Our Trip to Texas

Our source of income will be moving to Texas in 2017...

We got the opportunity to take a trip to check it out.  We made appointments at two schools and explored A LOT of neighborhoods!

Here we are at the airport waiting for our flight. 

I love the look on Philip's face in this picture!

We have a book about airplanes at home and I thought the boys might enjoy this picture because it is similar to a picture in their book.  

I was trying to catch a picture of the airplane's shadow.  I succeeded, but it doesn't look that great.  It's near the middle of the picture.  

I am a clumsy sort of person and a lot of times I don't think things through.  I took this water bottle onto the airplane and it had water in it.  I went to get a drink, I opened up the spout, not thinking of the pressure change and... water shot up into the air and not only did I wet myself, but showered the people in front of me...ooops!!! Thank goodness they were good natured about it and hopefully had a good story to tell people.

This is the magazine I had in my lap at the time.

I love the patchwork view from the airplane.  

The horizon.

I thought he was cute sleeping...

There was a "expo" of cities in the area where employees might be interested in living.  They gave out pamphlets and talked up each town/city, of course.  

Sunrise in Texas!  We had an appointment at a school at 8:15 am...which was 6:15 am at home...

The school was a dual immersion program, similar to what our oldest is enrolled in now.  It seems as though they spend more money on their schools than our local schools do. The class sizes are smaller (18 max, where it's 30 here), they have a full time nurse (we get like one and a half days a week), they have a full time P.E. teacher, and they had separate music and art rooms, too!

I wish I had taken pictures of a house or two from the areas we visited.  It seemed everything built in the past 20 years had a brick facade.  They were cookie cutter houses and each neighborhood looked similar.  We looked drove through half a dozen towns/cities and crunched some numbers using a real estate site to check home prices in four or five of the areas.  We were in the car probably about six hours perusing around.  

If you know us, things wouldn't be complete without finding our Asian connection.  We went to the area that has Korean shops, including a bookstore.  Philip picked out a book that had English on one page and Korean on the next, saying the same thing in both languages.  I decided to get a magazine that featured a guy from a band I know, Jung YongHwa from CNBlue.  When we got talking to the lady there, she was very nice and tried to recommend places to look to live.  

We found this at the Korean market.  We thought it was funny!!!!

Philip's company has their name on a bunch of stuff.  I thought the flags were funny...USA, Texas, and Toyota right along with it.  

We had an early Valentine Dinner of Korean BBQ, yum!

The soap was shaped like a leaf, so we thought the boys would like it and brought home the unopened bars.

Here is the future sight of Toyota, this picture was taken from the car, but it's better than nothing.  It's still a huge open field, about 9 1/2  months after announcing that the national headquarters sight will be moving!

The loner cars were from Toyota, of course!

We were the 42nd wave of trips to come check out Texas. This move will affect 4,000 employees and their families.  

We visited a Japanese school there, too, of course.  The biggest part of the program is for the children of ex-pats from Japan that want to keep their children current with the language and up to par on math. The level of Japanese would likely be too high for our kids.  They also offered Japanese as a "heritage language" which may be more appropriate for our children.  

Our flight options were early in the morning, or 5:50 in the evening.  If we had left early in the morning we couldn't have visited in the Japanese school, so we had some time in the afternoon, but we had to turn our loner car in by 11 in the morning.  We went to some local shops to look around. 

We aren't in Kansas--er California anymore, Toto... 

Philip caught a bit of the sunset, despite our seating arrangement that was close to being over the wing.

We made it home, safe and sound!

My mother had mentioned that I had some distant relatives in the area of Texas we are considering.  It's true, too! One of my great grandmothers was born in one of the cities we looked in!

Philip and Jenny Get Away!

We did a late anniversary getaway in Carlsbad.  Not too far away from home--we could have gotten back pretty easily in an emergency, but far enough where we couldn't just take a quick jaunt home.  

I thought this fountain was cool.  It looks like glass!

Having a leisurely breakfast together!

Our view from dinner!

This ship was right next to where we ate dinner.  

We at crepes on the way home.  We had a sweet and a savory one.  

Ragnar Napa Valley

In September I flew to the bay area to do a Ragnar Relay Race.  200 miles split between 12 people, run over about a day and a half, day and night. It was San Francisco to Calistoga.  It was fun, but challenging!  

Pre-race Dinner

Food, yum!!! Jessica, Josh, me, Tristan (I think) and Lindsey.  

"The G's" (left two) kindly let us stay at their house for the night before the race and the night after the race.  Middle: Tristan, then me, and Lindsey.  

Team "We Like Pie" has to have pie for dessert!

Day 1

Diane and Cherylin ready to go!

And they’re off!!!

The first leg, which Diane ran, went over the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was a foggy morning!  

Here comes Diane!!!

My first exchange with Steve, I got the taste of a hill, but poor Steve got more work than me!  What a crazy place for an exchange; in the middle of a hill!!!!

My first run splits…In the middle there I wasn’t sure if I was going the right way…

I drew the runners from van 1 on our window!

Getting ready for nighttime at another exchange!

MOO!

Day 2

Getting ready to get back out there dark and early...

Vineyards!!!

Another exchange with Steve, this time I also got a jacket…

All finished and ready for a protein filled brunch, yum! 

The temperature from my window at home while I was away...

Our team made it to the finish line!!!!  Some of us got two medals: the gold one was for finishing both California Ragnars: So Cal and Napa Valley.  Go team We Like Pie!!!!

I can't seem to find a team picture, but here is one of just me and the two medals. 

Trying to get a good picture of the giant pie I drew on our van the morning after the race (in the dark!).

Pictures from the car, not turning out quite like I wanted.  

I made it home!!!

I had another great race with Team We Like Pie, thanks everyone!