Drive-thru dry cleaners

Even at the dry cleaners you don't have to get out of your car here in the US. You just drive up and the lady will come outiside and either take your dirty clothes or give you back your clean ones.

And if you are too lazy for that, they will deliver to your home for free!

Coach Thijs

This season Thijs was the soccer coach of Floortje's team. 

He had a lot of fun with them but decided that coaching 7, 7-year old girls is a lot tougher than his day job :)

And this is what happens when coach Thijs calls me last-mniute to say that he will not be able to make practice, and can I just run it for him....(long live the internet!)

 

Award ceremony!

 The Green Gators!

And this is a picture of Famke's team

Stephen F. Austin State Park

Yesterday was a beautiful day and we decided to head out to one of the nearby state parks for some walking and geocaching.

The park is situated on the Brazos river and since there has been quite some rain in the last few weeks the river was nice and wide.

Everything was beautiful and green and some of the trees were completely covered in ivy, from top to bottom. Quite spectacular.

 

These mushrooms were growing on a tree trunk.

The walk was not always easy :)

And of course we found some caches.

At the end of our walk we were standing still, determining our direction and wondering if we should find another cache. All of a sudden Famke stated very 'matter-of-factly': 'snake'. And yes, there it was, just of the path, slithering away from us in the tall grass. Too quick for us to take a picture.

As we are by no means snake experts we just noticed the colors: yellow, black and red bands, more black than colors. Long live Google! By doing some searching we came to the conclusion that it had been a coral snake. There are more snakes with the same colors but it is all about the order of the colors to determine if they are poisonous or not. As it goes, the coral snake is not one of the nice guys.

For next time, we will just remember the rhyme:

Red touches yellow, kill a fellow - Red touches black, venom lack.

Some (reassuring) snake bite statistics from the Texas Department of health

• About 7,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes in the U.S. annually.

• Only 0.2% (1 out of 500) venomous snake bites result in death

• On average, 1 to 2 people in Texas die each year from venomous snake bites in Texas.

• Roughly half of all venomous snake bites are "dry." That is, the snake does not inject venom into the victim.

And for those who want to read even more: http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/idcu/health/zoonosis/animal/bites/information/venom/snake/

 

Vending machine

At a popular rest stop on one of the nearby bike routes we saw this vending machine.

Not your usual candy bars of soft drinks but stuff for your bike. Pretty cool!

 

Girls hangin' out!

 

Koninginnedag knutsels

 

BP MS150

As most of you know Thijs had been training for The BP MS150 bike ride from Houston to Austin for a while now. It is a ride of 180 miles over two days benefitting the Multiple sclerosis society. Every rider had to raise at least 400 dollars, Thijs managed to get over a 1000!

He was looking forward to the weekend very much so imagine his disappointment when his boss walked into his office on Thursday night and told him he was expected to attend a meeting on Sunday!

Even though he would not be able to do the whole ride Thijs still got on his bike on Saturday morning and rode from Katy to La Grange where I picked him up. It was a beautiful day and he had a great time. He was amazed at the support along the route and the reception all the riders got in La Grange. Too bad he couldn't make it all the way to Austin but well done Thijs! There's always next year!

 

 

Mini geocacher

While Marc, Diana, Norah and Pep were visiting us we found some geocaches together and I think they got infected with the 'virus' as well :)

Here a picture of the smallest geocacher in our family, Norah! (Pep can play when he starts walking!)

 

Cool geocache

While on holiday in Belize we picked up a travel bug (our first) while geocaching! (Below some more info about travel bugs for those who are interested)

It had been a while since we picked it up so time to let it travel on! Before an early dinner we made a stop at some old grain silos. Very neat hiding place!! If you are not looking for something you would never guess that the box didn't belong there.

What is a Groundspeak Travel Bug?

Simply put, a Groundspeak Travel Bug is a trackable tag that you attach to an item. This allows you to track your item on Geocaching.com. The item becomes a hitchhiker that is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) in the real world and you can follow its progress online.

What does a Travel Bug do?

It's really up to the owner of the bug to give it whatever task they desire. Or no task at all. The fun of a Travel Bug is inventing new goals for the Travel Bug to achieve. One Bug's goal may be to reach a specific country, or travel to 10 countries.

How does a Travel Bug work?

Each Travel Bug has its own unique tracking number stamped on it. This tracking number is used as proof by the user that they found the item. It also doubles as a way for the user to locate the personal web page for the Travel Bug.

Travel Bug Trackables are tracked with the help of users who go online and 'grab' them from caches, or receive them from users. The idea is by picking up and dropping off Travel Bug Trackables on the web site you are mirroring the Bug's real world adventures. Each Travel Bug has its own 'diary' that follows its movements.

 

Beautiful weather in Katy today!