Big Brother’s Birthday, or; How I Learned to Love the Atomic Bomb (a post by Lee)

So, Sunday was Remy’s birthday. Remy is my favorite older brother. Clearly:

The love here is transparent.

He turned 25, which is a pretty major age. In that it’s halfway to fifty. Or a quarter of a century. Considering this milestone event, I wanted to do something special for him. Being both halfway across the continental United States and vain, I decided I’d write and record a song commemorating his big day, and film a music video for it. After attempting to write my own song, I eventually just learned how to play Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy” on the ukulele and re-did the lyrics to correlate to Remy and his lifetime achievements. (Fun fact: This is Remy’s favorite Beyoncé song.) Mar taught me how to edit videos on the computer, and I got to it.

So, Remy, here it is. You’re welcome.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science. (a post by Anna)

Lee and I moved to Houston, Texas last week. Our first week involved furniture shopping and long drives on fast highways. Amid a long day of couch shopping, we decided to take a short recess by seeking out a nearby tourist attraction. After a brief brainstorm, we both decided it could be in our best interest to visit a museum, considering Houston is known for having one of the largest museum districts of any city in the States. We set our minds [and our GPS] for The Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Much to my surprise, Lee was aware that the renowned Faberge Jewelry was on exhibit at this location; for this reason we got super pumped on the drive through the museum district. As we parked our car, we agreed to commit only one hour to this cultural experience, then return to furniture land. It was going to be awesome!

As soon as we entered the museum, we hopped over to the main counter to figure out where to find our desired exhibit. That’s when we noticed the large counter of cashiers, complete with museum fees posted above. Not only was it going to cost us a chunk of dough to see the regular exhibit halls, but the Faberge exhibit was even more costly. [Mind you, neither of us have started paying jobs at this point in our lives.] We had 45 minutes left in our stopwatch, so we made the game time decision to save the museum for another day and instead enjoy a leisurely meander through the museum gift shop.

The gift shop stroll provided pretty much an overview of the museum. If nothing else, we were able to gather an idea of the potential exhibits we came so close to actually seeing.

Lee's favorite animal.

The gift shop offered a variety of books on subjects that were most likely displayed throughout the exhibit halls.

Scholarly, Scholar Lee.

With an entire section dedicated to magic tricks and experiment kits, we found it safe to assume that the museum was featuring magicians.

Magically, Magic Lee

And most importantly, we quickly discovered that the gift shop had a potpourri of science themed hats and masks of all designs. This discovery marks the moment that the museum truly won us over.

Visualizing the magic trick exhibit.

Envisioning the dinosaur exhibit.

Apparently there's a butterfly exhibit?

We couldn't have asked for a better gift shop.

As you can see, Lee thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Houston Natural Science museum and is excited to return next time to actually go inside!

Lee LOVED it!

Thus ends our visit to The Houston Museum of Natural Science.