Fun with Friends

Matt was able to stay a full 3 weeks this year by doing some remote work and get his second vaccination.  Of course, the weeks flew past and all too soon it was time for him to head back...but not exactly when we expected.  Because of a visa mix up, he didn't leave on his scheduled flight and had to take an Uber back home.  But the good news for us was that we got a bonus night together! We found a great race track on Saturday morning and had some fun.

We also had time to get ribs at McKenzie's...definitely made this guy happy! Then we dropped him at the airport again and he started his long trip back.

On Sunday, the Dulaneys arrived and we had a much overdue reunion with one of our favorite couples! They are always so much fun and such wonderful people...we had a wonderful few days playing and laughing together.

We all went to the Armstrong's for dinner and had a wonderful evening with a rowdy game of dominoes.

We kept up our perfect streak on esape rooms! Couldn't have done it without these two.

A few days after they left, Hope and her boys came to town as well and we got a chance to catch up with part of another favorite family. Thank goodness this Airbnb had lots of sleeping space to accommodate all of our friends and family passing through...it was wonderful being able to stay in one place and enjoy our friends' visits! 

Both of the boys took rock climbing after school this past year, one of the few activities they were able to enjoy until the rock wall closed because the inspector couldn't fly in from Singapore.  We were very happy to find Climb Woodlands just around the corner and found a great air-conditioned place to work out some energy.

It's a small place and not too crowded, so we took advantage of the space many times over the summer.

It even has a ropes course, but it became less interesting as their endurance for climbing increased.

With Jakarta in the midst of its worst Covid outbreak to date, we decided to spend an extra month in Texas and enjoy all the freedoms.  Instead of packing up towards the end of July, we took our fully vaccinated selves to an Astros game with the Hesters!

The Saturday night game against the Texas Rangers was a full house.  At first, I was a little freaked out because we hadn't been around thousands of people in about 18 months, but then we relaxed and enjoyed how NORMAL it was to be at a baseball game!

Meanwhile at home, I started a 2,000 piece puzzle.

It was slow going by myself with a little help from Alex.

After a few hours with Grammy and Stacey helping, suddenly it looked possible!

We spent a night in Katy to catch up with old neighbors and friends.  My night out with the ladies!

And the next day we took Ryan and Presley to Typhoon Texas and the kids had a great time catching up and enjoying their favorite waterpark.

Farah invited me to play golf and I had my first round ever without a caddie! We had a lot of fun together, lost plenty of balls, and finished 9 holes in exactly 2 hours.  Not bad for two non-golfers who've only recently started playing.

We had a cheering squad and two willing drivers along with us as well.

After several more days of work, we finally finished the puzzle!

Well, almost...turns out it was only a 1,999 piece puzzle.  I spent so much time looking for this piece that was probably missing from the start.  It was a free-to-me puzzle, so I can't complain because the rest was tons of fun.

Alex solved the problem for us.