtle cookie. Then we continued walking on the river until it was time to go back up and wait for our next bus. When we got off our bus at El Verde Rd., we called Guillermo and asked him if he wanted to walk up the road to meet us, and he did, so we met him about halfway to the house.
Our nice day on the River Walk and on the bus:

Visiting Mom

Martina and I went to Mom's house yesterday.  I dropped Martina off at Mom's house and then picked Jacob up and he and I went to buy tamales. When we got to the store, they told us the next batch of tamales would be ready in about 15 minutes, so I decided to take Jacob to the park. At the park, I showed him the little creek where I caught my first-ever fish. I can still see that little tiny Perch. Then we raced each other back to the car and we drove over to the playground. He got to play for a whole 7 minutes and then it was time to go. Back at the tamale store, they told us the tamales would be ready in about 5 minutes. So we stood around and waited. When the guy finally said they were ready, I told him I would take 4. Jacob was shocked and out loud said that he thought we were going to buy more than just 4!!! The man laughed and told him that was just adult talk, that telling him we wanted 4 really was just a short way to say 4 dozen. Jacob was amazed. We took the 4 dozen tamales home, fixed rice and beans and had a great lunch!! Then Kathy came over with Samantha and we all enjoyed some hot chocolate and Mom's Christmas cookies.

Great day for Fredericksburg

We had a very pleasant visit to Fredericksburg today.  The drive there was nice and then the first thing we did after finding parking was Martina and I headed for some shops. She found a perfect cowboy hat, a red one, that looks very nice on her. After looking around in the shops, we had a nice lunch at a Biergarten. I had wiener schnitzel, Guillermo had a Ruben sandwich and Martina had tacos. It sure was nice sitting outside in the cool air, feeling the warm sun on us. We ended the meal with a cheesecake and an apfel strudel. After lunch, we stopped in at a wine-tasting store and bought a bottle of wine.

Then we got back in the car and drove to the Johnson Ranch. Martina was able to speak German with one of the workers there, and the worker seemed happy to be able to use his German a little bit. This time, when we went inside their "meat smoking" room, we were pleasantly surprised to see lots of meat in there. Lots of sausage, and bacon hanging. It smelled delicious!!!

After the Johnson Ranch, we drove to Luckenbach, expecting to just take a few pictures and get a beer. Turned out the place was full of people!! So we parked, got us some beer, and then found a place to sit and listen to the "pickers". They sat around with their instruments right by the outside of the store and we really enjoyed listening to them play and sing. Shortly before we left, they opened up the dance floor and we listened to the band play for a few minutes before leaving.

That wasn't my beer, but Guillermo was making it look like it was.

We encountered some nice prize sightings on our way home! Just outside Sisterdale, we came upon a big flock of wild turkeys crossing the road. There were at least 20 of them, if not more. That was so exciting to see!! Then, a short time later, we saw an armadillo digging in the dirt along the side of the road. So, we turned the car around and pulled over close to where it was. The car scared it off a little, making it run to the fence, so Martina got out and ran over to the fence so she could try to get a picture of it. She came back just laughing, saying it was so cute and funny as it ran - kind of jumping like a kangaroo. She was able to get a fairly decent picture of it.

We'll do it again!

Actually, if the weather is nice this coming Wednesday, Martina and I are going to ride the bus again!!! It wasn't bad at all taking the bus, and we enjoyed the walk up El Verde road after getting off the bus. Hopefully, this next time, I'll remember to take the camera and can post some pictures.
Here's a picture of us after eating out with Martina at a Mexican restaurant close to our house. It was COLD this day!

After dinner on Friday Martina, Guillermo and I "walked" in the mall. Yep, we were Mall walkers, can you believe it??? Martina, though, after about the first leg of the walk, saw a shop that she just HAD to check out, so she broke from us with a promise to meet up again in 30 minutes. So, in that 30 minutes, Guillermo and I easily reached our 7,000+ steps.

And Jason is done with his exams. He had an exam everyday last week, except for Friday. But it's not over yet!!!! January 27th he takes the oral exam.

Today, Martina and I took off before noon to do some shopping out at the stores by 1604. We had fun going into most of them and looking for clothes and stuff. It was about 5pm when we finally went to Subway, picked up some sandwiches and pizza for dinner, took them home, put in the new disc of "Lost" that just arrived today, and enjoyed relaxing while eating and watching another episode of Season 3. After dinner, we sat around - Guillermo making up tests, Martina doing her homework and me doing stuff on the computer. While doing all that, we enjoyed a WONDERFUL bottle of wine from Wimberley, TX. From the looks of these pictures, maybe that homework is going to be questionable and those tests may be a little strange. ;-)

Homework's done and the bottle is empty. Can that be good?

Riding the bus

Today I dropped Guillermo and Martina off at SAC, then did some errands before heading back home to ALMOST finish putting the Christmas decorations away. Still have the tree to pack up, and most of the decorations that were outside still need to be put away. But progress is being made!!!   Later, I went back to SAC to leave the car for Guillermo because Martina and I are going to take the bus home!! We are doing this as a test to see if it will be a way Martina could get home if neither of us are available to take her home after her classes.
The bus from SAC to downtown was easy to catch, and it came quickly. We had a twenty minute wait downtown for the bus that heads out to Leon Valley. Fortunately, the weather was nice and sunny, although just a little bit too cool when standing in the shade. Once on the bus, the ride seemed to go fast, although it took 40 minutes to get to El Verde Rd. The bus let us off right on El Verde Rd. We crossed Bandera Rd. and walked the 7/10 of a mile to our house. Martina and I enjoyed that walk a lot since the weather was so nice.
So, all in all, it's not bad really, to take the bus from SAC to our house. Especially if the weather is nice. Maybe we'll do it another day just to do it again!!!

Jason's rough month

Jason is taking his written exams all this week, for his PhD in Ecohydrology. He has been under a LOT of stress lately, what with having to study for those exams, PLUS trying to revise a paper that he and his advisor are trying to get published in the journal "Science". Revising that article is no small task, because to get something published in Science is a major accomplishment.
And not only has he been trying to study for his exams, and also find the time to work on that article for Science, there have been job applications that are due this month, so I can't even imagine what he is going through lately. We sent him a care package yesterday to let him know we are thinking about him.

The long drive is over

Yesterday evening, we got a "chat message" from Fernando that he was in a hotel in Billings, Montana. He said that there was plenty of snow in the fields on his drive from Limon to Billings, but the roads were clear.

This evening, we got another "chat message" from him that he was now in Calgary. He'll be staying in a house of some students who are out in the field right now. He'll be able to stay there until about Thursday, and then he'll either have to move into a hotel, or hopefully he'll have found an apartment by then.  Finding an apartment at this time isn't very promising because most leases are up at the end of the month. So, there may not be much available to choose from.

But anyway, the long drive is over for him, and we are very happy about that.

Today was the first day back to classes for Guillermo, and the first day of class for Martina. Things seemed to go well for both of them. When Martina had to do homework later that day, and she needed to work with a partner, she and I worked together. That was interesting. We had to have "discussions". One discussion was about what happens to Christmas trees after people take them down. It will be fun to help Martina this way.

Limon

Fernando called us at 10:30 last night, saying he had gotten as far as Limon, Colorado. We looked at where that is on the map, and he got fairly close to Denver, which I think was his goal. He said the roads were clear, and he didn't have any bad weather to contend with.   We slept much better that night.
So, that's one day down, and two to go.

Back on his way to Calgary

Well, I hardly slept last night. Woke up early and then just couldn't get back to sleep, thinking of Fernando and hoping he was sleeping well.   Hoping he was getting enough sleep to tackle that first day driving across Texas. He got up around 6:15am and after packing up his last minute stuff and eating a decent breakfast he was on his way by 8:00. It goes without saying that we were sad to send him on his way, but we felt confident that he was prepared, and we felt good that we had packed him a lunch box of drinks and snacks.

Martina and I spent several hours at the mall later in the day, buying clothes, so that was a good way to get my mind off of Fernando for a little while.

Just a few pictures before Fernando was on his way. It was COLD and windy!

Feeling kind of sad

We had a big breakfast with Fernando this morning, and then Guillermo and I got ready to go to SAC. I dropped him off there, and went on to Mom's house where I picked up Martina. Then she and I went back to SAC, met Guillermo, and all of us then went to several bookstores so that Martina could buy her books.

We fixed Paella for dinner, listening to Spanish guitar again.
Every now and then it would hit me, while we fixed dinner, that Fernando would be taking off in the morning. I would feel so sad, but then I would remind myself that at least he spent more days here than we originally thought he would. So, that was very nice. I just don't like the idea of him traveling by himself all the way up north, in who knows what kind of weather. We have been following the weather channel, and so far, it doesn't look like there are any major winter storms in his path. :-)
A cold front is supposed to hit in the morning, so he'll have some strong winds to drive against at least in the beginning.

Martina goes to Mom's house

We spent a lot of the day getting some business taken care of with mail, auto accessories, grocery store, stuff like that. In the afternoon, we looked at some of Fernando's pictures from Borneo on his laptop and they sure were impressive. He visited a lot of caves and took boat trips down a river (which reminded us of the Amazon). But the amount of wildlife and the KIND of wildlife he saw was incredible. Absolutely beautiful birds and many different kinds of monkeys. He also saw several beautiful snakes. Since he has so many pictures, we are going to look at the rest of them some other time .
Martina gave me some CD's that Andrew made for me, and I put one on while fixing the spaghetti for dinner. It's a Spanish guitar CD and it was perfect - I enjoyed listening to it while fixing the dinner. In the evening, Mom, Linda and Jacob came over and joined us for the spaghetti dinner. The Spanish guitar was lovely background music while we ate.
After dinner, we all marveled at the candy that Fernando brought back from Japan, and also had cookies and chocolate sticks. We then brought out Mom's albums from when she was little and had her start identifying the people in the pictures. It was fun to see and realize that some of those "little toddlers" were pictures of her!!

 She also explained to us the writing on the back of some of the pictures, which was hard for us to read. It was a writing that they were taught back in 1st grade and we found it very interesting. Jacob and I also played a little bit of Guesstures, and we had fun doing that!
So, when they went home, Martina went back with them. She will be staying at Mom's house for two nights, before her classes start. I know Mom is looking forward to spending some time with her, so they will have a good time together. We will pick her up again on Friday afternoon.
Some pictures from the evening.

Martina and Linda

Jacob in the recliner

Fernando and his Oma

Today, Guillermo, Fernando and I just got back from eating lunch at Rudy's. That is a mandatory place to visit whenever Fernando is in town. He leaves day after tomorrow. :-( :-(
This evening, I'll fix an "almost" Thanksgiving meal, and the boys will be watching the Spurs play and the college Championship game.

Celebrating Reyes Magos

Here are some pictures of us celebrating Reyes Magos. Some pictures would have been better left out (like the one where I'm eating that Japanese candy), but anyway, it gives you an idea of things.

 Trying the candy from Japan - it was amazing!

Fernando arrives today!

We spent a lot of the morning out, showing Martina San Antonio college, FINALLY finding an adapter for her laptop (so she bought two - one for her phone, also), and picking up Guillermo's truck from the shop where it was getting a small paint job. Now we are getting Fernando's room ready for his arrival. His plane arrives at 6:30pm. I'm sure he's going to be tired - our 6:30pm is actually to him 9:30am of January 6th already.  BUT, we more feel for Eva right now - whereas Fernando will already be home and able to rest comfortably, Eva has a 24 hour layover in Amsterdam, before she can head on to Ghana. I can't even imagine that kind of wait in an airport.
Here's a picture Martina took of us at San Antonio College.
And here's a picture of Martina at SAC.

Fernando is home (for a little while)!!! I didn't even recognize him at the airport. He said he figured as much, since he saw me from the escalators and I looked at him and didn't even do anything. It wasn't until he was close to me that it hit me, "That's Fernando!!!!!" His hair was way longer than we are used to so he looked completely different. How happy we are to be with him again! We're all going out to Cha-Cha's tonight, his choice.  Tomorrow we will celebrate Reyes Magos with Fernando and Martina!! :-)