Houston, TX

You may have thought that my last post was a little random, but it really had a purpose.  I left soon after that post on a trip to Houston!  I was there for a week visiting Kimberly.  We had a really good time.  The first day I was there I got to meet the family and I am not going to lie, I was scared.  Luckily they were a really nice and I felt really comfortable around them.  They are a really great family.  

While I was there we went around Houston, and Sugar Land.  That that was really fun to see Houston and some of the places that Kimberly grew up around.  we also went to some museums in Houston.  That was fun to see a Pompeii exhibit that was there.  We went on a little picnic that day in the park and we had a lot of fun with the squirrels that were there!  One of them got on the table next to Kimberly and she decided they were getting to friendly and it was time to go.

I just thought they were fun little guys sharing our food with us:)

We also got to go to the Pasadena strawberry festival.  That was really fun to see the fair and the mutton bustin!  That was really fun because Kimberly had never been to one of those before.  She thought the little kids dressed in their cowboy outfits were really cute!  There was a bunch of other things at the festival that we got to see.  There was a family circus that was really cool to watch, especially the motorcycles in a cage, because I had never seen that in real life.  They had some really talented kids in the family.  We also got to see a pig racing and that was pretty funny to see.  They had all sizes of pigs from little ones that ran really fast to big ones that barely made it around the track.

I had a really good time and I was glad that Kimberly and her family let me go down there to visit them!  Maybe I will be able to go back sometime

Fun Filled Facts!!

Did you know that!!!

• Houston is the fourth most populous city in the nation (trailing only New York, Los Angeles and Chicago), and is the largest in the southern U.S. and Texas.
• Founded in 1836, the City of Houston has a population of 1.9 million.
• Houston metro area's population of 4.8 million is 10th largest among U.S. metropolitan statistical areas
• County seat of Harris County, the nation’s third largest county with more than 3.4 million citizens.
• The City of Houston actually spreads over three counties: Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery.
• More than 38 million people each year fly in and out of Houston's two major airports: Bush Intercontinental and William P. Hobby.
  
• Houstonians eat out more than residents of any other city. Houston has more than 11,000 restaurants.
• Houston has a unique museum district offering a range of museums, galleries, art and cultural institutions, including the Houston's major museums.
• Houston has more than 500 cultural, visual and performing arts organizations, 90 of which are devoted to multicultural and minority arts
• Home to 18 Fortune 500 companies and more than 5,000 energy related firms, Houston is considered by many as the Energy Capital of the world. Companies headquarted in Houston include Halliburton, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Corp and Dynegy.
• The Port of Houston ranks as the nation's largest port in international tonnage and second in total tonnage
• America’s first public television station is located there.
• Located 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.
  

Now you know!!!!  :)

You would think you could just turn the water on!!

For the summer I have decided that I would come home and work on the farm!  This has been a grand adventure(isn't it always)!  The first week home was probably the longest, but I don't think it was all because of the work, probably the lack of social life is more like it!  Since then it has improved significantly..........ish!

So working has been fun and for the most part we have been able to get a lot of things done!  We put up a new fence line that Dad has been wanting to do for a few years, and we moved a lot of rocks so we can hopefully gain a few more acres of farmland!  Work has been going grand!  

This week we thought everything would go just as well--when does that ever really happen though!  On Saturday last we decided that we would start the water on Monday, easy enough.  All we had to do was make sure the pipes were all working well and straighten the wheel lines so they were going the right direction!  Okay, we had a few lines that had broken, so the loose lines were all over the yard(literally, some were even on our lawn)!  This wasn't to hard to fix we just pushed the loose ones back, replace the broken ones, straighten the line, and we're done!!!

After working all day Saturday and all morning Monday we were ready to turn on the water.  This is always fun!  We turn on the pump and noticed it wasn't filling up the pressure like it should so we went to see what was wrong.  Well one of the valve openers wasn't clamped down right so it sprayed all over, the hand line was laying down so it sprayed water all over, and one of the hoses come unhooked so it sprayed all over.  Little things that we have dealt with many time, easy fixes!  

As we finished hooking all those up we still didn't have the pressure we should have had.  So as Dad drove up to the pump (I was talking to him on the cell phone on the other side of the farm) I could just tell that he wasn't happy with something!  He said there was water were it wasn't supposed to be and that we would have to turn off the pump.  Great!  Apparently the 10 inch pipe that is 10 feet from the pump had rusted through.  It was a big enough hole that dad decided there was no way he could just weld it back,  This would mean replacing the whole pipe!  this wouldn't be so bad but the pipe isn't straight.  It is actually the blue pipe that sticks out of the ground by the pump, if anyone remembers!  So since it doesn't work what else do you do but replace it.  Dad and Brian went into the Sprinkler Shop and got new pipes, one of Brian's co-workers come and helped weld, and Dad and I mixed new cement that held it in place.  

On last Saturday we thought that we would be able to start watering our fields by monday and then go over to Grandma's farm to start hers by wednesday, now we are hoping to finish this project tomorrow so we can turn water on saturday--only 5 days behind plans!  Who ever gets things done on time anyways, I know I procrastinate homework until the last minute.  Why would i want to get farm work done on time?