Splash Kingdom End of School Year Celebration
For the end of year of school, the kids got to go to a waterpark with their classes! It was a lot of fun!
Bubble fun!
Love this!
Got my great little workers to Spring Clean the van.
After cleaning, a few days later the girls rode in my friends car and Claire said to her, "You really need to spring clean your car." ha ha
Crystal Beach Trip in the RV
We always got a beach house when we went to the coast and this time we wanted to try it with the RV. It was fun to have the RV, but I think I would prefer to have a beach house house because of the beautiful view of the beach.
There is something so magical about the beach. It is fun to see the imagination of the kids, chasing and jumping over the waves, diving under the waves, and much more. It is a way for me to be present and enjoy the time with the kids and family.
The weather was rainy so we went to a place called Gator Country which is an alligator sanctuary. Oh my goodness it was a lot of fun. One of my friends told me about this place at church and I am (was) terrified of gators. I thought I would bring it up to my kids as a joke and they all wanted to go. So it has been on our bucket list for awhile now.
Oh it was really cool to see all the gators, get more comfortable with gators because they are in every lake in Texas! We had a great time!
Everyone's favorite part was walking around with the baby gators at their feet and holding them!
GGGAAATTTOOORRRRSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!
If this doesn't get you out of your comfort zone, then I don't know what would!
They see you and then they swim up to you.
I don't have a picture of the first moment I walked into the place, but immediately I walk to the fence of the medium size gators and they ALL start crawling out of the pond and up to you at the fence. You are also at ground level with the medium size gators so it was a little creepy. It kind of reminded me of a scary movie.
Feeding the tortisises.
The Gator Show
Feeding the gators
This is a 14 foot gator! The biggest gator in the nation
They caught this gator while we were there and it has more fingers than usual.
They also had a petting zoo.
This guy is such a great patient!
We haven't been to the firework show for awhile and this was our view of the firesworks from the city. I think next year we will find a different location. We still had a great and enjoyable night together.
4th of July fun before the "fireworks"
We love our hikes that we do as a family.
Grandma comes to Texas. She always make things fun for us. The kids love the crafts and activities she has planned.
The girls have recently gotten into tennis and are really enjoying it. We got them a private lesson with the local university at SFA. Coach Austin was testing their skills to see which level of class would best suit the girls. I love how much they enjoy it.
Fast forward a few months, now they go to tennis on Thursdays (when we are in town) and Ashlyn also goes on Saturdays. It is fun to see their skills and love for the sport grow. I love watching them enjoy it.
Dad set this gig all up so I don't know who is the most excited?!
We went to a lake with Grandma and it was fun to enjoy our time in nature with her.
Rock chair- or King of Rock
Love the process of learning to dress yourself.
Too funny not to share
Zoo
Grandma loves to do the girls hair whenever she comes and Emmett wanted to look handsome.
While Grandma was holding down the fort at home, Derek and I got to go on a getaway to AUSTIN and it was so much fun! It is such a cool place to travel and it was so nice to be just the two of us. We took the RV at a place near downtown and it turned out perfect. We had a great time and it was very needed!
We went ziplining over Lake Travis. The course was enjoyable! It was so beautiful to do it at sunset. Very beautiful!
We did a lot of physcial activities to explore this beautiful area. We did a short hike with lots of stairs (102 stairs to be exact) to see this beautiful view of the Colorado Rivers called Mount Bonnell. This area is so pretty.
We heard that BBQ was a big hit in Austin and honestly I am not the biggest fan of BBQ, but man it is SO DANG GOOD!!!! We had it everyday when we were there for the 5 days! There was a certain restuarant that we went with a couple of times called Terry Black's BBQ. I still get cravings for it because it is to die for.... my mouth is watering right now for it as I type. YUMMY!
We did a hike at McKinney Falls and it was so fun to see. We only did the hike, but we want to come back with the kids to enjoy cliff jumping and playing in the water.
rants
One of the activities that we did that I was very excited for was a E-BIKE FOODIE TOUR and oh it was so much fun! I think that was one of my highlights of the whole trip. So we had a tour guide and we rode e-bikes around the city to different locations in the city and we would eat at 3 different restuarants. Our guide would get food at these locations and we would sample different items from the menu. It was a great way to get excerise, try a variety of different foods from different restuarants, and see the city.
We had a very fun group too.
The tour included biking around Lady Bird Lake, around the State Capital, sropping at the library and eatting our first meal there, we when continued downtown to a BBQ place and Pizzeria. The whole tour was about 4 hours. We laughed a lot and really enjoyed it! I would love to do it again!
One of the days we rode around 10 miles around Lady Bird Lake. I rode a bike and Derek rode on his one wheel. The last 1/2 mile Derek had to carry his one wheel because it ran out of battery. It was such a blast. It is so fun to see such an active city!
One of the mornings we just got up and went for a hike at a trail that was near our RV.
We tried a farm to table restaurant that had food that was good and a little dfferent. It is fun to venture out of the norm.
Another day we tried to long board the Lady Bird Trail, but it is definitely not friendly with longboards because it is more of a dirt trail, but we did a small section with cement. It was still fun to try.
We went at dusk to see the bats from the Congress Avenue Bridge, but the bats weren't active. There is 1.5 million bats that live under this bridege and they do flights together which is supposed to be pretty cool. We were let down because the bats didn't really fly out. We are still glad we went though. You could definnitely hear the bats.
We did another hike trail (I can't remember the name of it), but if was a lot of fun. It is amazing how great and beautiful. There is so many hikes and trails to explore there.
MORE BBQ (I seriously need to organize another trip there...yum)
This was one our favorite local trips!!! It was fun to be so active and eat deliciuos food. This trip was very timing. Long story short, Derek and I decided that weekend before we went that we are choosing to leave the church. It has been the hardest decision that Derek and I have ever made! A year of searching, researching, pondering, reflecting because we knew that it was a huge part of our lives. There are days when it still isn't easy. Now that it has been 5 months now, we are so grateful and feel like this is the right decision, but it doesn't make it easy. We are so grateful for being rasied in the church and having a big part of our lives, but we feel like there are things that we don't believe serve us or our family. For a few months I feel like I was going through the grieving process and that a part of me has died. It was a huge part of my identity and my whole world. As I am typing this I am getting emotional because there are days when it still hurts and I miss it, but I know that it is what is best for our family.
I could write a whole blog just on the growth that it has brought to my life individually and as a family. I am very grateful for this challenge in my life. I am definitely learning a lot! The biggest thing that I am grateful for is being ont his journey with Derek. We are a team and our family is our #1.
We know that this decision hasn't been easy on others as well. We are grateful for the support from our family. If you are family reading this, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart! Thanks for being their for us through this journey and doing your best of trying to understand. WE ARE SO VERY MUCH GRATEFUL FO R YOU!!!!!
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