Africa

I recently spent two weeks in Angola while we were starting up a new project. It was fun to see that part of the world and be part of that project. Here are some pictures.

This is the center of Luanda, the capital of Angola. There are 4 million people in the city.

Here is a picture taken out the window of our car. Notice the woman behind the truck with the load on here head and the baby strapped to her back. We saw that a lot. Often the load was much bigger. The baby is just strapped on with a piece of cloth, kind of like a towel around your waste.

I spent a night on one of our floating production facilities (FPSO-Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading). Crude oil travels through miles of underwater pipelines and then up a mile-long riser to reach this vessel. It is processed and stored on board and offloaded to a tanker (if you watch the video below you will see a tanker slowly approaching, preparing to hook up and offload 1 million barrels of crude). They offload every ten days. Do the math on that with oil at $140 a barrel.

Here is the same view in the morning.

Here is some video of us taking off from the FPSO in the helicopter.

San Antonio

The weekend after Ian and I returned from CA, the Larsons took a spur-of-the-moment trip to San Antonio. It was so much fun to go for no other reason than to be together and do whatever the heck we wanted! We stayed a night at the Residence Inn by Marriott, and I loved that our room had a full kitchen and a living room, even if we didn't actually use either. We were only a few minutes walking distance from both The Alamo and The Riverwalk.

We spent Friday night exploring the outside of The Alamo, and strolling The Riverwalk. We ate dinner on The Riverwalk at a place called the Republic of Texas. The food was terrible, but the restaraunts' name made it a worthy stop anyway. Saturday morning we ate the hotel's delicious hot breakfast (including Texas-shaped waffles), swam in the hotel pool, ate at a really good BBQ place (turns out Ian loves beef ribs and strawberry cream soda), and toured The Alamo. We noted The Alamo was in the very center of town, which seemed an odd place for it to be. Inside the walls of The Alamo are lots of garden paths, beautiful flowers and plants, and several fountains. There were also costumed demonstrators who showed us how to make bullets.

This really cool tree was just outside the walls of The Alamo

Outside The Alamo
On the way home, my incredibly kind husband agreed to go an hour out of our way to visit the San Marcos outlets. Overall, they were disappointingly similar to every other outlet mall I have ever been to. However, I did get two very nice soap dispensers for the master bath at Crate & Barrel, and Scott found the coolest lion laundry hamper for Ian.

Ian was a pretty good sport for the 3 hour drive each way. His favorite part of our trip was easily the cordless keyboard in our hotel room. He busied himself with typing and relocating the keyboard and typing some more.

Growth

I am so glad Scott finally spilled the news. I would have waited eternally for the scanner to cooperate so we could share our many ultrasound pictures. But since we are already more than half way through this pregnancy, some of you may have first heard about the baby after he arrived.

But just so you don't feel like you missed out on too much these last few months, here are some pictures of Baby Larson growing.

Week 11 (mid March)

Week 16 (mid April)
Week 23 (last night)

Do you remember how big Ian was? It looks like his baby brother is ready to set records too. At our last ultrasound he was measuring two weeks ahead, and was still in the 81st percentile. He already weighs 1 lbs 9 oz, while a typical baby is just over 1 lb. We like our babies big around here.

I am really enjoying how the second time around my belly is blossoming more quickly. This pregnancy has been heavenly, without much morning sickness and with lots of energy and excitement. Playing with Ian all day is the best reminder of why all the less pleasant parts of pregnancy are totally worth it. We can't wait to meet Ian's little brother! Ian will be exactly 18 months old when the baby arrives.

It's a BOY!

For those of you who haven't yet heard, we are expecting another baby! We had an ultrasound a few weeks ago and found out that its a boy, due on October 11. We are so excited to be adding another member to our family.