Yes, I realize it has been a really long time since I've updated regularly. Alison thankfully filled in a bit of the gap, but since I last posted, yes, we have indeed moved and had a baby. I'll try to fill in the in-between bits, the creme between those big chocolate wafer book-ends.
Let's see...the landscaping was filled in by early October. Our home looked like an oasis in the desert of development.
It's funny looking at "old" pictures like this
Alison has a tendency to make pictures brighter
Once you add me into the mix, things get a bit more muted
As the closing date approached, we got more anxious. Packing and moving is hard, long work.
Can't we just move in already?
We took a break from our anxiety to see the Clash of the Cougars, with BYU playing against the undefeated UofH.
I can tell you this much: the Texans did little to add to the greatness of Reliant Stadium this year
The UofH's stadium was under major renovation at the time, so the game was held in Reliant Stadium, the professional football stadium for the Houston Texans. The day was nice and cool; I wished that they had opened up the roof.
In a stroke of incredible luck, Debby was able to get seats right next to us. She wasn't even planning on attending the game originally, and she got her tickets independently from us.
One of the happier moments of the game
It was a manic game, with highs and lows. Alison seemed not to be affected by the lows.
A couple of our friends from our ward scored seats right behind us as well
The game finally was won by the Cougars in blue, by one point.
I'm so football happy here
With the excitement of the victory still buoying us, we went into the long slog of house closing. After all of the arrangements, the closing team messed up and had to adjust our costs upward about an hour before our scheduled time. A series of misadventures ensued, as they would and then wouldn't accept a personal check to make up the difference from the cashier's check that I had picked up not 3 hours earlier. This resulted in Alison scurrying off to the bank after hours and somehow convincing them to get her the additional cash needed. Success at last; the house was ours.
It's The Little House in the Bayou!
Meritage was nice enough to provide us wine. We declined, being the silly Mormons that we are, and toasted with water. Apparently this is bad luck in some circles, but we laugh in the face of danger.
A portent of trouble to come?
We finally packed up our little townhouse where we started our life together, with big thanks to our ward friends and no thanks to our landlord.
Farewell, maintenance included living...
Quickly we ran into issues. The first one was our refrigerator, a Frigidaire, came to us damaged and leaking. It took 4 service calls, hours of waiting around, and several angry statements before Sears would finally fess up to the issue. That's the last time I buy from them. Home Depot seemed to be much nicer to deal with.
Boo. Note the off-kilter right door.
Another problem was getting services set up at our house. Internet was promised in November, then delayed to May (a major reason I hadn't been able to post). There was also the issue of there not being enough neighbors to prove to USPS that we had a real address. About two months of correspondence to our new address was returned as a result. UPS and FedEx had some difficulty, but they got their act together much faster.
I guess "go to the only finished house in the subdivision" isn't specific enough direction for some people
I spied a nice Samsung at Sears. I had to buy it with them because they wouldn't give me cash, only store credit. After some weird and confusing calculations, I was able to convince Sears to get me this refrigerator with only about $20 out of pocket.
Note that the doors match on this one. It also didn't leak.
Before we knew it, we had our first anniversary.
I even combed my hair for the occasion.
Our new refrigerator was an added bonus to the anniversary celebration.
Hurrah!
We took a protracted selfie photo-shoot in front of our house.
Later we searched for where our mailbox would go. We couldn't find it.
And it got Alison cold in the process. :-(
We painted the nursery just before taking off for Thanksgiving.
I have a girlfriend wife, and she is so blue
We made one more round about our kingdom of Sawmill Ranch...
It had been a while since we had visited Mom's family in San Antonio.
I just wanted to finish Reamde, and she kept wanted pictures...
My cousin Becca became a majorly Pinterested at some point in her twenty-somethinghood. We had some of these as a result.
I still kind of miss the cherry cordials...
Grandma even got a couple of tech lessons while we were there.
I found one of the few instances where a smartphone might actually be easier for communication...
After we got home, we had waffles.
That pumpkin ended up staying a little too long...
Christmas season was already upon us by this point, so we decided to branch out and go to a large Presbyterian church downtown for their Messiah sing-a-long. I was surprised that our church didn't have anything like this in Houston (that I knew of).
No one tried to convert me, interestingly enough...
I ended up needing some professional help to get lights up on the high peaks of the house. I didn't have a ladder long enough to reach. I just might drop these next year for all the trouble they were. But it looked nice, at least.
Too bad phone cameras stink in low light.
By this point, it became increasingly apparent that we would have neighbors.
I was starting to miss being the big kahuna on the block.
I started decorating inside for Christmas while Alison had fun with her debate kids.
The first time I ever really felt the lyrics to Blue Christmas
With the mailbox still screwed up, I took to yelling at our builders. Not that it really would help matters. But, it did get us internet faster! We finally got connected on December 19, after arguments with AT&T and multiple technician visits.
An interminable fight
My original plan for our anniversary was to recreate our little honeymoon trip. With Alison's debate/teacher obligations, this got delayed until just before Christmas. I got a good deal on this lodge out in Utopia via AmazonLocal. Yes, you heard that right, Utopia.
The view right behind our lodge
I bet earlier in the fall these maples are even more beautiful
Alison was thankfully feeling pretty good during our little romp in Texas Hill Country. The lodge was run by this nice lady who used to be a caterer in Houston. So, breakfast was really good. The weather was quite nice as well.
It was a bit blustery...Alison ended up with a lot of tree junk in her hair.
As part of our tour, we stopped in the Cowboy Capital of the World, Bandera, Texas.
This is the county courthouse, preserved from the 1880s.
This is one of the curios from the Frontier Museum in Bandera. There's a lot of weird, interesting stuff there.
Alison, framed inside a wagon wheel outside of the museum
After Bandera we drove north to Camp Verde, where Jefferson Davis got the bright idea to use camels to move provisions across the southwest territories.
The AmazonLocal package came with all kinds of interesting deals, including admission to (closed) state parks and golf. One thing that confused me was a $5 credit to the Apple store in Medina. I figured maybe I could get iTunes gift cards as stocking stuffers?
Oh, that kind of apple...
Turns out this quaint little outfit makes product from local apples, including an ice cream flavored with apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Alison approves.
Simply the drive alone was part of the fun. The area west of Vandenberg is referred to as the Swiss Alps of the hill country. Apparently there are a lot of motorcycle riders out this way too.
In Utopia, of all places, is a fantastic gourmet restaurant owned and operated by a Cordon Bleu chef called the Laurel Tree. It was dark, so I wasn't able to get good pictures of the outside (very Euro, with beautiful Christmas decorations, including an enormous, ancient oak tree filled with large ornaments). But I managed to get a picture of some of the stuff that was going to go inside. This was a cranberry and citrus glazed pork chop served with vegetables and rice. Every single bite of this pork was infused with tangy wonderfulness.
Not pictured here is the chocolate soup I had for dessert, because I ate it too fast.
Later we went to Austin by way of Kerrville and Fredericksburg, reminiscent of our honeymoon. I scored an amazingly good deal on a downtown hotel in Austin. Apparently, according to Tyler, the city clears out during the Christmas holidays.
A big thing in Austin is the Trail of Tears Lights, which was having its final open day the night we arrived. This was the night that Texas decided to get cold (near 0C). Tons of folks were bundled up to take their friends and families around the park. I was reminded of Winterhaven in Tucson, although this had a more corporate feel. It was still nice, although the hour or so it took to get into the park after waiting in queue for the shuttle dampened our spirits a bit.
It did look nice. The tamales they sold here were nice too.
The tunnels of lights were pretty neat.
There's no earthly way of knowing/Which direction we are going
We kept ourselves warm on food truck food and hot cider.
Austin does have a pretty night skyline...
...and a morning skyline!
There was a cool gingerbread house display in the lobby of the Hilton.
Alison was giving me a look after I laughed at the "Merry Crismus" on one of the houses
Checked out one of the vaunted breakfast stops.
Clever girl...
Our parking system at the hotel was kind of...Russian?
Luckily, we were able to catch Tyler before his family came in town. I hadn't seen him since our wedding. We spent the day in a very Austin-commercial-esque fashion, strolling down South Congress, peeking at the weird consignment shops and bookstores. It was good to catch up with Tyler and hang out a bit. We peeked into this Stag store for men, where a flannel shirt costs $200 and a jacket costs $90. They kept offering Tyler a beer. We left and grabbed some Home Slice Pizza, then headed over to BookPeople. A dangerous place for readers. The sun began to set and we hit Mt. Bonnell, overlooking the Colorado river, at almost the perfect time.
You can see people trying to get cute with the Austin skyline in the distance
Our biggest regret was not being able to spend some time with Gretchen. She was visiting family for Christmas.
A somber Tyler. I think Alison got the happier Tyler pictures...
San Antonio was our Christmas stop. My family was waiting for us.
An outing at last!
Over Thanksgiving we had some trouble getting out of the house. This time we rousted folks out to see Frozen.
Where else?
There was still plenty of time to hang out at Grandma's house, observing the interesting things there.
ANIMAL NEED HELP
Haley got a bug of some kind and spent the better part of Christmas Eve wrapped up in a blanket in sick bay.
She may kill me for posting this
The James tradition always involves a reading of The Littlest Angel. Since Grandpa died, the mantle has passed on to Uncle Kevin, who reads with heart and sarcasm.
No Christmas celebration is complete without singing, of course.
Some of us get more into it than others.
On Christmas morning, Eric put his phone down and his eyes were all sparkly.
We opened our stocking stuffers...
Tic tacs and glowsticks. Truly the Christmas gifts of champions.
And Eric's Gran Torino.
As usual, it never takes long to open up all the presents.
Alison wanted this cart for lugging school stuff.
Dad was already playing with his new GPS.
And Haley was playing with her guitar stuff.
We took Dad's GPS on an adventure, looking for geocaches.
This one took us across an empty field to a cemetery.
We found this one in the hollow of a tree.
Another geocache was in a park, with some strange equipment.
The cover art to Eric and Haley's debut album, Gazebos.
Eric and Haley got a little bored waiting for the rest of the family.
The Christmas table prepped for the roast beast
Grandma finally got a modern television!
As the night wound down, Alison wanted to stretch her legs. My memory of Windcrest was a bit rusty, so we found ourselves wandering a bit to find the pond I was aiming for. Suddenly, I heard some familiar voices...
Looks like my family had the same idea, but they had left before us. We just so happened to end up in the same place.
Eric and Haley wanted to close the night off with a impromptu Bob Dylanesque Christmas concert.
It was...interesting.
We were on our way the next day for Christmas II.
This one came from Jordan!
Market Street at the Woodlands, still in Christmas mode.
The Christmas II Tree
A vase for Debby...
Scarves and shirts for Alison...
A Firefly poster for me!
My family caught up with us later in Houston. We spent a little time at Vintage Park.
On New Year's Eve we all went out to Benihana's.
My siblings were big on Mary Poppins after seeing Saving Mr. Banks.
Facepalm. Apply directly to forehead, Mr. Banks.
New Year's Day was an adventure in ceiling fan installation and our house's first fire. Nachos were left a little too long on broil. Things burn.
So apparently my new car doesn't have a 2 year sticker, like I was led to believe.
Happy 2014 to me. :-(
Our neighborhood's walkways actually can look quite nice in the early morning.
We suddenly found ourselves on the ticking time bomb for baby John (see previous post). I was really hoping I could get Alison's real Christmas gift, a Moto X, delivered to her in time. I'll spare you the long tale, but it took hours on the phone, tweets, emails, and wiring money to Jordan and having him wire it back before I could buy this thing, all because of the stupid address issues. It came though thankfully.
And Alison likes it too. Take that, Motorola!
Last Friday we thought baby John was coming, but it turned out to be an extended false alarm. Sunday wasn't so false, and...aw, forget it. I know you just want more baby pictures.
Evidence of his weight. His feet are blackened with ink.
This was right after he was taken to the nursery for initial testing. Making sure joints move correctly, heart beats right, etc. He was still fairly quiet at this stage.
The morning after John was born. I needed to breathe.
John with Grandma Debby
John is tired in Mommy's arms
Alison was surprisingly mobile for just having brought out a baby.
John, not Monzon, is sleeping
Sometimes Mommy needs sleep too.
We brought John home after 2 days. He seemed to enjoy the car seat, but enjoys eating even more. He also likes our baby swing.
Right after his first bath (he didn't look nearly so content then)
If he knew how, he'd totally making a thumbs up here.
So there you have it. I've got the arrangements for his blessing taken care of, and the ward has stepped up to take care of us with meals. Already I'm starting to become familiar with the restless nights and baby bodily functions. I've got an achievement chart for his first two weeks, which doesn't seem too tough: eat 8-12 times a day and dirty several diapers.
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