Let's play catch-up! Again!

It's a good thing I'm not doing this professionally since I didn't think more than once or twice about posting something on here to show what we were doing during this summer.  We had a blast and I want to remember it, which is really the only reason I'm even doing this now.  I know in a few years I'll look back and this and it'll help me remember the fun we had.  So once again, the last couple of months in pictures!

I sewed a tablecloth for my Mom and Dad.  It had a border on it. It wasn't as hard to do as I thought it was going to be.  Just don't examine it too closely.

I ran out of red thread for said tablecloth.  I had one more panel to sew.  One!

 

 The girls and I went to The Farm while Hubby was in CA doing a meeting.

Then we stayed with my sister and bro-in-law for a few days.  The B-I-L grew up with one brother, so we're a bit much for him to handle in large quantities, but he's getting used to us. 

So used to us, that when I asked them to bring me back something from Scotland, this is what he bought me.  Note--that's not my hair attached to the hat.  I laughed.  It is pretty funny!

On to my parent's house for their church's VBS.  The girls always enjoy it.  And we enjoyed spending time with everyone there.

I think my brother wears the hat much better than I do!

Or #4

We had a shower for my brother and Sis-In-Law for our newest niece.  #1 was sick and not able to be there, but the other girls had a good time.

 

Then the girls all stayed while I drove 12 hours home by myself.  I felt like this the entire way.  I swear towards the end I was stopping every 30 minutes because I was guzzling the soda to stay awake.  You would think all the salt from the sunflower seeds I was eating would have helped that, but all it did was give me cankles!

However, the girls got to spend time with my parents and my sister and bro-in-law and they had an awesome two weeks without their parental units around. 

All the grandkids for my parents at church together.  LuLu (the one we threw the shower for) wasn't quite there yet.

Hubby and I had a lot of fun being able to go and do whatever we wanted without having to think about the girls.  For instance, we spontaneously decided to drive 3 hours one way to hear The Fabulous Equinox Orchestra.  Clay is our friend, but we've never heard him perform with his group before.  So we drove there to hear them with every intention of driving home that night, but we were given a hotel room on the Mississippi River so we just stayed the night.  It was awesome!

After two weeks those in my family who could come met up in Hot Springs for a family vacation.  And this is the only picture I took.  I will eventually get more from those more picture conscious than me and I'll do a different post for it.  Because it was an amazing week!

Except for the trip home when #4 had a fever and was miserable.  Everyone ended up getting sick, but I was thankful we had made it home before it hit!

And since being home I've finally finished the t-shirt dresses I promised the girls I would make them this summer.  #1 and #2 have one also, but again, not picture conscious! 

So ya know, nice, typical, slow summer for us.  Wouldn't have it any other way!

Annual Camping Trip

Hubby and I both really like to go camping.  Right now all we have are tents.  We can't justify the money involved to get any kind of camper to just go once or twice a year.  Maybe eventually, but right now we're sticking with the tents.

Ready to go!

So we try to meet up with our friends from Houston once a year to go camping together.  Since neither one of our families celebrate Halloween we've decided that it is easier to just be gone over that particular holiday.  Plus, the weather down here has generally at least started to cool off by the end of October so that we're not completely miserable in our tents. 

Some of the worst weather we've ever driven in.  That wad of brown is napkins put there to block the water leaking in under the windshield!  Thankful Hubby was driving.

We made our reservations a couple of months in advance and the menfolk had already taken time off, so when the day arrived for us to actually leave we couldn't do anything when a huge storm blew in except pray that God would move it through quickly.  We did leave a little later than originally planned in the hopes that the rain would have stopped by the time we got there.  And it had let up almost completely by the time we arrived.  After dumping 5 inches of water on our campsites. 

It's hard to tell, but this was actually really wet.  This is where we would have been

However, we were very blessed that this particular KOA site had cabins to rent.  They were originally going to let us rent the cabins for a discounted price.  Still more than what we would have paid for a tent site, but the cost was worth it to us at this point.  We would have been miserable in tents with all that water.  However, their computers wouldn't let them give us a discount so they ended up letting us stay in the cabins for the same price we would have paid for the tent sites.  That was such a huge blessing for us.  It was still muddy outside, but we had invested in some rain boots for all of us so we didn't have to worry about wet, messy tennis shoes.  The cabins had a bathroom with a shower, AC/Heat, a microwave, and a little fridge.  The only down side was that since we had packed to be cooking and eating right next to each other we had to make several trips back and forth to where we set up to cook and the cabin.  Other than that, it was absolutely perfect!

Deck from our front porch

The cabins were right next to each other and we had a little pond literally off our front porch.  We spent a large part of the day on Friday fishing.  All of us caught a fish, including yours truly!  I've been fishing so many times in my life and never caught a thing.  I caught two fish within 5 minutes of each other.  It was awesome!

Look close, it's there!

We took a couple of walks, played on the playground for a while, ate, talked, and laughed a lot.  We had a fire pit right in front of the cabin and had fun both nights sitting around the fire.  So what could have turned into not so much of a fun trip turned out to be a blast for all of us.  We got to spend time with good friends and take a break from real life for a couple of days.  We're already looking forward to next year!  Even if we do have to go back to our lowly tents!

Stennis Space Center

I know I mentioned this in my weekly wrap-up, but this field trip deserves a post all by itself!

#3 told me she had never been on a bus before.  Poor homeschooled child!

When we lived in Houston we lived 30 minutes away from the NASA center.  You know--the one that when you think of Houston you think of NASA being there?  Yeah, that NASA center.  It has a really cool science center attached to it and everything.  In the four years we lived there do you know how many times we visited this wonderful NASA center?  0.  Yep, we never made it there.

#4 driving a space shuttle

So imagine my amusement when I realized that the field trip I signed up for this month without even looking at where it was or what we were doing because we missed all the summer field trips and I wanted to see everyone again was in fact a visit to the NASA center in Mississippi.  I found it quite amusing that we were driving an hour and a half to visit something that was only 30 minutes away for four years.

I was pleasantly surprised when we got there.  Turns out the Stennis Space Center is the second largest NASA center, second only to Kennedy Space Center.  This is actually where they test all the engines for the rockets.  Navy SEALS also train there, there are several military facilities on site, different colleges have buildings there, and many commercial companies use the area to test and build new products.

This picture actually doesn't do the size of this justice.  It is the size of two football fields.  Massive!

Another rocket tester

While there we were also treated to a volunteer who ran us through several different aspects of what an astronaut's life is like while in space.  I learned a lot of new things I had never heard of, but my favorite was how the astronauts eat their food with a spoon.  They literally shovel it in their mouths with the spoons turned vertical.  Awesome visuals!

When there are too many astronauts on the Space Station and not enough beds, the astronauts without a room will sleep in these bags, literally hooked on a wall.  They also wear that strap over their eyes to block out any light and keep their head against the pillow!  Crazy!

They eat with a tray strapped on their leg with velcro tabs to hold their food packets on the tray.

 The three oldest got to ride on a simulator.  I'm not sure exactly what it was of since I didn't go on it with them, but I heard about lava and almost hitting a lot of things.  They loved it!

And of course, the gift shop had astronaut ice cream.  I wanted to try it too so we got mint chocolate chip and chocolate.  If you've ever eaten those freeze dried yogurt bites they have for babies you'll have a sense of the texture of this stuff.  It didn't taste bad, but the texture was just weird!

The only ice cream allowed in the car!

We were also blessed to meet new friends today.  I actually met the Mom at our Mom's Night Out a couple of weeks ago and we knew that we were going to be seeing each other today.  Her three oldest are girls the same age as my oldest three.  I was hoping the six of them would hit it off.  Well, they did more than hit it off.  They immediately paired off with their "same age" friend and it was like they had been friends their entire life.  None of them were shy and once they started talking they didn't stop.  By the time we were ready to leave we had been invited to a birthday party for their third daughter and there was talk of letter writing and sleep overs.  Thankfully the Mom and I also get along well so I look for this family to become good friends for all of us! 

Yay for new friends!

I'm very thankful I finally made it to visit a NASA center, even if I had to drive to MS to do it!

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!