Gorgeous Winter

My trip to Houston was planned mostly around the arrival of my nephew (thanks for coming at a convenient time for us, little one!) and Ben's school holidays, so a lucky coincidence is that we missed 6 weeks of winter weather here. Last year's winter was horrible - cold, rainy, windy and generally miserable. It lasted from the day we arrived (one year ago today!) until October and I pretty much hated every minute of it. I was extremely happy to miss some very cold weather and big storms while we were swimming and sweating in Texas, but we have had some incredible weather since we returned. It's been sunny and calm nearly every day with highs around 70, lows around 40, and little humidity. Pretty amazing. Bad news for the locals because they depend on the rain to fill up the reservoirs in the winter and are severely low on rainfall, but great news for us because we've been outside all the time.

The boys and I enjoyed the beach a few afternoons because it's definitely too cold to swim so they were content playing in the sand.

This seagull kept a close watch an Alex...I guess he looked likely to drop food at any moment.

Alex took care of that by chasing him away.

The kids enjoyed running up and down the sidewalk.

Big smiles....

...happy boys!

I've walked past this sign a hundred times but just finally read it. Glad they warned me about the water before I walked into it.

We've also been enjoying our favorite parks again, like the lotterywest area at King's Park.

These were lots of fun to climb on.

Today we helped the boys' friend Wilder celebrate his birthday and it was funny watching the kids because they stuck together the entire time. They hadn't seen most of the other kids since June but were more interested in playing together. They've really bonded since they started sharing a bedroom and even more so on the long trip with just one another for entertainment.

As soon as the cupcakes appeared they were right back in the crowd. Nothing stands between these guys and frosting!

Yum!!

Alex's disappeared immediately.

We're finally back on the right side of the clock. It took a week to get everyone sleeping normal hours again and it's sure nice to be able to stay awake past 8pm myself. Unfortunately, the boys picked up a little virus and haven't felt well but a precautionary trip to the doctor yesterday caught the reemergence of Alex's ear infection and I got him started on antibiotics again before he got bad. Hopefully early treatment will keep my little guy happy.