Little Brown Mouse

I finished sewing Sidney's mouse ears last night. Here she is wearing the costume. There is a tail on back, but you can't see it at this angle. You can see the mouse in the picture of the cover of the book in the previous post.


This afternoon I also finished putting all the glass and moulding in a cabinet we had redone. As there are three large pieces of glass, four doors with glass and three glass shelves, it was quite a project just to get it all put back together (without breaking any glass!) It will go in our dining room, as it is a near match to the formal dining room set.

The Gruffalo

It is Red Ribbon Week at Sidney's school (the anti-drug campaign) and there are lots of different activities. As it is Halloween week as well, many of these things involve costumes, pumpkins, etc.



One thing that is happening is a pumpkin decorating contest (no carving allowed). The pumpkins are to be decorated as a character from a favorite book. One of our favorites is The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson, a British author we were introduced to in Norway (illustrations by Axel Scheffler). We decided to base our pumpkin on the Gruffalo himself. It was a bit of a messy project involving spray adhesive and fuzzy yarn, but I think it turned out pretty good. I tried to incorporate each "descriptive" item given by the Little Brown Mouse about the Gruffalo from the book:





"Terrible tusks and terrible claws,
and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws;
knobbly knees and turned out toes,
and a poisonous wart on the end of his nose;
his eyes are orange, his tongue is black,
he has purple prickles all over his back."

There will also be a character parade on Friday, and Sidney will go as the Little Brown Mouse. While the Gruffalo is the title character, the mouse is actually the hero, as he is quite clever in the ways he avoids being eaten by the various other characters in the story. I am currently finishing her costume by sewing (by hand - I don't know how to use the machine) the ears for the costume. So far, it looks pretty good. I will add a picture of her wearing it later.

Doing things again...

Yes, Houston may not have the mountain hikes that Norway had, but there is still a lot to do here. This weekend, Sidney and I took advantage of it and had some great fun!



We started out by meeting Kevin, Dawn and William to go to the "Wings Over Houston" airshow. It was at Ellington Field, a base that houses a lot of NASA facilities and aircraft. One of the static displays Sidney got to go inside was the actual 747 built to carry the space shuttle. We also saw several other displays (here, Sidney is standing in front of a B-52, on which the tires were taller than she is) and some great demonstrations.



Featured demonstrations this year were the "Tora! Tora! Tora!" re-enactment by the Commemorative Air Force, a Vietnam air power demonstration, and several acrobatic flyers.



There were also current military jet presentations, like the F-16 Falcon and the F-18 Hornet. Sidney and William were quite impressed with the loud sound that these two jets made. The humidity was also high enough that it created some spectacular effects in high-g turns and high-speed passes.



The final demonstration of the day was the Air Force Precision Flying Team - Thunderbirds! Sidney got an autograph from one of the pilots, and (after a little bit of a wait) they put on quite a show.




The jets look fantastic in their red-white and blue paint with the "thunderbird" silhouette painted underneath. It is very impressive seeing not only the high-speed runs, but the precision with which the various formations are flown. Just look at how close these two were flying to each other!

We left the airshow and headed down to the Bolivar peninsula to Dawn's beach house, Luna Bella. It was one of only a handful to survive Hurricane Ike two years ago, and they have done a lot of work to get it back in beautiful shape. Kevin liked it so much that he also bought a beach house there - Kay Caye, and Dawn's parents had one built next door named Shell Station.


The weather was great, so Sidney and William spent much of Sunday morning playing on the beach. We then came in and cleaned up for a wonderful lunch with Dawn's parents before heading back home. We would have liked to spend more time, but Sidney had homework.



On the way back, we were able to see some of our favorite animals - pelicans and dolphins. Sidney and William also enjoyed feeding the seagulls from the back of the ferry.

Kimber is in Norway right now and will return on Friday. She is going to try to bring some reindeer sausage home to keep Sidney from having reindeer withdrawal. We will be happy to have her home, and will (hopefully) have almost everything done in the house before her return!

In the house!

No, it is not a line from a rap song. We are now out of the temporary apartment and in our house!


Our shipment was delivered this morning, and we spent much of the day unpacking boxes and getting stuff into place. It looks like we were fortunate in that there was no major damage we have found so far to our goods, but we do still have several boxes left to unpack. Here is a picture of our container from Norway!

As far as the status of actually settling in, I guess it would be easiest to describe by room. The office, which is where I am, is about 90% done. The kitchen stuff is all unpacked, most of the dining room is done, and the living room is also almost done. The master bedroom and bath are mostly unpacked, Sidney's room is unpacked and mostly set up, the media room still has all the books to unpack, and the extra bedroom is about 90%. There are now several boxes to unpack and put away in the garage, and the "spare" room also has several boxes to sort yet. All in all, I would say we have done a pretty good job considering how much we have had come in and at different times from different places.

Kimber leaves tomorrow afternoon for two weeks in Stavanger, so much of her time tomorrow will be spent packing. At least we have the stuff from Norway unpacked that she will need to pack to take back to Norway. Confusing, huh?!?

More to come as we get settled, as well as pictures of the stuff in the house.

Hopefully a delivery this week!

Our shipment from Norway is due Tuesday. I am not completely sure if that means it will have cleared customs and be ready for delivery Tuesday, or if it means it just arrives on the ship into Houston that day. The other thing I thought of is that the Houston ship channel spent most of the last week and a half closed because of a barge that knocked some high voltage lines into the water, so there were over 40 ships backed up waiting to come in. Hopefully our stuff wasn't tied up in that mess.

Either way, we are going to move out of the temporary apartment on Friday. We do have one bed, and Sidney has her air mattress, so we should be okay. Kimber leaves for Norway for two weeks Saturday evening, so Sidney and I can hold out "camping" if the stuff doesn't come in this week.

I have been working on getting our garage organized most of the week. It may not seek like much, but it is the area of our house with the most loose "stuff" in it. I went with a Rubbermaid clip-on hook system for the large, long items and put up a peg board for the small hand tools. We also have a tool cabinet and a set of Elfa drawers to organize other stuff. There is plenty of room for the Ikea shelves coming from Norway to organize other "garage" stuff. The nice thing is I was able to park in there for the first time Friday after they came and picked up all the boxes from the first shipment.


We also have been getting some "necessity" items for the house. The most important of these things was a barbecue grill. I chose to go with a Charbroil "Red" infrared four-burner with a side burner. After recommendations from others and reading the reviews, I think it was a good choice. The nice thing is that it was the last one they had at Home Depot before closing out for the season, so we saved almost $200 off the list price! I can't wait to get some fresh sweet corn and a couple of New York Strips to try it out.




A few people have requested pictures of our new cars here, so here they are. We are quite pleased so far. I was also a little surprised when I went to fill the Prius the other day. It was down to 1/4 tank, and it only took $25 to fill it back up. I am checking mileage on both of them now, and will have a full report to come.

As I said earlier, Kimber is going back over to Norway next Saturday, so if there are any special requests for things going either way, let us know! Her next trip will be in December.

Well, it is Sunday afternoon, so I think I will turn on a little American football...

"Normalizing"

We are getting a little more settled, though still not quite in a "routine." We closed on the house a little more than a week ago, and we received the first shipment of our household goods last Thursday. As these were the things we had in storage here in the U.S., there is a lot of furniture, but only one bed. There are also no dishes, so we can't quite live in the house yet. We have, however, succeeded in opening all the boxes except one, and all but about ten are unpacked! The rest of our stuff is due to arrive from Norway in a little more than a week. It will still need to clear customs, so who knows when it will actually be delivered.

Sidney is doing well in school. We had a conference with her teacher last week, and she is doing quite well academically. Her only real issues are talking a bit too much (really?!?) and not walking quietly in line in the hallway. She also tends to get off task (another big surprise!) and needs a little re-direction at times. She still loves reading and has also developed a nice interest in science.

Kimber is beginning her planning for her trip to Norway in mid-October. She will probably be leaving about the time our stuff gets delivered and unpacked. Oh, and we bought a bag of cherry tootsie pops for you, Gwynne!

We spent much of yesterday buying cars. We were able to find a used 2011 Hyundai Sonata Limited at a local Toyota dealer. It is a very nice, comfortable family car and easy for Kimber to drive, as the seats adjust nicely for her. We also found a 2008 Toyota Prius that will be my car, or the car we use for local family trips so as to save on gas costs. We will post pictures of the cars soon.

Now that we are a little more settled, I will be doing a little job-searching. I probably will not start working until we are in the house, but I can at least get the license transfer stuff out of the way.

On the relaxation side - we've made a couple of local forays recently. Last weekend we took Sidney to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. We had a nice time, and Sidney really enjoyed the Butterfly Conservatory. Today we went for a walk down to the Water Wall, a large fountain designed in the shape of a half-circle wall about 30 feet high. Unfortunately, the water was off for maintenance, but Sidney found a few little friends and they all kicked a ball around the field.

This week will find us getting things put away in the house, as well as an actual full work-week for Kimber. We will also pick up the Prius tomorrow night (we could only pick up one car on Saturday because one of us had to drive the rental car.) It has been a little cooler, so perhaps we will also add some pictures from a walk around the new neighborhood in the next post.