home sweet home

We are finally getting settled in here in the big city of San Antonio. We live in a nice little (actually big these housing developments are huge) neighborhood. We found a great deal on a furnished place, so our leap of faith of leaving MS without a place to live worked out. If traffic is minimal Ben can get to the base in about 15 mins. We live about 10 mins away from Sea World, but we haven't been yet. I think that we'll be in San Antonio for just the right amount of time to enjoy the state of Texas.

Here's the front of the house

Here's our view from the back deck

Finding a furnished place was great- except that means that the decorations just might not be your taste. The owner of the home is from Ecuador and she's probably in her 70's (the dishes are the exact same as my granny's). Here are a few of the cool pieces from our house.

There are a pair of these elephants in our front room.

Our bar- we are pretty sure that all the carvings are by hand- they are pretty cool.

Everything is bigger in Texas right? Well this is the first time I saw a C-5 up close. It is so big that they don't even put the whole plane in the hanger. Ben had his first simulator on Friday night- he came home and said, "she's a big beautiful beast." Ben told me that they can fit 6 greyhound buses in one, crazy isn't it.

That line in the sky is actually the crack in the buick's windshield- very classy huh.

west of the mississippi...... it's nice

We headed out for San Antonio with the truck and car (yep, we are still driving around my amazing buick). We had plenty of time to drive here, so we didn't have to marathon it, which was especially nice for Rhone. I think that he has spent more time in a car seat than most 6 months olds.

We made a detour through Natchez, MS. We stopped at 2 antebellum houses there. The first is Melrose. The house was built in 1849 and still has the slave houses in back. We also stopped at the William Johnson House, he was known as the "Barber of Natchez". William Johnson was born the son of mulatto slave women, but when he was 11 he was emancipated by his owner (who had the same name, what a coincidence). He then learned to be a barber and opened up shop in Natchez. What I found so interesting is that he then hired free blacks and bought slaves to work for him. I had no idea that blacks had also owned slaves- especially those who had once been slaves.

Just outside Melrose- isn't Mississppi green

Melrose- The Cotton Kingdom Estate

A view of the Mississppi

In Louisiana we stopped for some real cajun food, it was pretty delicious. Ben had red beans and rice and I had jambalaya. In Texas, we had to stop off, because a lid was coming off one of the tubs in the truck and this is what we saw:

Who doesn't want to say that they live on Slaughter House Road?

We though Galvaston, TX might be a fun place to spend the second night, so we made the detour to the coast. It was pretty, but it turns out that they are still feeling the affects of Hurricane Ike, so we took some pictures, spent a little time on the beach and stayed closer to Houstin (which by the way has CRAZY traffic).

Ben and Rhone in Galvaston

What used to be the board walk along the beach

We made it to San Antonio safe and sound. Ben and I only lost each other once in traffic, I wasn't able to get over so I was forced to another highway and then we found each other using buildings as a reference- it was actually pretty funny (not as much at the time though). Ben checked in at base and they didn't have any room for us at the hotel so we got to stay downtown at the Marriott for the same price as on base (no complaints here). One night we headed out to see the River Walk- its a fun, but crazy place. Pictures of our house to come soon- that's right we are no longer homeless!

On the River Walk

double the fun

Rhone had his 2 month check up and he has already doubled his birth weight, weighing in at a whopping 15.5 lbs. He is heavier than 95% of kids his age. He is average height and as you can tell by the video an exceptional pooper. Make sure you listen carefully for the whole effect.

being homeless

I have a blog backlog that I've been wanting to get posted. So here's the first and hopefully some more will follow soon.

We got back to Mississppi (from our 3 week trip) on a Sat night, and we had to be moved out by the next Friday. So Monday morning the chaos began, we rented our storage unit and started packing. We have moved out of a place in much less time, but that we before we had a baby and had to prime the walls. Rhone was such a trooper, he had to play on his own and be ignored a lot. Every time we took a load to the storage unit, my cart would only have half as much as Ben's, because Rhone road back and forth on mine. When I was priming our red wall at 2:30 am on Friday, the home we lived in for a year and a half just became a house. It was so weird to erase all of our previous existence, since our family doubled in size there (we got Ace and Rhone). We passed the inspection with flying colors and then Ben and I looked at each other like where do we go now. We had planned on staying on base (at a TLF), but everything was booked, so there we were dirty from cleaning all day at 4:30 pm with no home.

Mississippi really did feel like home at the end. I made Ben stop for this picture even though it was night.

We decided that if we were going to spend money on a hotel it might as well be someplace more exciting than Columbus, so we headed to Birmingham, Al to take a little road trip (plus we figured Rhone should see the state since we lived so close). We drove north from Birmingham along lake Gunter, and the drive was beautiful. We were headed to this place called "Unclaimed Baggage" . It is a store that buys unclaimed luggage from the airlines then sorts through the contents and sells it in what is basically a huge thrift store. We had heard interesting things about this store and thought it would be really cool, but for all the extra driving we thought it was a bit of a bust. From there, we headed to Huntsville, AL.

Along the way we saw some signs for the Cathedral Caverns, so we decided to back track to them on a whim. We weren't sure if we could do it with Rhone because we forgot the baby carrier. Turns out the whole thing has been paved so it is stroller and wheelchair accessible. Here are a few pics from the caverns. They were amazing, and our tour guide was real southern and I loved hearing her say "Right thir is another world record folks" (the caverns have 4 in case you are wondering).

Here are Ben and Rhone at the cave entrance. It is a huge natural opening, 126 ft wide.

This is from the Al State Parks website, this mineral water fall was amazing!

We made it to Huntsville later than we thought so we decided to spend the night there so we could hit the space museum in the morning. If you didn't know Huntsville, AL is the home of Space Camp.

Here is a space shuttle on display

We just thought this entrance to the space camp was too funny to not take a picture. (We are referring to Rhone here, not Ben).

Yep, sometimes it does snow in the south, and since we are from Idaho we were prepared with a window scraper.

Then we spent 2 nights in a hotel in Columbus, while we finished paper work and packing for Texas. The moving trip will be posted soon (hopefully).

he's TWO.....months that is

Here are a few skills that Rhone has developed in the last 2 months. Rolling from his tummy to his back was something he mastered early on. He's getting to be our big chatter box and smiler now. We are pretty sure his eyes will be blue and he's getting his real hair. We sure do love this little man.