A Texas first-timer

Despite summer classes, I continued finding little escapes from Waltham (although I do love this city) by paying a visit to my brother's family just outside of Houston.  I had never been to TX before so although I was a little worried about what I would find (perhaps rattle snakes carrying guns, fanatical bible-thumping mega churches, or the worst: George W. Bush?) I was also excited to explore a new place.

It turned out that Houston was not too foreign and actually was a bit similar to Raleigh.  Although the topography was rather flat and uninteresting, I was surprised by the people.  At least compared to the Boston area, there was a bit more diversity and folks in general were quite friendly.  I actually felt jealous of Houston's large Vietnamese population, the heavy Mexican influence, and the good, cheap food (Tex-Mex and BBQ hasn't yet made its way into New England, unfortunately).  It would have been fun to see some other locations in TX, but those will have to wait; it is a big state.

I had the pleasure of going to Carter's class party on the last week of school

Sawyer did a good job entertaining himself, for a little while anyway :P

Carter cleaned house with 3 awards during the kindergarten awards celebration

The Landstrom Family, ranchers of Monarch butterflies

We had frozen yogurt to celebrate the last day of school.  If you look closely you can see that Carter has a kid-size forehead vein, just like his aunt!  (poor guy)

Just around the corner from the house is a VN restaurant (Pho Vy) owned by an old friend of Mom's from Vietnam.  She also had at one time been married to Mom's cousin.  It is nice to have some family connections in the area :o)

Visiting my favorite section of the Natural History Museum in Houston

We went to Spring Creek BBQ to celebrate Andrew's early birthday   

BBQ is one of the primary forces keeping me from becoming fully vegetarian.  Here I got to try some good ol' Texas brisket, which made me very happy.

The creepy 'ice cream man' that goes through the neighborhoods.  The jingly music was right but the seedy van was very wrong.

Happy birthday to my much, much older brother ;o)

 

 

On our last day we went to visit Andrew at work at the Texas Medical Center.  Here he is in his natural habitat.

Chuy's has some of the best Tex-Mex Houston has to offer, so it was a great final impression to take back home