Well, the arrival of Lebkuchen from Lynda’s uncle in Germany this morning and the full feeling of a delicious turkey dinner in our tummies means that it’s time to write another Christmas letter from down here in Texas. We just got home from a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with friends (hence the turkey), and realized how quickly the holiday season will be upon us. Time passes so quickly – Lynda figured out recently that we’ve now spent more of the time we’ve been together, 9 ½ years, living in Houston than living in Canada. We're looking forward to some indoor and outdoor decorating, and having our first Christmas in our new homestead.

You may remember that this time last year we were searching for our new home. We found a house we liked and spent the holidays packing up for the move, January 5th. After spending 4 days of the New Year’s holiday weekend painting our very tall living room and a spare bedroom, moving day arrived quickly. We were able to bribe our friends with pizza and beer to help with the move, and aside from the pouring rain (c’mon, one move in four years and it rains?!) all went very smoothly. We marveled at all the space we now had to accumulate more stuff!  We were lucky that Joe got a bonus at the end of 2001 so we were able to buy some furniture shortly after moving in.

Lynda went to Vancouver in February and March to spend some time with her family. When you get to be her parents’ age, it’s nice to have the out-of-town kid come home once in a while. Joe and Lynda celebrated the Olympic Hockey gold medals in Houston and Vancouver. Every Canuck in Joe’s office wore their maple leaf ties to work, and boasted that Canada “won the Olympics, 2-0”. Back in Houston Joe learned how to tackle the grass, roses, and garden – yes, in early March things had already started growing!  He had a push mower that he was using on the grass – we former Vancouverites are quite ecologically minded. That lasted all of a month as he sweated over the mower and imagined what it would be like in the summer. Home Depot to the rescue, with a 6.5 HP self-propelled mulching mower with convertible rear/side bag and a multi-attachment trimmer/edger/blower. Their names are Troy and John (Troy-Bilt and John Deere, of course).

We found that we were unprepared for many things in the garden – when we found our house, we were enchanted by the garden, the roses and the deck, imagining that we would spend all our time outside. Silly, silly Canadians – we were thinking that our house would magically be in a Vancouver climate!  The reality is that we bought a patio set that we have used a few times, but not many. The deck is also a good idea in theory, but when the temperature is 90º+ (over 30º C) and the humidity is over 80% we don’t spend a lot of time outside. Toss in hungry mosquitoes and it gets even less inviting.

Joe quickly learned that Texas grass is a weed. The only way to get it to grow neatly may be to cover the yard with concrete sidewalks and flower beds, because that’s apparently where the stuff prefers to grow. Evil things hide in it, like fire ants. (Teeny little ants with an extremely fiery sting in their bite, that swarm instantly when disturbed [if you step on something that feels like sand, JUMP AWAY!!]. The secret is to use stinky bug powder to keep them moving until they build their mound in the neighbour’s yard.) The novelty of mowing wore off, especially since we have a corner lot with a sidewalk (3x the edge trimming!), several trees, a hydrant, a stop sign, and a light post to go around. Joe has to get up nice and early to do it all, so that the temperature is only 90ºF (32ºC) degrees or so… Our little pool makes a great reward after sweating in the garden and Joe loves to frolic with the floating toys!

As summer approached we learned (tried?) to keep our plants and grass alive, and went to war against the weeds that seemed to relish life more than the rest of the garden. Weeding was Lynda’s hated chore – especially since she’s never been that tolerant of the heat. She’s now at the point where walking around in the hot sticky summer air doesn’t bother her as much as it used to, but actually working in the heat and humidity, that’s another story. Lynda also tackled her first home improvement job on her own – the guest bathroom. It took a while to get ‘just so’ but was great to be finished finally (under time pressure since we were expecting our first guest!). We managed to have one perfect week where the grass, roses, and flowers looked wonderful. That week Lynda’s friend Rose came to visit and we had our housewarming. We had such a wonderful time with delicious food, thanks in part to all the help Rose gave us in the kitchen. The party was well attended by friends from both NAM and ABS and we had so much fun that we completely forgot to take pictures!

Our green card application finally progressed this year. Joe, advance planner that he is, had made sure that we had birth certificates, marriage certificate, and other papers ready. (Did you know that BC uses the same form for requesting both marriage and death certificates? It’s called “Application for Marriage or Death”!) We loved the immigration questionnaire: Are you planning to overthrow the US government?  Have you ever engaged in genocide?  Have you ever been, or are you planning to be, a prostitute?  One “yes” and you’re out. We filed the paperwork in September and in four to six months Lynda should have her work authorization. 

Joe was pleased to receive another promotion at work, he’s now Principal Engineer leading the team that regulates the stability of ¾ of the world’s floating offshore drilling rigs. It’s his job to enforce the regulations that are aimed at making sure an Ocean Ranger disaster never happens again.

Lynda took a Spanish course to learn some of the language that’s all around us here in the summer with friends. Meanwhile she still volunteers in the Children’s clinic at least 10 times a month training new volunteers and helping to re-write and computerize information booklets given out to patients and forms used in the clinic. She put the fear of God into the doctor at the clinic (to get him working on his re-writes) when she mentioned that she might be able to work by spring 2003. There are a lot of projects she would like to complete before she has to look elsewhere for a job. The clinic, being a non-profit enterprise, can’t afford to create a new position for her. The prospect of being able to work for money again in both thrilling and daunting. “Oh, yay, I can work!” and “Oh, crap, I don’t have an excuse for not working any more.” It’s unlikely that strolling into NAM at 10 am (after a trip to Starbucks including newspaper reading & journaling time) will be tolerated by someone who pays her. 

In the summer we went on our first road trip in a while – driving to Las Vegas to join friends there for a wedding. Yes, Las Vegas in July. What were we thinking???  We sure found out how big Texas is as it took us two days to get out of the state. Taos, NM, situated beautifully in the mountains was cool and rainy as we drove in and made us miss Vancouver. The rain stopped as we headed further west into the parched southwest. First we arrived in Cortez CO where we explored the ruins of the Ancestral Puebloan peoples (aka Anasazi) at Mesa Verde and other sites. It’s amazing that these buildings from the twelfth century, only occupied for about 100 years, still stand. After a few days there, we headed up (and we mean up: 8 to 10 thousand feet above sea level) to Cedar City UT where we marveled at beauty of Cedar Breaks National monument and the hoodoos at Bryce Canyon. 

After a quick side trip to the Little Al’E’Inn in Rachel, NV – a cheesy little diner along the ‘Alien Abduction Highway’ next to Area 51 – it was off to Vegas for the wedding and a chance to spend time with Lynda’s friends Leah and Ross.  Joe hadn’t seen them since our wedding six years ago (6?! Where does the time go?).  Las Vegas was as crazy as we remembered, and this time Lynda had Leah to brave the roller coaster on top of New York, New York with her – thanks Leah (‘cause Joe sure as heck wasn’t going)! What a fun visit and thank goodness we’d been living in Houston for a while or we never would have survived temperatures around 110ºF (44ºC). Lynda finally got to see Cirque du Soleil as well which was a delayed birthday present.

We headed back to Houston via southern Arizona so that this trip Lynda could finally see the saguaro cactus. She always thought they were cool, but could never have imagined they were so huge! (They don’t look 30 feet tall when Snoopy’s brother Spike is next to them in the comics.)  We also got to see a Joshua tree forest and spend a night in Tucson AZ. We’ll have to go back there too. All the places we visited were definitely worthy of a longer stay – there was so much to see. 

The rest of summer passed quickly (though it didn’t seem so at the time) and hotly. Again this year we thought it wasn’t as bad as in the past, a combination of a slightly cooler summer and more acclimation on our part. In October, we welcomed some more guests to our new house – Lynda’s friends Lada and Tom and their 14 month old, Amanda. What an adorable fun handful she was. Lynda and Joe had a lesson in how unchildproofed their house really is – a good thing to know since many of our friends are expecting in the new year. While they were here Houston has some flooding again (ten straight days of rain will tend to do that), though thankfully we weren’t affected. Joe had a fun Hallowe’en night filling the candy pails of the little ones who came to our door in our first Hallowe’en in the house. And thanks to that rain and the following ‘cold’ weather (brrrrr, down into the 60’s) we actually had some fall colours this year. Other than our usual yellow and brown that is!

Lynda finally succumbed to her curiosity and went with (Southern) friends to a Luby’s cafeteria and tried the Chicken Fried Steak in November. She hates to admit it, but it was quite yummy! Although she liked it (and had it twice now) she’s not quite ready to buy a cowboy hat and boots and sport a bolo tie as our friend Russell has! We finally found out the difference between 'Fried Chicken' and 'Chicken Fried Chicken'. CFC is a boneless breast of chicken done up like Chicken Fried Steak -- pounded thin and battered and fried -- though Lynda hasn't tried that one yet...  Texan expressions and pronunciations have definitely crept into our vocabulary – like “we sure don’t” and “fahr ants” instead of fire ants. (We will admit to using “fixin’ to” but only in jest!)

Anyway, we’re fixin’ to wind up this letter with warm wishes to all our friends and family. We sure do miss all y’all and hope that the holidays are filled with the joy of the season and the love of family and friends. We’d love to see any of you flee the frigid north for a stay at Casa Rousseau – it’s always interesting here! (And if it’s not, Joe has some stuff for you to help him out with around the house…)