Birthday in Houston!

Well, it's official: at 31, I'm firmly into my thirties (plural), and no longer just 30. But, we had an adventurous weekend in Houston, so that makes up for it. Since Spencer's birthday is in only a couple of weeks, we thought we would just go to NASA (for Spencer) and IKEA (for me!) in Houston Friday afternoon after Brant was done with class. Once we factored in travel time, however, we realized we'd only have two hours at NASA, which seemed too short. So, we decided to go to IKEA on Friday, stay at a cheap hotel in Houston, then spend all day Saturday at NASA.

IKEA was...amazing as always. Brant's parents got me a set of shelves I've been wanting, so we found those and then spent about 3 hours looking, walking, and eating delicious swedish meatballs. I love IKEA :)

This all seemed like a good plan...until we got to the 'hotel' we reserved. For all those who would consider traveling to NASA, DO NOT stay in the Oxford Inn & Suites near the Space Station, pictured below.

Don't let the picture fool you--it's ghetto. So ghetto in fact that soon after we checked in, we noticed suspicious behavior from the guy just two doors down from us...standing without a shirt on by his open hotel room door (red flag #1), random people parking their cars and coming and going from his room (red flag #2), and looking noticeably nervous at the sound of a police siren (red flag #3). We thought about alerting Hotel management, but when we realized the manager was driving a brand new Land Rover, we realized he might be on the take, too. So, we said the kids were 'sick' and turned the key back in, opting to lose our deposit over spending the night next to a drug dealer :)

The next day, after swimming in our much-safer 2nd hotel, we went to NASA! Spencer was absolutely thrilled. The look on his face of absolute awe is indescribable and, unfortunately, impossible to capture on camera. We did take a few fun pictures, though.

Spencer, our fearless tour guide :)

They had a real Space Shuttle inside, it was amazing!

Brant and Spencer at the Space Shuttle cockpit. There were HUNDREDS of switches, knobs, and levers. Crazy!

Gavin liked it, too...but just isn't quite old enough yet to appreciate it.

This is THE mission control where they have run all of the Space Shuttle missions. This was Brant's favorite part, by far. In the middle screen you can see a map of the globe, where it tracks the position of the International Space Station, then on the other screens are live feeds from the Space Station itself. It was cool to see the space station cross all of the African continent in 15 minutes!

Next stop was to the building where the Astronauts train. Spence called it Astronaut School :)

Part of a full-scale model of the Space Station where the astronauts train.

Me and the boys in front of a Space Shuttle that's used for training.

This was at the Rocket Park. We forget what this rocket was used for...but it was HUGE!

Inside, they had a full Saturn V rocket, the same kind used to launch the Apollo missions to the moon! It was almost 400 feet long...

Gotta love our Spencer :)

All of us at NASA. It was an amazing experience!

So much so, in fact, that Spencer (above) and Gavin (below) fell asleep within 30 seconds of getting in the car...

When we got home, Brant got to work on putting up the shelves (he hates unfinished projects...which I love!) The before and after, shown below.

It was a great birthday filled with fun and adventure! We would highly recommend NASA to anyone visiting Texas...just call us and ask for recommendations on Hotels :)

Strawberry Freezer Jam

The only problem with homemade jam is that it tastes so good that I never want to eat store bought again. I try to make some every summer, but we usually run out in the winter sometime. Then we are without jam until strawberries go on sale again. This year I made 3 batches so hopefully we'll have jam for a while. First I took out everything I needed. Brant got me these bowls and colander for Christmas last year. I love kitchen stuff for Christmas. Seriously, I really do.
Making freezer jam is so simple, it's just a little time consuming. After washing the strawberries it seems like it takes forever to get the stems out. In the past I've used a pastry cutter to mash the strawberries, but this time I used the food processor (also a past Christmas present). It was much faster and made the strawberries less chunky which I prefer anyway.
I used two different kinds of pectin. The first was the Ball brand (in the first picture) and then Sure-Jell. I usually always use Sure-Jell, but Ball was on sale so I thought I'd give it a try. The Sure-Jell is much, much better. It probably has to do with the 4 cups of sugar to 2 cups of fruit ratio. The Ball brand had more fruit than sugar so it's going to be the healthier option. It almost tasted kind of bitter, though. I think strawberries need lots of sugar. :)
Another time consuming part of the process are washing all of the dishes that are used. I'm so glad we have a dishwasher which makes everything a lot quicker.

Here's our jam for the year!

It helps that I have plenty of entertainment while I'm in the kitchen. Gavin never gets tired of playing peek-a-boo with the colander. I tried to get him in action, but it's just blurry.

Super Puppy!

Spencer woke up the other morning concerned that his puppy didn't have a cape so he couldn't be Super Puppy. We quickly took care of that and made a matching one. Spencer was thrilled and apparently Puppy was too because he was flying around the house the rest of the day.

Even super heroes need some cuddle time.

I love watching Spencer build things. It's fun seeing his imagination start to take over.

I also love walking in the room and finding Spencer or Gavin reading a book. Here's Gav flipping through his favorite. I tried to sneak up on him, but he heard me. Once he sees me he's done reading and wants to play.