Picking up the cars in Galveston and Dallas

So we went to pick up the cars from Galveston and Dallas. we had to wait a day on the customs form for my car so we didnt get to pick it up until Tuesday and Jamie’s got there late so it worked out ok.  the BMW had some minor damage on the hood, looks like a rock hit it.

Jamie’s battey was dead, so we got a jump and let it run for awhile but i wanted to check to make sure it would start when we got gas so i turned the car off and of course it wouldnt start back up.  we got another jump and we drove over to the auto parts store where i “thought” i would have the easy job of just swapping the battery out.  well alas, the negative cable was completely stuck to the negative post and pulling on it just pulled out the entire post (yeah that sucked).  so i went in and bought another battery cable, well the jeep has some crazy two wire negative battery cable and of course they store didnt sell one, the solution ended up being cutting the cable adding some little clips so i could screw them to another top post terminal…all of that took about 2 hours.

my favorite quote from the whole trip was stopping in some hole in the wall dairy queen between galveston and dallas this guy walks in and orders the “belt buster” triple cheeseburger and then asks if he would have room for ice cream after.  plus he topped it all off with a diet coke.  gotta love it.

my patch job on the jeep got us back home and i am gonna get it fixed up this week and hopefully pass the texas safety inspection.

pictures of the house off to the right

-Chris

Pyrotechnics in El Paso

I guess there’s a reason fireworks are illegal inside the El Paso city limits.  Chris and our neighbors decided last weekend to buy some fireworks fun.  They lit several firecrackers and threw them over the hills behind our houses with no problems.  Of course, then one of the fireworks started a very small brushfire that didn’t go out by itself.  I guess someone driving along the road behind our house saw that and called the fire department.  We heard sirens several minutes later and a very large firetruck rolled up the street.  We all ran into our houses and peeked down the hill to see what was going on.  The firemen were shining lights up the hills, so we thought we were all in big trouble.  Lucky for us, they put out the fire and went along their way.  I’m glad to know that the fire department responds so quickly around here…we’ll try to be good from now on!

Texas is a really BIG state

We should know…we drove from Houston to El Paso.  We flew to Houston and stayed with my brother for two nights and picked up Chris’s car in Galveston.  There were issues with the customs forms so we were already two days behind.  We then drove to Dallas to pick up my car…of course the battery was dead.  Two hours later, the battery was changed and we decided to start on our 650 mile trip to El Paso.  We made it to Abilene and stayed the night.  The next morning we got on the road again.  Let’s just say that there isn’t much going on in central and west Texas…lots of desert and oil wells.  We made it to El Paso and picked up the puppies from the kennel…it was nice to be home.  Our unaccompanied baggage comes next week so things are finally shaping up!