10/6 ~ 10/10 Our Family Trip -- Houston/Austin @ peggyhuang1

Lately I've been trying to type my blog in Chinese... to practice Chinese typing... but... it's kind of late now and I have so much to talk about ... much easier and faster for me to write in English... so sorry Grandpa, you will have to read your daughter's English again :D

The boys had Monday and Tuesday off from school, and daddy had business trip on these 2 days... so we decided to tag along... On Saturday we left our house at around 9am.. heading to Houston. This trip the most important place we wanted to visit was ---> Houston NASA Space Center(太空總署).
http://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/
The boys have been reading about space, space shuttle for a while, and they were super excited that they would get to see a space shuttle in person!

We arrived safely at Houston around 1pm... and headed toward Chinese restaurant directly... we heard 山東麵館's food is yummy, so we decided to go there. We bought 珍珠丸子，包子 to take with us.. .. then we drove a little down south, about 30 more minutes, and arrived at our 1st hotel... Since it was free stay using the Marriot points we had, we didn't expect it to be too high-end... but it turned out to be ok. We loved the little kitchen we had, so we could heat up foods. It's almost 4pm but we still wanted to check out NASA space center before it closed for the day. And WOW... the playground is HUGE... my boys were very excited and Timothy LOVED the playground...

We purchased NASA membership because we wanted to come back again sometime within the year.

After NASA our tired daddy decided to take us to Galveston.. to take the ferry. It was wonderful on the ferry, we enjoyed the bay view and even saw dolphins swimming along side.. it was very cool !!

It was so much fun already, for the 1st day of our vacation.

10/7 SUNDAY
We didn't attend the church meeting because it was far away... after everyone woke up we headed for NASA again. Today surprisingly not many visitors, so we took the TRAM to tour the space center ... we entered 3 buildings and got to see the "Mission Control" room... WOW COOL!!! It was a real mission control room, not a movie set, and there were astronauts (太空人）in the space that day.. so flight director and a few other officials were working... WAY TOO COOL!!! IT's like watching the movie "Apollo 13" in front of our eyes... almost....

And of course, the highlight was to see the BIGGGGGG space shuttle... Jacob and Timothy were VERY excited!! It's now housed inside.. so we couldn't take a picture of the whole space shuttle from afar... it was also very cool to see the astronauts training center. It's tough to be an astronaut, and indeed a very dengerous job.. I probably won't want my boys to be one when they grow up!!

There were a lot to do and play inside the space center.. and we were there the whole day... truly enjoyed it!!

Timothy was brave to walk on the Circus rope.. ok it's not that high.. but still, I would be very scared to go on top!! Very proud of my brave little boy!!

Even Acacia had a great time playing inside NASA.. We WILL be back !!

10/8
We went to Houston Children's Museum. We got to go in for free since we purchased Dallas Science and Nature Museum's membership. Today is Columbus Day.. and a "fake" Columbus was present and talked to the boys.. but they didn't know much about Columbus.

We played there for the morning and decided to go eat Chinse food again!! This time we went to our beloved 京津小館. There foods are SO yummy.. the boys ate lots of 炸醬麵, and I enjoyed my 羊肉麵，羊肉水餃，羊肉餡餅... ok you probably guessed how much I love 羊肉 !!

We then headed to our 2nd hotel... this one is MUCH nicer. For dinner we ate at Ramano Macoroni Grill(Italian ). Yummy as usual.

Poor daddy, after playing with us all day(even took the boys swimming in our hotel), had to work over night... this is the reason why we were here... so while we snoozed off, Daddy went to the client's site and worked until 4:30am, and drove another 30 minutes back to the hotel. And after only about 3 hours of sleep,...

10/9Tuesday
we drove to San Marcos for me to shop... daddy was very tired by the time we got to the outlet mall, so he wasn't in a very good mood to shop ... so mommy quickly escaped to COACH store, and bought 2 bags and 1 wallet(spent a lot of money!!)... then we went to our hotel in Austin(another 30 minute of drive). THANK YOU DADDY!!! ... for letting mommy buy the stuff I like :D

This third hotel is by far the best. we got a whirlpool in front of our bed, and the boys had tons of fun taking a hot bath...(Acacia too!).. ..

After swimming in the hotel pool, we were all too tired to go out to eat, so we ordered foods from Ramano Macoroni Grill, and daddy went to pick it up. It was very relaxing to eat at our hotel room, because Acacia could run around and we didn't have to chase after her. We turned in bed early because very soon daddy would have to go to work again. Luckily, tonight's work load is light so daddy only took about 2 hours to finish his job and he returned at about 2am....

10/10 Wednesday ... HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TAIWAN!!

Today is the day we go home. Finally. Although it's so much fun to vacation, it's a great feeling to finally go back to our sweet home. But not yet.. we still had to tour Austin's Children Museum... ah, although it is much smaller in size, it was still a lot of fun. The boys loved playing with the digger. We spent about 2.5 hours there, and it was time to go home.

We had to went to Cherie's house to pick up our hermit crabs... although I think it was only the boys' excuse to get to play with the girls.

HOME SWEET HOME!!! Our home is probably 10 star hotel.. it's got everything and more that we need. Everyone was happy to sleep on our own bed !!