Galveston, Kolaches and Fish Stories

We had the pleasure of going to Galveston last week for a few days. Joe has a bunch of vacation time left, but it's hard to get it to fit around his projects at work. We scheduled this trip for after labor day to avoid the crowds and to get a good deal on a hotel room, etc. Traveling in "off" times is one of the benefits of homeschooling. We spent two nights and Grandma & Grandpa came with us. We had 2 hotel rooms with 2 king-size beds in each room. The boys slept G&G's room, Zach was in his pack n play so that left Abby with her own king bed. The hotel had a nice breakfast too.

We ate some great food, spent time on the beach and at the pool and even fit in a round of miniature golf one afternoon while Zach & Abby napped back at the hotel with G&G. It was a great get-away.

This pic is outside at Mario's, and Italian restaurant. Super yummy food (the kid's Mac N Cheese it to-die-for) and they bring out balls of dough for kids to play with!

Zach discovering sand for the first time.

Sam packed his "vacation" shirts (Hawaiian). He hasn't worn them much and now I know why...he was saving them for their proper use!

We got home from Galveston on Friday evening and then went to the Kolache Festival on Saturday morning. I think the little ones were a little too worn out from the trip to really enjoy walking around in 93 degrees. We met BillyBekahSteven (cousins) there and Gramby & Pa too. It was much more crowded than last year (when it was pouring rain), but the kolaches were just as yummy. Everyone came back to our house to celebrate Steven's birthday.

The boys have been wanting to go spend the night at Gramby's for a long time, but she and Pa lived in LA for 1-1/2 years for a job. They're back now and Ben got to go spend 2 nights there. He watched some movies and got to go out on the boat (they live on Lake Belton) and caught his first fish...a big-mouth bass. They put it back in the water so it could grow a little more. He had a great time and Sam is looking forward to his trip this weekend.



Birthdays

I really don't know why it's so incredibly hard for me to post things out of chronological order, but I'm not doing a very good job of catching up so I'd better just pick up again with what's been going on lately.

Sam turned 7 at the end of August. He had a friend come over to play and then we went to Gattitown (like Chuck E. Cheese's) for pizza and mayhem. I think he had a great time and is very excited about playing with his new Legos (I'm probably supposed to put a trademark or copyright symbol on that word, but I don't know how to make them, so consider yourselves warned that the word Lego is proprietary).

About 8 days later, it was Abby's 3rd birthday. We went down to Cypress to visit some friends we hadn't seen in a long time because their daughter turned 6 on the same day. It's funny how the little present that you throw in at the last minute that is cheap and wasn't on your list is usually the one the kids get most excited about. For Abby it is a box of "Dora games" that includes Dora Bingo, Dora Go Fish and a Dora puzzle. What more could a little girl want, really? Forget the new bike!

Saying Goodbye

Just as I had finally gotten around to posting about the wonderful girls our friends adopted, we found out they would be moving to Virginia! They left 2-1/2 weeks ago and we miss them tremendously. Here are a couple of pictures of the kids' last play time together. (Zach is missing because he was home sick.) The girls have changed so much in the 6 months they've been here in the U.S. It seems like we'll hardly recognize them the next time we see them!

(And just so you know, my friend "C" always has the girls' hair done up really cute, but she was neck deep in house projects and packing on this evening so it didn't happen.)