Ten years ago today, I walked into La Griglia, a nice Italian restaurant in Houston, for a blind date that my sister-in-law's aunt had set up. As I walked in, the maître d' walked up to me and said, "Ms Lunt, Mr Hooper will be here in just a couple of minutes.". Being a freak about timliness, I almost left. After all, our date was supposed to be at 7pm and it was 7pm! However, because I was still in shock that the host seemed to know who I was even though I had never been there, I decided to wait. True to word, Mr Hooper walked in at 7:02pm. (I know as Scott reads this, he rolls his eyes. Ha!)
We sat and had dinner and wine and visited for several hours. We went from the up-scale Italian place to an old hole in the wall beer and jukebox joint (Kay's) down the road. There we sat, drank beer, played music on the jukebox, and talked for several more hours until the bar closed. I think "Me and Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin was played more that night by us than it has ever been before or after that date.
About a year and a half later, we married at the ranch. We have had wonderful adventures and two kids. I simply can't imagine how dull or unhappy my life would be if I hadn't waited those two tiny minutes. Ten years later, my partner in crime still makes me laugh hysterically and is the most involved father and husband in the world. He always has my back. Always.
So here's to the ten wonderful years with Scott. I can't wait to see what the next ten years will bring, but I bet it is wild, fun, and entertaining!
We had a very exciting six day trip to Iceland last weekend. We took advantage of the Queen's Jubilee four day weekend and scooted off to Reykjavik. What an amazing place!
Our first day we strolled around Reykjavik. We visited a cool cathedral that overlooked the entire city. We ate some good food and generally enjoyed the 22 hours of daylight. It was surprisingly warm and wonderfully sunny.
Scott lined us up on a couple of tours of Iceland. We saw everything from where the american tectonic plate joins with the eurasian plate, to a glacier, to a waterfall that would give Niagra Falls a run for its money, and more. Some of the most interesting things were the geysers and random heated natural spring pools. The kids loved pretty much all of it. Having worried (needlessly) that the trip wouldn't be kid friendly, I was surprised how great of a trip and learning experience about nature it ended up being.
Most of Reykjavik is powered by harvesting the geothermal energy right under the island. They drill down and pull up the steam which is then used for heating. One of the "by products" of the steam is water. At one of the big steam sites, there is so much warm water produced directly from the earth, that they have turned it into the Blue Lagoon. The water is replaced every 40 hours through sinking back down into the earth. Rich in minerals, it is rumored to cure skin ailments and to make you look younger. We took a swim in it but I don't think we look any younger! It is a beautiful site to see though with volcanic rock everywhere and this bright blue chemical-free pool out in the middle of it.
The video highlights can tell the story far better than I can:
Honorable mentions: This is a picture where just 10 months ago an earthquake moved the earth so much that it destroyed an overlook walkway.
Our cheeky kids:
Of course the snowmobiles were a huge hit!
This was a great trip. It ranks up there with my favorites! For any friends flying over to Europe, I heard that Icelandair (GREAT AIRLINE!!) will fly from the USA to Reykjavik as a stop over on the way to Europe. They don't charge extra to extend the layover by up to ten days. So if you are heading over, consider this route and stopping over in Iceland for a few days. It will improve your overall trip (unless there are any volcanoes of course...)!
Keali has had a very busy week. First, she had a friend stay overnight for her first sleep over. Izzy and Keali had a blast! They stayed up so late that they got weepy just before they passed out. But the girls were very behaved and super sweet.
But perhaps even bigger, yesterday,Keali learned how to ride her bike!
A couple of our good friends from Houston visited us over the last weekend. Tanya and Darin are our neighbors in Texas and it was fun to see some friendly Texan faces.
We had a big time exploring bits of London that we hadn't yet seen. We hit the Winston Churchill War Rooms museum for a start. Those of you who know me very well know that history isn't my first love. Or second. Or really any part of like. Much more into science and maths, I feel anything that happened before about 1950 seems too long ago to worry much about. (Yes, I know the adage about history repeating itself, but it doesn't remove the boredom associated with knowing about it.)
The War rooms were actually fairly interesting. Even for me. That says something, folks.
We took a little hop-on, hop-off bus in order to score some good pictures for another friend's from Houston Flat Stanley project. Additionally that weekend, we were able to make it to another rugby game at the local fields.
The highlight of the weekend (aside from the company) was the day trip we took to Stonehenge and Bath. Stonehenge is believed to have been constructed before 1500 BC. The older it is to me, the less time/attention I have for it. So we walked out to see it, snapped a picture, and then waited for Tanya and Darin to finish up. It was unseasonly cold and rainy so Scott was happy to wait in the car with me!
We then drove on to Bath where we walked around the very old and beautiful town. The Abbey church was a beautiful building, but the center part of the town was the Roman Baths. The baths are built around a naturally forming hot springs. The water is at a constant 35 degrees Celsius. It really was amazing how something so elaborate could have been built so long ago. The Romans even used the heat from the water rising up to heat the rooms of the structures. Even for this low-level history interest, it was something to be seen. The cold beer at the pub when we finished was equally entertaining.
Tanya and Darin went on to tour Scotland and will be returning to Texas tomorrow. We wish them safe travels!
UPDATE: Just as I was about to post this - I realized that somehow I managed to exclude the true best part of their visit! On Saturday afternoon, we set out to go to St Paul's Cathedral. Perhaps not surprisingly, we were distracted with a quick stop at a very cool old pub. This lead us to abort the plan to go to St Paul's and instead do a pub crawl in order to get a free t-shirt. We are still missing one pub stop which Scott and I will "force" ourselves to go to, so that we can send Darin his t-shirt!
We had a three day bank weekend, so we decided to head to the country. After many hours of searching the internet for pseudo-nearby castles, we finally settled on going towards Bath/Bristol area to Bradford-Upon-Avon. There was a "family friendly" manor house hotel.
The house was beautiful and huge! But the thing that most impressed me was the "family friendly" hotel part. The Brits know how to do family friendly! There was an indoor pool which the kids loved (an outdoor one too but it was tooooo cold), a trampoline, two or three fields for football and cricket, two different kids clubs rooms with toys and games, two different playgrounds, kids menus, and even a dog and a hamster on property.
We explored some of the area around the house/hotel as well. Bradford is a quaint little English town with some beautiful and stereotypical buildings. We had a great and relaxing weekend for all four of us.
We are happy to report that our sweet friend in Italy who was going to move in with us is recovering. She is out of intensive care and into the specialty unit. Her life goes on fortunately. She still has some dangers associated with her illness, but she is recovering, which is in and of itself quite a milestone.
For the time being, we have a super fun, very cool Brazilian au pair living with us. She will only be here until the end of June when she will go off on her next adventure. So come the end of June, we will welcome a new girl in to our family and home.
For now, the kids are happy and so are we. It's always an adventure with the Hoopers!
Today was a difficult day for us. Mary Poppins told us about 6 weeks ago she would be leaving at the end of April. She was nice enough to stick around for the busiest part (the kids had no school for four weeks for easter break!). She is moving on to the next phase of her life, and we were sad to see her go. We do want the best for her however, so we wish her the best. This picture is her and the kids this morning just before she left to move to a new city. We will definitely be keeping in touch with her!
Over the last 6 weeks, I have spent a crazy amount of time trying to find a great au pair to become part of her family. We managed to find the perfect person! She was flying to London tomorrow to live with us. The kids were over the moon with excitement about her coming to stay with us. We awoke this morning to a message from her father. She suffered a cerebral hemorrage last night and had surgery over night to drain the blood off her brain. We are shocked and saddened for her and her family. At only 24 years old, something this serious makes us all realize how delicate life really is.
