They're just a few hours away!

After our friends from India stayed with us for a few days they took off for the next leg of their trip to California and Oregon.  Because that is where Hubby is originally from and we have contact with most of the churches out there, Hubby was elected to be the one to take them.  All together he was going to be gone a week.  While I understood why they wanted Hubby to be the one to take them, I was less than thrilled at the prospect of him being gone a week.  So instead of being at home by myself with the girls for a week doing nothing except our same old routine, I decided to invite ourselves to our Houston friends' house.  I did feel a twinge of guilt because I knew they were slightly behind in school and that our coming would interrupt school time, but I got over it pretty quickly!

So we left on Wednesday about mid-morning and headed that way.  For the 4 1/2 hour drive time we only had to stop once for lunch.  This bodes well for our three week road trip we are taking this summer!  And even though this is a relatively short road trip for us compared to what we normally drive to see family, I'm happy the girls all did so well.  Everyone was able to keep themselves entertained, even the 3 year old. 

Because of the lack of stops we got in a little earlier than I planned so we took a drive through our old neighborhood.  I was surprised how much it made me miss it!  We've settled in pretty nicely here, but there are still a lot of memories in our old town!

That night we did get to go to the Bible study at our old church and see many familiar faces.  Always fun to catch up with our former congregation!

 

 

Good friends can cuddle on the couch!

Thursday we went down to Galveston.  This was at my request, I've missed going to the beach.  It was overcast and a little cool, but we braved the cold water anyway and had a really good time.  I even bullied our friends into having a late lunch just so we could eat Carl's Jr.  If you don't know what it is, you're missing out!  My western bacon cheeseburger was just as good as I remembered!  Unfortunately, I left my phone in the car the whole time so I have no pictures.  Oh well, you can take my word that we had fun!

 Friday was spent doing absolutely nothing, and it was awesome!  It stormed most of the day so we wouldn't have gone out even if we wanted to, but it was nice to just have a day to do nothing.  That night we went to my favorite Mexican place.  It was as good as I remember as well!  I'm happy that we've found a good Mexican place here, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy my old favorite place! 

Playing Head-Bands

#4 missed the instructions for how to wear it

The bench at my favorite restaurant!

 Saturday we got up and had pancakes made for us.  My girls were floored by the multi-colored pancakes that were presented to them.  Apparently Hubby needs to get on the band wagon and start adding food coloring to the pancake batter!  It's the small things! 

We actually left about an hour earlier than I planned.  We got everything packed up and I figured we had come close to wearing out our welcome, so better to leave early and hope they want us to come back some day!

I'm very thankful to have good friends that I can just invite my brood of 5 over and have it be totally ok.  I'm thankful that the Mom and I are good enough friends that we can sit and do nothing for an entire day and be cool with that.  I'm thankful that my girls are all growing up enough that I can handle a road trip by myself without having to stress about if we'll all have our sanity at the end.  And I'm thankful for a Hubby who didn't even blink when I told him we'd gone over our fuel budget by $75 because of the trip.  And because he brought me back almost 4 lbs of salt water taffy!

The end result--a vehicle covered in bugs and their guts!