After Houston we headed to the Northwest to see Seth’s sister Claire and her husband Donnie in Oregon. We had a great long weekend with them there enjoying the sights of Oregon!  One of the highlights was a trip to the coast. Despite the fact that the water was icy cold Jackson just LOVED it. He had no hesitation. He just held his breath and enjoyed! We got spoiled eating all of the famous blackberry sweets! It was so fun to see Claire and Donnie’s new home and Claire’s growing tummy! She is due only 3 weeks after us! The only downside of the trip was that Jackson (independent of his begging parents) decided to stay on Texas time. So we woke up for the day with him in the 4 AM hour which made for some tired parents!

Here are a few pictures!

On Sept 11th we landed in Houston, thrilled to be back in the United States!! We had a packed week visiting with Seth’s family. We ate our fill of Blue Bell ice cream and made sure to get to Lupe Tortilla!

We took Jackson to his first Astros game! He was so excited and actually payed attention more than we anticipated.

national anthem

Jackson had lots of fun time playing with his cousins.

We spent a day in Galveston….We thought Jackson might get his shorts wet but we never anticipated him wanting to dive in to the ocean! He loved it!

ready to feed the seagulls on the ferry

We visited with Seth’s grandmother, Mimi, at the nursing home.  After visiting Jackson said “Mimi, old lady”

One morning, out of the blue, Mia spotted a snake in the backyard.  Turns out it was a coral snake.  Check out the video if you don’t believe us.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RBjptynLx4]

At the end of our time in Houston we made our 6 month stop at MD Anderson. Another all clear check up which was an answer to prayer! Jackson was a trooper when the IV took 3 attempts.

After the MRI Jackson was groggy for maybe 20 mins and then he was ready to get moving!

Well, it is good to be able to post on this end of things having had survived our packout. It took weeks of prep with our things being divided between storage, DC short term (our things for the next 8 months), DC long term storage, Bern and giveaway! I threatened after this packout that next packout I might take Jackson and Owen away and let Seth do it! Jackson was more than enthusiastic and helpful which made things interesting. The movers were in our home for 3 full days, not because we had that much stuff but because in true Colombian style our packers were late, didn’t show up and worked like snails! We were so relieved to see the trucks drive away.

Here are a few pictures!

Jackson on his last day at school. He carried in bouquets of flowers for his teachers

saying good bye to Sonia and Santiago

saying good bye to our guards and getting the chance to hold the walkie talkie and wear the official hat

helping with the luggage.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5JJKZ4XfA0]

his backpack was so heavy he fell over carrying it!

Our traveling family. USA here we come!