New Fence, New School, and Another Round of Rodeo

Continental Airlines…er, make that United Airlines now… had a special round-trip ticket price last weekend, so we put mom on a plane and brought to Houston.

But before she arrived, it was a busy few days of getting Ivy enrolled in PreK next school year, plus hiring a contractor to tear down and building a new fence. I’m trying to get Ivy enrolled at Helms Elementary which is a dual language school. She will be in an environment where spanish is spoken 90% of the day. They will decrease the spanish to 80% the next year, and continue to decrease it until it is about 50/50 by the time she reaches 5th grade. Ivy was totally jazzed to be inside a school building and wanted to see and touch everything. She is very ready to go to school! 🙂

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our contractor was busy tearing down and building up a new fence. Altogether it took 4 days to get it done (2 days longer than anticipated), but it was finally finished Friday afternoon … within minutes of a downpour of rain! Good timing! The fence looks great and gave both Holly and I a motivational boost to get busy making the yard pretty.

Mom Goes to the Rodeo
Saturday morning Mom arrives via Bush International Airport and we wasted no time saddling up and heading to the Rodeo. We parked at the downtown YMCA and rode the metro to Reliant Stadium. There we stayed for about 4 hours checking out the rodeo and exhibits.

Check out this cool panoramic picture I snapped with my phone:

Cool Panoramic Rodeo Pic

Sunday with T.D. Jakes
The next day we headed down to Lakewood Church to hear special guest speaker T.D. Jakes. He did a great job as always, although he was more calm than usual and didn’t call fire down from heaven. Still, it was exciting and a great message. Later in the afternoon, Mom stayed home with Ivy while Holly and I went to see “John Carter”. Good movie! I thought it was going to a little like Star-Wars (which I don’t give a hoot about), but it was actually very well made and entertaining. I give it a thumbs up.

Monday morning I put Mom back on a plane and shooed her out of here. It was pleasant visit! Thanks for coming down. This makes, what… about 10 flights in the past 6 years? Pretty good for someone who had never set foot on a commercial airline until 2005. Now she’s a regular frequent flyer and can even navigate through the confusing halls of IAH without any help. Way to go, Mom!