Bon Jour!

For anyone out there who doesn't know...we traveled to Belgium this week to start working on a new documentary project about the country of Rwanda in Africa. We made it to Brussels at about 8:30am on Wednesday. To us it felt like the middle of the night, but we stayed up and completed a full day's work. We rented a car and scouted locations, picked up equipment, and even got to shoot footage of the subject of our film as he was being interviewed in a TV studio by Al-Jazeera. By sheer coincidence Rwanda was big news here yesterday because its government issued a statement accusing France of participating in the 1994 genocide. So that's why he was being interviewed.

We got room service last night and slept from 9pm to 7am. I cannot remember the last time I've gotten so much sleep. It was great. We've been interviewing Paul this morning, and we're about to drive to Antwerp for another interview. This one is with one of the world's experts on Rwanda and the genocide.

Mat is planning to keep track of our work-related progress on our company blog here. I will try to post here on the family blog about some of the fun parts of the trip. So far the most fun :-) and challenging thing has been driving! Actually I got the hang of driving fairly quickly even though our rental car is a manual transmission and everyone here just cuts in front of each other and crams into any space in the road they can fit. It's the finding our way around that's challenging. It sure makes you realize how easy we have it in the US where everything is clearly labeled with big green signs.

The weather was extremely sunny and warm yesterday. Today it's rainy and cooler. Everyone has been really nice. I've only had a couple of times when the language barrier has been a problem. Most people here speak at least some English. I loved this phrase that's on our room service menu "meusli of choco pops." That one cracked me up.

I will post some pics tonight if I get a chance to download the camera.

Au revoir!

Dressing Up for Dinner

We go out to eat a few times a week, and I'd say more than half the time Jackson is dressed up in a costume. We always get a lot of funny looks and smiles from other people. Sometimes I even forget that he's dressed up and wonder why people are staring at us. One night he will be Woody, other times he dresses like a more generic cowboy, an astronaut, or a superhero. He would like to wear his birthday suit or his pajamas sometimes, but we have to draw the line somewhere. Anyway, last week we went to Pok-E-Jo's (Jackson got to pick), and when he saw this Indian statue he asked me to take his picture with it.

Lukey is Two!!

Today is Luke's birthday. I can hardly believe it's been two years since he was born. We have a tradition in my family that at some point on your birthday my Dad will say "Two years ago today...(or however old you are)...there was a big storm coming..." and then he'll proceed to tell the story about the day you were born. He does this every year and it's always fun to hear him start in with, "Thirty years ago today..." or whatever. He always ends the story by saying, "And I looked down and my feet weren't even touching the ground." So sweet. I was born the day after Easter, during As The World Turns, and there was a tornado that night. Or at least these are the things I remember from him telling the story over the years.

So anyway, this morning I got to tell Luke's story:

"Two years ago today, we got up on a Thursday morning and went to the doctor. It was a normal visit - nothing much had changed. Luke wasn't due for another 2 weeks, but we had set a date to induce because the doctor thought he was going to be extremely big for some reason. It came at a really busy time at work, and Mat and I were both worried that he was going to be born on the day that we had this big shoot planned. After the doctor's appointment we went to lunch at Taco Deli. I had a meeting at the LAF that afternoon and we always try to plan our meetings there around lunchtime so we can go to Taco Deli either before or after. (If you're in Austin, 9+ months pregnant and wanting to have your baby...maybe you should try Taco Deli.) Anyway, so Mat went back to the office and I took my car to the LAF for our meeting in their conference room. Most of you probably know how this story ends, so I'll cut to the chase. Right as we were ending the meeting...my water broke. Yes, it was one of my most embarrassing moments caused by my children.

It was kind of frantic after that as my friends drove me home, we packed a suitcase, and raced to the hospital. All I could think about was how my sister-in-law Leslie gave birth to Cate 30 minutes after her water broke, without an epidural, right after they got to the hospital. We made it in plenty of time though. When we got to the room the doctor kept saying that it was going to go quick, and all I could think was 'I'm not ready! I'm not ready!' It was a weird feeling knowing that nothing could stop this from happening whether I was ready or not. With Jackson it was much different since he was induced and it was all scheduled out.

Luke ended up taking his time and finally arrived at 8:50pm at 7 pounds 14 ounces and 20 inches long. Jackie (Nana) happened to be in town, and all the grandparents arrived shortly after. Jackson got to come up the hospital and see his new brother before he went home to bed. When we talked about it this morning he remembered that he got to wear his pajamas up to the hospital. In the end I was happy that Luke came early. It was a great day, and I wouldn't have changed a thing."

So I started to tell the story this morning, but it was the short version because Luke wasn't really interested in all those details. :-) Luke has been such a blessing in our lives. He is truly the sweetest little boy. He's lost without Jackson, and if Jackson is not around he'll ask over and over "Where's Jackson?" He's very loving and easy. And he's smart and funny and cuddly. Almost perfect I would say.

Here are a few pics from our birthday weekend...

Is anybody watching Design Star?

I've been saving the episodes and watching them on my DVR. This made me laugh very hard. I love Youtube...

Colorado 2008

I can't believe I've had this blog for over a year. I'm now starting to repeat myself because this is my second entry about a family vacation to Colorado. We had a great time this year. It was much more enjoyable I think because we learned some lessons last year. 1. Road trips are a thing of the past. We flew this year and that was a fantastic decision. We weren't frazzled and tired when we got there which made a huge difference. 2. Sleep more. We didn't really do anything different other than take older kids with us, but it helped. 3. Lowered expectations when it comes to hiking. Mat and I used to try to do really hard, long hikes almost everyday on vacation, but that just doesn't work during this phase of our lives.

So here are a few pictures.












I picked a few more to add to our Flickr page. Unfortunately since Mat and I split up several times to do different things we don't have pictures of everything we did because we only took one camera. One of my favorite activities was the high ropes course and zip line. It was very fun, and I definitely want to do that again. Mat hiked Jackstraw Mountain which is only hiked by about 10 people every year. It's pretty remote. But no pics of that either. The boys went fishing one day with Grammy, Papa, and Aunt Becky. Umm, what else? Oh yeah, we got to go out to eat at the Dunraven Inn on our last night to belatedly celebrate Father's Day with my dad. That was my annual allowance of fettucine alfredo. Yum.

Jackson was a MUCH better hiker this year. Last year he whined and had tantrums and had to be carried. This year he went on two long (for his age) hikes. The first day I estimated that he hiked almost 2 miles. And on the last day I'd say he hiked another 2 miles, lots of it in the snow. At the end of that one I was complimenting him on the accomplishment and he said, "I didn't ever complain or throw any fits!" It's true. Even though he got tired and needed to rest a few times, he was very pleasant.

Lukey kept us all laughing because of this funny speech problem (?) he has. Any words with the sound "air" he pronounces it with "urr." It may not really sound funny, but he just does it all day long. Chair is churr. Bear is burr. Here is hurr. Over there is ober durr. Upsturrs. Downsturrs. Down durr. It's cute evey time he does it - never gets old. Speaking of bears...we finally saw one! I've probably been to Colorado 20 times, Alaska 3 times, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming (Yellowstone and Grand Teton), Utah, Oregon, Washington, um where else do bears live? Anyway, we've never seen a bear in the wild until now. It was quite exhilerating. Luckily we were safe in the car. We pulled over and just stared at him for a long time until he ambled away.

I think one of the best things about our vacation is that this is a short week and we have a holiday to look forward to this weekend! Lakehouse pics to come!

Lukey loves to read

I was procrastinating the other day while we were packing and took this video of Luke. He talks so much, but he always clams up when we're around other people. When he's at home with us, he's a little chatter box like Jackson. There's a pause in the middle of the video, but it's cute at the end.

It takes a village...

...to move the Hames. I just want to take this opportunity to thank all the people who helped us move. When we started the process I knew we'd never be able to pull it off on our own, so when our awesome realtor Jennie told us on the day we met her that she'd help us with everything (including painting if it came to it) I knew she was the one for us. That was just the beginning. We had a few days with Jennie in the house rearranging furniture and putting blue tape on everything we needed to pack away or get rid of. We had blue tape everywhere we looked for awhile. I chuckled the other day when I realized that the bottle of shower gel that Mat uses still has a piece of blue tape on it. Jennie was great throughout the entire process. Luckily she and Mat were in charge of negotiating because it became clear during the process that I was terrible at it and all my instincts were pretty much wrong. :-)

Then we had Mat's mom Jackie for almost two weeks helping us pack and stage the house. We had several days over the last few months when Mat's Dad and Wendy took the boys off of our hands so we could work on the house. We had inspectors at both houses and the bug guy too. We had Don the handyman at the old house several times. We had a vist from Keegan the air conditioner man. We had Steve the carpet cleaner, Edward the plumber at least twice, Brandon the disappearing house washer, a random yard crew that Mat recruited from the neighbor's house one day, and Texas Re-Key twice. We had Amy, Robin, Dahlia, and Casey who babysat on various occasions. The mortgage lendor, the appraiser, the title company people. We had Christy who kept the boys while we signed the papers on the new house, and Danny who loaned us his truck so we could make a run to the outlet mall. Doreen and Thomas who loaned us the best boxes in the world. We had my sister Becky who came for two weekends to help pack, move, and babysit, and who had to endure an unfortunate accident in the back yard related to Luke not wearing a diaper while playing in the sprinkler. We had my cousin Donice who spent almost 12 hours babysitting, packing, and moving boxes. We had my parents who came to babysit one weekend before their summer trip to Colorado. There was Rachel the house painter, James the carpet salesman at Lowe's, and Raul the carpet installer. We had two cranky movers, Vickie the house cleaner, the friendly cable guy, and Keegan again before it was all over.

All of this in addition to four work trips between the two of us, one weekend in Rockwall, one wedding in Houston, work, a birthday, an anniversary, Mother's Day, end of the year activities at preschool, a day trip to Blanco, church, etc etc etc. So I can't thank all of you enough for everything you did to help us. I don't know why you did it, but I'm so grateful. Love you guys!!! (Not the cranky movers, but everyone else!)