Karen Jacot / the blog

I am a last-minute packer. I always do this to myself…I am getting on a plane in like 7 hours and I am just now finishing packing. I don’t know why I wait until the last second, but I do. It’s like I am just incapable of gathering together the right items before it’s absolutely necessary. (And who’s idea was it to book a 6am flight with a 2-year-old??? Not mine.)

I’ll be mostly offline for the next few days but I’ll return emails when I get back. Until then, here’s Lyle sharing his strawberry muffin with the world. (He has a muffin and a bagel BOTH, because that’s how he likes it.)

We had more visitors this week. It’s funny…after living in places that I consider way more exciting to visit, I thought no one would want to visit us in Houston. But people have been coming anyway. So I guess I owe the city of Houston an apology for assuming that it was so unexciting that everyone would stay away. It also helps that we have an entire guest room now and we no longer have to make our friends and family sleep on the couch or floor, which is where they’ve been sleeping when they visited for the past 8 years.

This week it was Jeff’s cousin and his wife and son who came to visit from Colorado. They nearly ended up living here themselves a few years ago–Josh is a pilot and he had just gotten hired at Continental (which is based here) when September 11 happened, and they laid him off before he even started. So they stayed in Colorado after all.

While they were here, we took the kids to a mall with an two-story indoor carousel, which was a little bit scary to them at first but in the end they both liked it.

And we also did a lot of hanging out at the house, playing fun games like rock-Josh-in-the-recliner.



On second thought, you can totally see why people keep coming to visit us, yes?

A couple weekends before Christmas, one of my friends from Boston came down for a weekend to visit. I took him to the Beer Can House, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Here’s Michael among the beer can art.

We also went to see the Menil Collection, which is a free museum in a very cool building in Montrose. Sadly they don’t allow photos inside, so I can’t show you how cool the space is. It’s a very varied and eclectic collection of art–definitely worth seeing. If you live here, you should go. And if you don’t live here, you should remember it in case you ever find yourself in Houston with a free afternoon.

The outside of the building was pretty cool, too, so we walked around with our cameras taking pictures outside before we left. Michael got this shot of me in action, because he thought it was funny that I was taking a picture of basically nothing.

Here’s the photo I took of “nothing.” I like it.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Hanukkah or Christmas. I am way backlogged on things to post…I have several things I want to write here about. I spent my Christmas in Colorado visiting lots of family, which is always a blast. (I am being sincere, people.) And now I’m back in Houston with a ton of photos to sort through.

So a belated happy holidays to everyone, and watch this space for more posts soon.