When moths attack

I realized today I'd never posted this back when it happened.
One morning while we were in Houston, I noticed one of my father-in-law's dogs, Holly, stalking a moth out by the pool. I didn't think she'd ever catch the thing, but apparently she was very patient and finally was successful a couple of hours after I took this photo.

On homelands

This post wasn't prompted by home leave, although it does coincide quite nicely.
I make no secret of my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormon). One somewhat prominent member of our church is an author named Orson Scott Card. He writes science fiction (none of which I've ever read) and some historical fiction (some of which I have).
But recently I've found myself reading his weekly column in Mormon Times, which is the Deseret News' weekly section on church news. (This isn't to be confused with Church News, which the Des News also prints but is an official church publication.)
A recent Orson Scott Card column was about homelands. Specifically, he talked about members of the church functioning as a tribe of sorts. He focused on his family's feeling that Utah is their homeland, for lack of a better word, although they've lived in North Carolina for years and some of their children were born there.
Where is my homeland anyway? The United States, obviously, but I'm not sure more specifically.
When Kevin joined the Foreign Service, we had to declare a state of residency and home leave address. Ours is Texas -- Houston specifically -- because it's where we've lived more than anywhere else during our married life, where we'd live if we weren't in the Foreign Service, and where we find ourselves spending our nonvacation, nonwork time.
Of course, I've also lived in South Carolina, Utah, South Dakota, Tennessee, Arizona, Colorado and Virginia. And it occurs to me that over the past few years I've spent more time in Florida -- home of both Disney World and Miami, site of the cheapest flights out of Port of Spain -- than in South Carolina, my literal homeland.
But because we don't actually own a home anywhere anymore, it's even more complicated, especially now that Laura and Owen are in the mix. Owen was born in Virginia, of course, but isn't old enough to care one way or the other. Kevin and Laura declare themselves to be Texans every chance they get.
Maybe the question of our homeland isn't much of a question after all.

To the person who left a comment on here in Japanese

At least I think it was Japanese.
Anyway, I rejected the comment because I had no idea what it said. So if it was legitimate and not just spam, let met know.

Oh what a big boy he is

Owen went to the doctor yesterday. He got his first set of immunizations -- complete with unpleasant aftereffects, although he didn't cry much at the time -- and we got a complete picture of just how big he really is.
16 pounds, 10 ounces. That's the 97th percentile for weight for 12-week-old boys.
Yeah, that's big. The nurse who was helping us yesterday said her 5-month-old is about the same size.
He's in the 75th percentile for height and 50th percentile for head circumference. So it's only his weight that makes him a whopper. Well, at least for the moment.

I'll eventually catch up on this thing

We got back from home leave Monday, and although I still have a couple of things from the trip to write about, who knows when I'll get around to them. It's been a busy week. A quick rundown:
Monday our flight came in around 5 p.m. Luckily we were able to rent a minivan; otherwise we might have had to leave some stuff at the airport. We checked back in to our apartment complex, and our new home is in another building. We've now lived in three of the four buildings in the complex.
Tuesday we got two of the boxes we shipped ourselves from Houston. Later we went to Costco and the grocery store.
Wednesday our unaccompanied air baggage from Port of Spain arrived. Six hundred pounds of what we thought we'd need. It's a lot of clothes and toys with some random things mixed in.
Thursday we regained possession of Green Car. The State Department doesn't routinely ship vehicles back to D.C. for people who are in training, but we elected to bring the car back and give up the right to ship a car to Milan. (We'll sell the Jeep here and buy another car when we get to Italy.) Of course, registering it so we actually can drive it hasn't happened yet.
Today I bought a changing table. No, it's not that dramatic a purchase, but changing diapers on the floor was getting to be too hard on my knees.

Laura's new haircut

I think my mother-in-law feels sorry for us when she sees the state of our hair when we come to visit, as she always offers to take us to her beautician for haircuts. Laura went last week, and I went yesterday. I don't have any photos of mine -- and let's be honest, I won't be able to re-create the style as it was intended anyway -- but Laura's is quite a bit shorter and really cute. (It's also smoother and more even than this photo suggests, but hey, it's 100 degrees and extremely humid in Houston.)

Cockrell Butterfly Center, Houston Museum of Natural Science

There are some things we always do in Houston, such as go to the zoo. This trip we've also gone to the Museum of Natural Science and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. (We were members of MFAH when we lived here, although Laura doesn't remember our regular outings there.)
The nature museum is free Tuesdays after 2 p.m., although you still have to pay to see the butterflies. Laura, Owen and I went this week, and it was a lot of fun. We didn't try to see any of the other exhibits, although I wish it wasn't so expensive to see the terra cotta warriors. I figure there's a better-than-average chance of us getting to China at some point, though, at which time we can see them in their natural habitat.
We didn't have any photos of Owen "doing" anything from this trip, so I got Laura to snap this one.Too bad babies don't feel lighter when they're asleep, as he was like that pretty much the whole time.

Bad blogger

Eventually -- perhaps even later today -- I will get around to posting some blog updates. But home leave isn't a regular vacation (partly because it lasts so long), and we've had some Internet problems. (Try losing telephone, Internet and television access for 30 hours. Hello, isn't this the 21st century in a major American metropolis?)