August in Houston...

How's everyone doing??? Keeping cool I hope! Apparently it's cooler in Houston then almost anywhere else in the US right now! We have yet to break 100 here and have managed to stay around the 90 degree range or cooler most days.

I don't have any new pictures this week. I'm waiting for Barbara (Matt's cousin from next door) to send me the one she took of the Coral snake I found while weeding the flower beds in the front yard, but more about that later...

Matt left on Sunday for his first official trip with work. Although he won't travel often, since they just sent him to training in NY and Kayleigh is gone, they asked if he could take this one to kick off his first project. He hated it. He was working directly with Salesforce.com (the company who developed the software we implement for our clients). Salesforce.com has their own division that implements the program and often times they are short-staffed, and hire from the outside to fill the holes. Our company is one of the top 8 partners, so we regularly staff these types of projects. Matt had to go to Livingston California which is near Oakland. About an hour west of San Francisco. All the meetings were held at the hotel he stayed in, so he was there from Sunday night, in meetings all day every day until Friday morning. Apparently it was incredibly disorganized, and by the end, Matt was unable to get the information he needed to begin working on the project. The next two weeks he will spend gathering the information that he should have gotten out of the meeting. Poor guy...

After I took Matt to the airport on Sunday, I decided to get busy on weeding the flower beds because his parents were coming home on Monday or Tuesday. I was nearly done, when I almost stepped right onto a Coral snake that was coiled up in the rocks. He was not very big, but I noticed his bright colors and immediately suspected he was poisonous. He was about a foot and a half long, and had black, red and yellow rings around him all down the length of his body. The red rings were the widest, then the black, and the yellow rings were more narrow. I went next door to get Barbara - she LOVES to kill snakes. She grabbed her shovel and came over to the house. She looked at it once and taught me a new rhyme, "Red and Yellow, Kill a Fellow!" Then she wacked him good! We didn't see him move, so we are not sure if he was already dead or not, but we certainly were not going to take any chances. She scooped him up and took him next door, jumped on the internet, and confirmed that it was indeed a Coral Snake! Apparently they are not too common - it's the first time she'd ever seen one near the house. She had to take a picture of it because she didn't think anyone would believe us.

On Monday, Tom and Louise (Matt's Parents) came home and I was the only one here to greet them. The rest of the week was pretty quiet. I mostly worked, and Matt's parent's settled in after traveling for several months. I got Kayleigh registered for school and managed to pick up all of her school supplies. She's coming home on Saturday, August 12th. Luckily I got to talk to Matt every night. It seemed like he was gone forever! We picked him up at the airport on Friday and went to Culver's for dinner. THAT'S RIGHT!!!! Culvers! We have a Culvers only 6 miles away! Isn't that awesome??? For those of you that do not know what a Culvers is... I'm SO sorry. Make it a point to get to one if you ever visit the Midwest or anywhere South of IL! We introduced Matt's parent's to "Butter Burgers!"

On Saturday, we finally went swimming in Terry and Barbara's pool and had steaks on the grill. It was the first time since we've been here that we swam in their pool. Getting settled has taken a lot of time!

On Sunday, Matt introduced his Dad to Call of Duty 2. He had a bit of a challenge figuring out the controls, but he was pretty good with a Sniper Rifle! He wants to get better so he can play Xbox Live and kill real people that are playing. Being an ex-cop, this game is right up his alley!

I think that's about it for now - but please keep your fingers crossed for us! Our house is supposed to close this week on Thursday!!! So far everything is OK, but you never know with these things. It sure would be nice to start working towards the new house!!! Stay tuned for more updates this week!