More pictures of Jeff

Here are a few more pictures of Jeff on console:

Mission Control

As you know, Jeff has been busy working the latest mission for NASA. There is a photographer that goes around and takes pictures of the people working, even in the middle of the night, when Jeff is working. So here is proof that he is actually there!





He cleans up nicely, doesn't he!

Carrie's shower

Carrie's shower was this weekend and it was very nice. We had it in Galveston at Jeff's Aunt and Uncle's beach house. The weather was perfect and we had a great time. She got lots of great gifts. Here are the pictures. There are quite a few (95 to be exact!), so sit down and enjoy.

Click here for the pictures.

The French Connection

The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), the European Space Agency's (ESA) latest contribution to the International Space Station (ISS), was launched at 10:03 PM CST last night. The ATV is an unmanned cargo vehicle that we will use to resupply the ISS with propellant, food, clothing, and other things. ATV is designed, engineered, and controlled by French aerospace companies working with ESA. This is the first time ESA has ever launched and controlled their own spacecraft in coordination with a manned space vehicle program. While no space mission is flawless, ATV continues to remain in orbit working towards a docking date with ISS on April 3.

In honor of the big event, Lauri and I threw an ATV Launch party, with a French theme of course. We had cheese and crackers, roasted garlic dip, fruit, eclairs, some cookies imported from France, some French wine, and some Champagne to top it all off. We had over most of the ATV team from my group at NASA, and we all had a blast (pun intended) watching the Launch.

Note from Lauri: Just FYI, ATV is the reason Jeff and I went to France in October of '06. Yay for ATV!

Here are the pictures from last night:

Rodeo Day 2, Faith Hill

Tuesday Jeff and I, Josh and Lisa, and Cory and Erin headed out to the second day of the rodeo. It was a beautiful day, but still pretty windy. We got there a lot earlier than Jeff and I had the day before, so we had a chance to do and see pretty much everything we wanted to. We ate lots of yummy food, watched mutton bustin' and pig races (pictures will follow) and saw the rodeo and Faith Hill. Once again, Tim did not come out and sing with Faith, so it was a little disappointing. But as always, she put on a good show. I took some pictures and Josh and Lisa took some as well, so I'll cheat and put a link up to theirs, in addition to ours.




Josh's pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jsparris87/RodeoHouston2008

Tim McGraw and Rodeo Day 1

Jeff and I went to opening day of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo last night. As usual with us, it was kinda crazy. On the way there, we got behind a Jeep which proceeded to spatter my newly washed car with clumps of mud, hood, windshield and everything. And of course, I'm out of windshield washer fluid, so I still have clumps of mud on the windshield. Luckily, the driver side was not that bad. As an employee of Hermann Hospital, I have access to the Smithlands parking lot and can park there for free. It is not terribly far from the rodeo (it does require a little bit of walking), but we parked there last year and had no problems, and it beats paying $12 to park in the parking lot at Reliant. Well, I guess you have to be actively working for your badge to work and since I haven't worked at Hermann in almost a year, my badge didn't work. So, on to plan B, whatever that was. We could park at Smithlands for a measly $10 and ride a bus to the stadium, but we've gotten caught in that trap before and we'll never do that again. All is well on the ride over there when everyone arrives at different times, but everyone leaves at the same time and you get stuck waiting with thousands of other people to get on the bus and it just takes forever to get back and it's not worth it. So we found a public parking garage just down the street and it only costs $5 to park! Cheapest place yet. Plenty of parking spaces available and covered as well. So we made our way to Reliant and looked around at all the things that had this year. We mainly tried to get out of the wind and cold. The temperature dropped pretty significantly from earlier in the day. Inside the arena, you would have thought it was 90 degrees outside. They had the air conditioner on full blast. And we were sitting pretty close to the top, so we had a steady blast of air blowing on us the whole time. We had to keep our jackets on for the entire show! So we never really got out of the cold. Then I was sitting next to 3 high school girls that talked, laughed and took pictures of themselves during the whole rodeo and concert! I couldn't believe it. You pay good money to see a big name artist like Tim McGraw and talk the entire time. You might as well have stayed home and saved your money. But other than those things, we had a great time. We have seen Tim before and he always puts on a good show. The only thing that kinda bummed me out was that Faith didn't come out and sing with him. We're going to see her tonight, so maybe he'll come out and join her for a few duets. That would be really cool. Hopefully it will be a little warmer today. We're leaving a little earlier and the sun is shining so hopefully we won't freeze as bad. The walk back to the car last night was pretty chilly! Check back tomorrow on an update from Rodeo day 2!

Operation Beaver

I know it's been awhile since I have posted anything, but I guess there hasn't been much to post about. I've been trying to get things together for Carrie's shower and that's coming along fine. But this past weekend we went back to Louisiana for what we called "Operation Beaver". My best friend of 23 years was getting an award from the Boy Scouts called the Silver Beaver. It's an award given to 10 people a year in the council for their dedication and volunteer work in the Boy Scouts. They had a banquet to honor her and 9 other recipients on Saturday night in Baton Rouge. I wanted to go and surprise her at the banquet, so I called up an old friend and got hooked up with 3 tickets, one for me, one for Jeff and one for my "ex-step dad", who is best friends with Michelle's dad and knows her very well, and is also very involved in scouts. So "Papa" flew in from Colorado to Houston on Thursday afternoon and then the three of us drove to Baton Rouge on Friday. This was an adventure all in itself. Usually, it takes us about 5 hours to get to my sister's house. We left our house on Friday at 1:30. We finally pulled in to my sister's driveway at 10pm!!!! The traffic was horrendous. We got off I-10 twice to try and get out of the traffic. We are guessing it was due to construction, but we were pretty much stoppedon the interstate and not moving. It was terrible. Anyway, we finally got there. On Saturday we had a crawfish boil at my sister's house. A bunch of people came over and we ate very yummy crawfish! Saturday night was the banquet, so we got cleaned up and headed over to the church. I was still hoping she had no idea we were coming. We got to the church and no Michelle. She showed up "fashionably" late of course. She opened the doors and there we were! She was very surprised! We had a good time visiting with old friends and catching up on the latest news. Sunday we ate lunch with my mom and then left for home. And guess what? NO traffic! This means people need to come visit us more so we don't have to get stuck in horrible traffic! I think that's fair. All in all, Operation Beaver was a success and we had a great time.

Here is a link to the pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jeffery.mauldin/OperationSilverBeaver