Editor's note: I've been "working" on this post since Saturday, so in the interest of expediency I'm just going to post it. I promise more details um... "soon". Really. Promise. :-P

So after two weeks of vacation (and nobody even threatened to fire me!) and two weeks of houseguests before that, life is finally returning to "normal", assuming I even remember what that is. :)

First, my brother Ryan and his girlfriend Katie were here for a week. It's nice to be getting along with Ryan again; there for a few years I worried a bit. We had a lot of fun hanging out with them. After four weeks, I can't remember specifically what we did, though I do know it included a trip to the Alamo. :)

After that, Simon and Fiona were here for two weeks. I took the second week of that off, and had an incredible amount of fun. We had a great time at Six Flags (skip the Rattler) and tubing down the Guadalupe River (margaritas in plastic bottles are definitely the way to go), plus the pub quizzes, not to mention just hanging out and playing Age of Empires or whatever. It's really sad that we don't live closer so we could hang out more.

Then last week Jen and I went to Padre Island (not South Padre) with Jen's family. We did some really fun things--toured the USS Lexington, which was interesting, visited the Corpus Christi Aquarium, went horse riding on the beach, and saw baby green sea turtles being released. I've posted pictures; unfortunately it looks like about 24 of the pictures somehow got deleted off the camera, including the close-up face-on shot of one of the baby turtles. Which absolutely sucks. :( Still, there are some nice shots in there. The best part about our digital camera is the fact that we can take upwards of 600 shots before swapping out the card or downloading to a PC, and with that kind of space even I can take a decent photo or twelve. ;)