Cowboy Up!

While you are patiently waiting for our new ministry website and blog I thought I would give you a glimpse into our lives here in Texas. Last week we went to the rodeo with the youth ministry and Jackson has been asking to go back every. single. day. since. Oh and I have misplaced my favorite camera ( don't worry, grandma and Josies, we will find it!) so you will have to forgive me for the sometimes blurry and red eye that my backup camera produces.

this is Olivia's new pose for everything.


checkin out our boots






We signed Jackson up for the drawing for mutton racing but his name didn't get picked so he got to ride the mechanical bull. Oh mutton racing is where a small child puts a huge helmet on and sits on top of a sheep holding on for dear life as the sheep runs around the arena....they usually only hold on for a few seconds before landing in the dirt. And it was his idea to sign up....I just prayed he wouldn't get picked and God listened.

It wasn't ever going fast enough for him to fall off so at the end of the ride he threw himself off:)



oh and some actual rodeo things happened too:)

Family Day!!!

Ok so I know I said that I would post yesterday but the connection at Great Wolf Lodge was oh. so. slow. We were very blessed to be given this great weekend trip to Great Wolf to spend our very first family day and we really had a blast! (Most people call it Gotcha Day, as in the day we "got you" and while we like that, we really wanted to focus on how God has made our family special. We decided to celebrate on the 17th, the day we came home to Jackson rather than the 13th which was her 'Gotcha Day.' Got all that? Good.) So get ready for a ton of pictures:)

Our room was a Wolf Den suite which meant it had this cute little area for this kids to sleep on bunk beds and there own TV:)





Great Wolf Lodge has an enormous indoor water park which was so fun. These are just some of the pools...I was too busy dodging water spray guns to get pictures of all the slides and things......that and the humidity inside are probably why my photos are all a bit fuzzy now:(


no fear





Jackson went on some much bigger slides but I could not take any pictures because 1 parent had to escort him to the top to make sure he didn't cut in line and the other parent had to rescue him at the bottom all while holding on to Livi and trying to avoid the massive amount of water that fell from the giant bucket every five minutes.

Great Wolf also has this game called MagiQuest where you get special wands and run all over the hotel on different quests and challenges. The bigger kids seemed to love this but we felt it would be too hard for our kids. But the staff just programmed their wands to light up everything they waved it at so we didn't actually have to play the game, we just ran around opening chests, lighting up pictures on the walls, and making animals talk. They absolutely loved it.

"Abra Cadabra I wish for this chest to be full of candy!"





We also explored the Cub Club which had lots of fun games and crafts.







The arcade

Livi was insistent on us trying the Dance game.....we were terrible at it but it was fun:)



I have to say that the one thing I really didn't like about Great Wolf was the food. It was pretty bad and VERY expensive. I mean I wouldn't mind paying that much if it were actually good but nope. So instead we went out on the town for a yummy Italian dinner.






Every night they have bed time stories in front of the big clock tower.

Meeting Violet the mascot. Livi was excited to meet her until we got close but she didn't cry so we are improving since Disney.....although I think Violet's purple crocs really helped.


We had a little cake in our room to celebrate our Family Day!





Our first Family Day!

Neighborhood Treasures!

Well, we are all moved in and I promise a tour of the new place is coming soon! The kids are easing into their new summer routine quite nicely. Here in Texas, it is the same temperature as the surface of the sun for most of the day so instead of going to bed at 7:30 like we do during the school year, we take long, late afternoon naps and get to stay up late (you know, like 9:00pm). This way the kids are able to get some much needed outside time. Tonight after dinner, Daddy had to go over to the old house to do some repairs so it can go on the market next week so Jackson, Livi and I went on a walk to explore the new neighborhood. We found some pretty cool things! I am really starting to like living in this little neighborhood.....to tell you the truth this whole downsizing thing and getting rid of all of our stuff is kind of nice.....freeing almost.

Anyways.....right at the end of our street behind a cute little neighborhood church, we found this!

It's a community garden for our little town! How fun!



We spent almost an hour walking through all of the plots and exploring all of the neat plants! The kids were having a great time learning where all their vegetables come from!










onions

compost

grapes

they started a little orchard with all sorts of fruit trees

So it started to get dark and I literally had to drag the kids out, but as we were leaving I noticed a little sign that said "please take these....free!" And there were two little, very tired looking purple flower plants. So we decided to take them home and plant them in some pots and have a little garden of our own. Jackson and Livi were so excited to have there own plants!

Here they are watering the front lawn! All these pictures were from my phone, sorry about the quality!

and here are our mystery flowers.... Maybe I can get a decent picture of them in the daytime and someone with some gardening knowledge could solve our mystery......

that is if they don't die tonight. I am a plant's worst nightmare.