Christmas and NASA tour

Christmas in Houston was great. Although it was cloudy every day and rained some, it was generally in the low 70s. We had a great time with the kids. Alyssa and Lichar were determined to set all the records they could on our Wii and Sandy and Lichar fought WWII airplane battles several times. We did a little shopping for bargains and baby things! We all went to church together on Sunday at New Beginnings where Kalum is the youth minister.

On Monday Ashley got NASA visitor passes for Mom, Alyssa, Sandy and me to tour the building she works in - building 9 aka the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. The NASA tour for the public goes through a glassed in catwalk on the second floor to view the mockups of the space shuttle and space station in this building. We were actually on the floor of building 9 up close and personal with those mockups. Ashley works in the Automation Robitics and Simulation Division as a documentation analyst. I don't know that even Ashley could tell you exactly what she does but she is enjoying her job. She works with lots of engineers and is really learning lots.

Ashley, Gay, Sandy and Jo at NASA
Ashley showing us where she hangs out
and how she can lift big, heavy things!
Sandy and I have tickets to go to the launch of STS-126 which was supposed to be in October. This is pictures of the crew. the gal in the 2nd row far right is Meaghan who is a friend of Alyssa and Lichar's. The shuttle is going to repair the Hubble Telescope hopefully in May.

Here's a slide show of more pictures. The "chariot" is the new lunar module which will be used when we next go to the moon. One of Alyssa and Lichar's friends,Andrew, worked on the design of this vehicle. Ashley said this was the first time that there weren't people there working on it.