Layne, Elissa and Brody are currently visiting us in Houston for a couple of weeks. As Layne is not the world’s biggest fan of competitive cooking shows, we watched one of the original Star Trek episodes last night. In this case “watched” means, watched most of, but fast forwarded through the romantic interludes.
One of the girls (who will remain nameless for this part of the post), Brock and I were sitting at the kitchen table. Part way into the episode, nameless girl was puzzling through something. “Speck? Spunk?, Dad – what is his name?” As it turned out the name she was searching for was “Spock”.
A few minutes later Brock finished his meal and migrated to the couch. This particular episode had the transporters malfunction and send the away teams simultaneously to a space ship in an alternative universe (the other universe of course, being an evil one). This led to the Brock comment to Elissa “What, there are two Spunks in this episode?”
So, a couple of fun pictures that I found out on the Internet commemorating this particular Star Trek episode, one of which I doctored up in honor of Brock.
And on to the other set of Brockisms for yesterday evening. The setting is that it is about 7:45 in the evening and the boys are hoping to go swimming with Layne. Sadly, there are some dark clouds partly overhead, making loud noises. We’ll pick up the conversation there.
Mom would not allow us to go swimming during a thunderstorm. – Heidi
Mom is not always right – Brock
Yes, but she usually is – Dad
She usually is, but not always – Brock
Rather than moving away, the clouds moved in overhead, there was more light and noise and quite a bit of rain. Nobody went swimming; Mom was right again.
Ben’s BirthdayI don’t have any pictures from my birthday party (maybe Lori might). We had the traditional birthday trifle with ice cream.
Brock, Dad, reading glasses
Someone’s been using my cellphone
In reviewing cellphone photos for this week’s update, it was immediately evident that someone (likely Heidi or Davison as they weren’t in any of the pictures) had taken lots of pictures with my iPhone. Here are some of the pictures.
Brock and DanayasistersBrockDanayagimme da phoneBrock and Danaya share a chairwe appear to be short on chairsDanaya
New Refrigerator
When we purchased our refrigerator back in 2013, we also purchased a 5 year full coverage plan on it. We’ve recently been having an issue with the fridge that numerous repair guys have been unable to solve. So, Sears has labelled it a lemon and provided for a replacement. This replacement comprises of a credit for the amount that we originally paid for the first fridge – that we can spend at a Sears store on a new fridge. Warranty-wise, this new appliance takes over the last two years of the original warranty. We can spend more than the credit and pay the difference if the refrigerator chosen is more expensive than the original. As might be guessed, it ended up being more than the original.
The new fridge has LED lighting and quite a bit more space.
I love opening the fridge. -Brock
Frogatorium
It appears that one of the attractions of our yard to neighborhood kids is that frogs (or maybe toads, or maybe both – do frogs and toads get along or are they like rival gangs or something) like to hang out in the damp dark space where our water meter and shut off valve are located. While working in the yard today, there were a couple of times when girls came by, got out frogs and played with them. One of those times; they took a couple of frogs off to the detention pond. I was tempted to say “Hey, put those frogs back”, but then I remembered that I don’t like frogs, so kept quiet.
the habitatthe cover
Lanier Library Lecture
We’ve been enjoying the nearby Lanier Theological Library, usually going there on Tuesday afternoons and evenings. I went to a lecture on Saturday night, featuring a University of Cambridge professor that they had brought in for the weekend, one event being the Saturday night lecture on the topic Jesus and Geography, in particular looking at the the validity of the gospels in their geography as validated by extra-biblical sources (i.e. Josephus, rabbinical literature, etc).
The speaker was Simon Gathercole, and it was a pretty good time. The chapel was full, so I was in one of the two overflow seating areas in the library. After the talk there was a question time in which the speaker was asked to answer questions ranging from the basic (“Are the Tyre and Sidon in the New Testament the same ones referred to in the OT?”) to the interesting (“Since Josephus was originally a Jewish generally, but then became a traitor who ended up on the Roman side, can we trust his writings?”) to the complex and open-ended (“Can you explain Isaiah 53?”). Answers to the above by the way were yes, yes, and a rather longer explanation than I wrote down.
The host (Mark Lanier) and the lecturer had a really good rapport, and there was a good deal of banter back and forth during the question time. One of the exchanges that was really fun was when Mark corrected Simon with “It’s pronounced ‘I-Zay-ah'” – versus the more academic/English pronunciation.
the path to the libraryOne of the gateslight tree by the library
Brody 3 month pictures date back to an email from Elissa on March 27th. I’ve scaled the size of these pictures back to speed up page loading; but if you want a larger copy to print, let me know (or Layne and Elisssa) and we’ll see what we can do. My favorite picture here has to be the owl hat, although the bowtie shirt runs a close second.
Wishing you all a Happy Easter day!
Thought a few Brody pictures were needed to send out again… He just turned 3 months old yesterday. Last week, while he was lying on a blanket on the living room floor, he pushed himself with his arms, and with some effort, then pushed himself over his left side onto his back. It was pretty exciting to witness (I, mom was there). We learned he is also ticklish, so it is fun trying to make him laugh and squeal with delight at times. It is crazy how fast he is growing, he is now about 13.5lbs, and wearing 3-6mo clothing.
We are super thankful this Easter, hope you all celebrated well.
Blessings,
Layne, Elissa & Brody
It was a busy week at the Houston Huber Household. Probably most important was that I completed the green card process, getting my permanent work authorization for the States. No pictures to show of that. In other news…
At a local Barnes & Noble store, I picked up a ‘build your own gliders’ kit (from their half price table). After some tweaks to the tail ailerons, it flew pretty well even though it was sort of windy.
Davison with the gliderBrock with the gliderthe requisite Bilbo picture
Flowers and Fruits
next step in grape developmentmature pomegranate flowerpomegranate fruit (really small)roseroseroserosesstrawberry harvesttomatesyots of yilies
Flood Aftermath
Danaya and I took an alternate route to the chiropractor on Wednesday, driving through one of the communities that has been hit hard by the flood. There were a lot of houses in this community with piles of debris (drywall, carpet, etc) out front. I drove through again this morning, and a lot of it had been cleaned up already. There were some streets that were still in cleanup mode.
Zach Winters house concert
On Thursday night, I drove Danaya and Daelynn to a house concert featuring a musician from Oklahoma named Zach Winters. It was held in a large very soggy backyard (like step on the grass and sink into a couple of inches of water) and was a whole lot of fun.
Danaya and Daelynn find a dry place to sitZach Winters in concertDaelynn, Zach, and DanayaOne of the filament bulbs at the concert
Ben: Elissa has been sending out monthly updates with pictures of Brody. I don’t know if all six of you readers get those emails, but I thought it would be fun to cross-post them here. (I have this dream of someday creating one or more coffee table type picture books based on the Huber family adventures as posted on hubcrate.com, and Brody is definitely part of the adventure). So, this post is based on Elissa’s email of February 27th. I have two additional emails (the three and four month updates) that I’ll be posting here shortly as well.
So, here is Elissa’s writeup (she gave me permission to post pictures, but I forgot to ask about re-posting her text – Elissa, let me know if that is a problem).
So, yesterday Brody turned 2 months old. Today he is technically 9 weeks.. and continues to grow fast. We are getting out for more walks recently, as we pulled the stroller out of storage, and the weather is mild. He is smiling lots, and starting to “talk” more- making fun coo-ing and vowel-type sounds. He is also getting more consistent with sleeping through the night, and we moved him to his own room this week. Our own room now seems big and empty, but he seems to do well now having his own space. – Elissa Huber
On Sunday night, we were awoken by a major storm that dumped a lot of water overnight. There was lightning and thunder all night long, some of it amazingly close and loud. All of us received periodic public announcements to our cell phones providing tornado and flash flood warnings. Both Mikaela and Heidi have old cellphones which are no longer in service, but apparently are still eligible for public service announcements. At 2:00 am, I had a worried set of kids (Mikaela, Heidi, and Brock) and a distressed dog in the living room. The detention pond was pretty much full at 6:00 am (see following picture), but by 8:00 am was down quite a bit already.
6:00 am picture of the park and detention pondThe view of the park and detention pond 5 days laterthe cul-de-sac underwater
At our place, we got (received, experienced, were deluged by) 15 inches of rain as measured by one of our garbage cans.15″ overnight
Work was closed on Monday, but for us the rest of the week was normal. About a mile or two north of us is Cypress Creek. It crested a couple of inches short of the all time measured high water mark, something like 127 feet above normal levels. It closed major roads in our area for 3 to 4 days but didn’t really impact us.
In other news,
further progression of the pomegranate blossomsTawny DaylilyGardeniastrawberriesblackberries ripeningpecan tree blossomBearded IrisRainbow Pinks
And in another news, Lori and Bilbo had a big altercation this week. Bilbo is now undergoing obedience and submission training.
I had to return my Pomegranate Orchard Otharized Professional badge, as the pictures that I posted last week labeled ‘baby pomegranate’ actually turned out to be the pomegranate bud and flower as shown by the following two pictures. I guess that the fruit comes after the pollination process.
Painting The Roses
Although I had captioned a picture last week about painting the roses (referring of course to the Alice in Wonderland movie), it was all in jest. However, one (and only one) of the roses actually is mostly red and part pink, looking indeed like it had been partially painted.
Baker Davison
Davison made a dessert this week called a ‘pavlova’. It consisted of a meringue crust, whipped cream and sliced fresh fruit. It was delicious and allowed Davison and Brock to stay up past their bedtime as it took an extra long time to cook.
Mentor/Mentee Meet the Family event
For the past 1.5 years as part of a work-sanctioned give-back-to-the-community program, I have been mentoring a middle school student. This consists of meeting once a week during a lunch hour for 30 minutes.
This past week, Lori and I went to a dinner and speaker event and had a chance to meet my mentee’s family. Mentor (sitting) and mentee (standing) in the picture. Some additional yard pictures
Rose
DaylilyWild Garlic zucchini blossomBlackberry blossoms Tropical Milkweedand last and least…
It’s been almost two weeks since we dropped Daelynn off at the airport as she jetted off to Calgary for three weeks. Being a contrarian, or possibly better described as a photo-oddarian, I enjoy taking pictures of people taking picture of other people. (If I end up getting a couple of the iPhone packing kids in on the act and positioned people correctly maybe we could get into recursive photo taking).
So without any further blather, her are some pics of the photo shoot at the airport.
We are having fun (and doing work) in the yard. Here are some pictures that I took yesterday.
Gladiolas in the front yardFront yard rosebush blooming profuselyOur new climbing roseour smaller peach tree with lots of bloomspainting the roses … pinkThe start of some grapesThe cocoa red rose bush we planted last yearA baby pomegranateA bottlebrush flowerThe climbing rose that we planted last year; hoping it will grow more this yearSome, uh, yellow flowers
