Our long weekend

The kids had both Friday and Monday off this last week and Jason had Monday off so we decided to make a little trip to Houston since we've never been there. Josh has always wanted to see the Johnson Space Center so that was our main reason for going.

We spent the entire day on Saturday at the space center. We learned a lot, froze while riding the tram, saw some pretty impressive things, and basically had fun all day.

I was most impressed with the size of the rockets and shuttles that they have used in space travel. The rockets themselves are HUGE. But the area that the people are in are TINY. Joshua's favorite was the Saturn V. Many of these pictures are of this rocket. It is hard to tell from the pictures the actual size, but it is huge.

Here is a picture of the rocket.

These are the engines of the rocket.

This copper colored area is the place the astonauts lived (they basically could sit and stretch out a bit). The rest of the rocket was used to get them into space.

Another impressive thing was the intricacy of the engines and such. There are so many wires and gadgets that I have no idea how they keep it all organized.

Another fun part was learning how they live in space. Without gravity there are many challenges. This toilet is quite the contraption. Showering and eating was also quite fun to see in videos.

On Sunday we spent some time at the Water Wall. Over 11,000 gallons of water spill over this wall every minute.

We also went on a hike at Memorial park. It was a beautiful day for a walk through the "woods".

The kids had a great time just playing games and watching some cable (since we don't have it) at our hotel.

Although it was a fun weekend, it didn't come without some excitement. Sunday as we were going to head to church our battery in our car wouldn't start. After getting it jumped, we were able to get around for the next two days, but it was always a question whether the car would start. Every time we tried to start it struggled to get going. With a lot of prayers were made it home, but we headed straight to the auto store and replace the very bad battery.

Also, as we were heading out of Houston we were rear ended at a stop light. It wasn't so bad that anyone got hurt, but our car's rear bumper has the permanent imprint of the licence plate of the other car. What fun ey.