Ketchup. Catsup.

This should be the last round of catching up. Lots has been left out, but if everything burned and all my unbacked-up files were lost, and I came down with a serious episode of amnesia, cyber world would save a bit. And I'd have access to some memories. I'm all about a Plan B.


Houston has a very serious soccer team. They thrashed Salt Lake City. We're sporting these hats as a symbol of us washing our hands of Utah, and fully embracing Texas.

A quick visit to Utah for a wedding: our favorite Salt Lake City place. The Beehive Tearoom is where Josh proposed to me over lavender ice cream and ginger tea...I would like everything in my life to be as fantastic as the tea room. I'll start with my own house.

Over the winter we dabbled in some P-90 X. Josh is practicing the pose: you can't be serious unless you know the pose.
Salvation Army Singing Group at the coffee shop across the street.

Oh, Texas...


Anniversary ride in Austin.
Followed by this new jazz wonder, Kat Edmonson. Such a fantastic discovery. You can listen to some of her music on her website.

The Hollingsworths threw a birthday party for me! 25.
And we went to Austin again to ride. And enjoy a Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration:

Two stripes means baby.


Mexico vs. Angola game...Mexico won and made a good 95% of the those attending very happy.



Josh turned 29.



Our friend Anne made Josh a dream cake.


Other things we are still doing in Houston:

• Tolerating a very small, very weird apartment that doesn't get circulation. Because the windows don't open. So when I lend my very attractive vintage cake dome to a friend, and she returns it because it needs to be aired out because it's sitting in our kitchen (which is the worst of all non-circulatory rooms), my frustration over this casita escalates. Because she's right! However, thanks to another of our dear friends who keeps our best interest constantly in mind, we signed another contract for a new place to move into on July 1. And it has a screen door AND a fan in the kitchen. What a luxury. July 4 will be a true day of independence and liberation for the Downs.
• Josh started a new job. Which is a very, very good thing. He's more independent and has his very own office: something he missed while touching shoulders with every one of his previous co-workers in their shared sardine-like office. This job is better for a million reasons.
• I was offered a job to teach at a local high school for the upcoming year. And I'm thrilled. All those wretched days of substituting have paid off, and while many are battling the chills of a wild hiring freeze, I'll be warm and cozy in my very own classroom. I feel very lucky.
• And our baby's coming in November. What a fantastic thing. We should find out tomorrow whether it's a nina o nino. I can hardly wait...Christmas is bad enough! These surprises are killing me.

And that's it for catching up. I'll try to be more responsible about posting so the very few of you who look at this don't have to deal with months of our lives tossed into one semi-lengthy post.

A Few Houston Updates

Port Aransas is a lovely place. And just a few short hours south of Houston, along the Gulf of Mexico. We went there (Before the oil spill. Lucky): this is what we saw on the way down.


We flew kites. Yo Gabba Gabba kites.

An event all Houstonites look forward to is the infamous Art Car Parade. By "art car," people really mean...well, it's really hard to know what they mean by "art car." Art has never been more subjective than it was that night, in downtown Houston. For example...



As far as we could tell, this mermaid's breasts did NOT shoot flames, contrary to what they might look like, which would have been a singular sight. We did, however, see a scorpion that shot flames, and a REAL LIVE gypsy mermaid who wore...something like a giant koosh ball, halved, and fashioned into some sort of unsupportive bra. That sort of counts.

These lobsters boogied in unison. The bass on the side too. Very impressive. You can see the creator inside: very proud of his chimera of crustaceans and old cars.





A Sunday adventure: we found wild mulberries growing in the park. We picked them and made ice cream with hopes of NOT poisoning the friends we offered it to. It was risky. And a risk we had to take, and that made all the difference.




Update: no reports of sickness.

More to come...soon. I hope.

The Cycle.

I want to be a blogger. But every time I commit to writing a post I think about how many posts I HAVE NOT written, but would still like to write, but they should probably come before the one I'm ABOUT to write...and how I should just start from some months ago and catch up because I want some things from our lives to be safely archived in the blogosphere, however safe that can be. And then I get overwhelmed. And quit.
So...I have some time and I've decided to do what lots of magazines do in January, and that is to do a "Josh and Jessica's Live 2009 in Photos" post. And then try really hard to not do the same thing throughout this next year. And so here it is: Our life in pictures (Installment 1).

A few from our Christmas 2009 trip to Mexico.




Same season, different temperature. Showshoeing in Provo Canyon.

Roller rink with the Young Women.


Trip to Northern California. American Gladiator battle with the nephews.

Trampoline with the cousins in Alpine, UT.



Our friend Mariko's baptism.


Josh graduated. Huzzah.



Which meant we had to say goodbye to our neighbor Fabino.

And move on to a Colorado Adventure.


I'm wearing my Colorado Adventure Scarf.

Our Neighborhood

Our neighborhood is nice. Families walk their kids and their dogs. Across the street is a coffee shop where we don't drink coffee. We ride our bikes or run freely. But there is also the occasional drug addicted man in a motorized wheelchair who rolls up to one of his colleagues and shoots him 4-5 times then rolls away. Or the as-yet-unidentified arsonist who has proven that he/she is consistent and considerate as shown by the fact that the one dozen homes he/she has torched were unoccupied. Or the pack of feral dogs that apparently has cut short several cats' lives.
And good garage sales.