Houston, we have a program

So, we have arrived in Houston and picked up the program for the next 4 weeks of our lives! I'm still not done with the posts of our road trip (coming soon), but just wanted to let everyone know we arrived safely and all is well. In the meantime, you can see some of the uploaded photos by following the link on the right. By the numbers: Our trip took 15 days, 14 nights, 3464 miles, 109.1 gallons of gas, and one oil change. Oh, and we ran out of windshield washer fluid. We stayed at 6 campgrounds, 2 friends' houses, 2 cousin's houses, and 4 hotels, one of which was more a casino with some rooms in the attic... We visited 4 national parks, a number of state and local parks, and one doctor's office. We ate at two Chinese restaurants, one German restaurant, two Mexican restaurants, 2 Arbys, one Sonic, one In-n-Out burger, and got to indulge our hosts or eat camp food for the rest of our dinners. We ate at least 18 hard-boiled eggs... and went through 7 bags of beef jerky, the most popular snack of the trip, with dried mangos second for me, and apricots second for Kim. Ella preferred pepitas (Mexican pumpkin seeds). We shopped at Wal-Mart twice, more than I've shopped there in the past 5 years because of their draconian labor and purchasing policies (I suppose I have also shoppe at a Mexican Wal-Mart in the past year--but "What happens in Mexico stays in Mexico", so that doesn't count, right...). The biggest disappointment of the trip was Ella getting sick with a urinary tract infection, high fever, and not feeling her self for a few days. Because of that, we decided to skip the scenery for the last 3 days and stick to hotels and interstates rather than camping and scenic sites. In the end, the hotels were a nice respite, anyway. Runners-up for disappointments included driving through Redwood National Park without stopping (Ella was sleeping too peacefully), the hectic crowded nature of Yosemite Valley, and missing getting a view of the Hoover dam. The best parts of the trip included simply seeing the amazing diversity of landscape between Washington and Houston, catching up with old friends and family along the way, getting out of Yosemite Valley to visit the beautiful Toulomne Meadows (a much less-visited part of Yosemite National Park), finding an amazing campsite in the middle of nowhere along a scrubby California highway, and seeing how much Ella loves swimming pools. The biggest annoyance was the RVs hogging roads and blocking traffic from Oregon through California, Nevada, and Arizona. The biggest umm, whatever the opposite of annoyance is... was the amazingly friendly people throughout the Southwest--I guess I need to retire some of my Texas prejudices. Anyway, we're here in Houston, safe and sound. Ella is better, and we've settled into our hotel which will be home for the next 4 weeks. It has free breakfast, free wireless internet, and a pool--Ella is quickly becoming a little mermaid. Tomorrow we get to do all our employment paperwork and get oriented to the Pediatric AIDS Corps. It's all very exciting... I will post catch-up posts of the last few weeks' journey as I get a chance (they will be below this, in order of date). In the meantime, please click on "comments" below and say hi.