Christmas and New Year's in the United States

I was able to make it home for Christmas this year, and also made a nice trip to Houston to see CJ (and enjoy some sunshine!)

On Christmas Day, we made a trip over to London, Ontario to see Grandpa and Peter and Natalie. 

Here's one of those rare photos of Dad, mulling over some point in conversation...

The family! 

I enjoyed a few days at home before heading out to Houston on December 30th. On New Year's Eve, we visited the Natural Science museum as well as the Space Center. 

Here's CJ at the Natural Science museum:

And then at the Space center with one of the boosters that they have on display.

We also went on the train tour through the Space Center, which included a stop at Mission Control. We were lucky - we got to see the real room, with real people at work! Apparently, that's quite rare. The ISS astronauts were not awake, so it was pretty quiet, but it really did look like what you see in Apollo 13. The tour guide also remarked that - since the ISS circles the earth every 90 minutes - he got to use his once-yearly comment that they were actually bouncing back and forth between this year and the next.

The Saturn V rocket on display is also quite an impressive sight! It's hard to really show how big it is...

Other rockets were on display outside...

We enjoyed being right next to the tram line in order to have a night on the town without driving.

We started off the evening with a meal at Guadalajara, thanks to Susan's generous birthday gift, and then went out to a local bar with another UM graduate and his date. I think the highlight of the evening was probably everyone's reaction to our swing dancing to "I will survive"!

 

 

We enjoyed really nice weather over the next few days - and took plenty of advantage of it to go bicycling, swimming, walking and hanging out in Hermann Park, and exploring the city thanks to the City Passes we had. We also had some cooking adventures, including geographic pizzas:

Scandinavia:

Texas:

Here are a few photos from the park  on a glorious sunny day, starting with the statue of Sam Houston:

... and the swan boats in the pond.

African cattle at the zoo. These aren't the same as Texas longhorns, but they look similar to me. 

 This is me looking up at the fish and rays from under the water at the aquarium:

And CJ is riding a bike with a skeleton at the health museum. The skeleton bones would show where they were stressed at each point in the cycle. 

And, of course, we had a blast at the water exhibit at the Children's museum. Their vortex exhibit was fun, you could change the size of the opening and watch the effects. 

And finally, a little wave basin! It's just a tiny bit smaller than the facilities here in Norway, but still fun.