Our Trip to South Texas!

Earlier this summer, once we realized that we really weren't getting either of the babies we'd hoped to adopt, we decided to plan a fun vacation to the beach with Isaac.  We wanted to do something special with him and celebrate this precious little boy God has given us. 

We went back and forth about where to go, but finally decided to stay in Texas.  We'd never been to the Corpus Christi/Padre Island area. 

Early Saturday morning, we started the drive toward the coast.  Before the trip, we bought a portable DVD player for the car...Isaac LOVED it!  (Why didn't we buy one sooner?)  We arrived at our condo on Mustang Island just in time to make supper.  A family whose children I taught at Friendship Elementary stayed at this same condo earlier this summer, so it was nice to hear about it from someone who'd actually been there recently. 

 Even though we spent most of our time at the beach, the pools were fantastic!  One was a kiddie pool that was only 2 1/2 feet deep...perfect for Isaac's head to be above water.  :) 

Did I say how much Isaac loved going to the beach?  I wish this picture had turned out better, but when we woke up the first morning, Isaac found his swim diaper, swim trunks, swimming shoes, and shovel and brought them to us (no small feat when living out of suitcases)...we hadn't even eaten breakfast and he was ready to hit the beach!

A big change from the last time he was at the beach!

 Isaac loved to "dig dig dig" at the beach.  (He always says "dig" three times in a row.) 
And, if he was digging, he wanted Dave & I to be digging--or at least holding a "hovel." 
One afternoon, I started taking a walk down the beach while Isaac and Dave were digging in the sand.  After a few minutes, I turned around to find Isaac racing after me with a shovel and yelling "Mama hovel, Mama hovel."  :)

We planned our trip after schools in Texas had started, which ended up being a great idea! The resort was nearly all ours after the first night, and besides a few fishermen, we had the beach to ourselves, too.

When we weren't digging, we were in the water!  It was so warm and shallow quite far out.  After the first day, Isaac was brave enough to walk out on his own.  Dave could get him to laugh so hard when he bounced him up and over the waves!  He started saying "sand," "gull," and "beach" while we were there.

 

Our friend Corrie borrowed the book Heaven Is for Real to us for this trip.  Dave read it in one day!  He couldn't put it down or stop telling me about it.  Isaac was apparently interested, too.  ;)

On Tuesday, we packed everything up at the condo and took the ferry across the bay into Corpus Christi.  We spent the rest of our trip staying at the Omni.  I may have made a slight complaint about our room, and the manager offered us this room (for the same price!)...the views over the bay were gorgeous!

 

While we were in Corpus Christi, we spent half a day at the Texas State Aquarium!  We all loved it!  

Touching the stingrays

Watching the stingrays being fed

Watching the dolphin show



Outside the aquarium--USS Lexington is in the background. 
Dave visited the Lexington while Isaac and I spent the afternoon at the hotel!

Another fun place we visited was Snoopy's, a great restaurant right on the water.

For our last day of vacation, we drove down to Padre Island to the National Seashore.  It was gorgeous!



           We went to Landry's Seafood on our last night in Corpus.  Isaac loved the banana foster dessert!  (Okay, so did we--we ordered two!)

 



 

Wow!  I think this goes down as my longest post ever!  But, I wanted to write down all our memories while they're still fresh in my mind.  My heart is so full after such a wonderful week with my family.

Nash Farm

Last Saturday, we went to "Dairy Days" at Nash Farm in Grapevine. This was another activity on our Summer Bucket List!

There was a small section of a field open for the kids to pretend they were planting...as long as all the kids kept the shovels and hoes below their waists, everyone was safe.  :) 

(And, I had to laugh when I saw this picture--you can tell we're not really in the country because there's a stoplight at the intersection behind the field.)

They also had several "discovery tables" set up for the kids to play with models of farm equipment. I think Isaac stayed here playing for over a half hour! While he played with the models, Dave checked out all the old farm equipment that they had on display.

We also went on a tractor/hay ride, saw a lady make homemade butter, and sampled some delicious cheeses! Even though it was very hot, we had a great time!

Thankful for these two!  They put a smile on my face every day!

A Week of Winter

For over a week, everyone has been talking about what a bad storm Texas was going to get hit with this past Tuesday...and, for the first time since we've lived here, I actually think that all the weather forecasters' predictions were right!  (Usually they go on and on warning about "arctic blasts" that are never much colder than freezing.)  I woke up at 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning to what sounded like a hurricane!  (I've never experienced a hurricane, but this was what I imagined one would sound like.)  It was sleeting, thundering, and so, so windy.  I was supposed to go into school that day, but Keller (along with over 150 other districts in and around DFW) had already cancelled for the day. 

 By 8:00 that morning, our driveway was a solid sheet of ice.  And, even though we had a -2 degree windchill, Isaac and I still went outside to explore all the ice that covered our driveway and yard.  After a half hour, I dragged Isaac inside, even though he was throwing a fit crying to stay outside. 

We drank a lot of hot chocolate this week!

Best of all, Dave came home around 4:00 on Tuesday afternoon and was home all day Wednesday, too! 

We didn't have a sled, but Dave rigged this up to pull Isaac around in....he loved it! And, our driveway was still so icy that Isaac actually had a pretty good ride!

I'm pretty sure we set several records this week with school being cancelled for 4 days in a row along with over 100 hours below freezing.  Even though we didn't have a lot of snow, all the streets were covered in ice.  This is Fort Worth, so we don't have snow plows or sand trucks.  Basically, everything shuts down when it's as icy as it was this past week. 

Dave went into work again on Thursday.  But, early on Friday morning we had several more inches of snow, so he was home with us again on Friday.  Our neighbor had seen the picture of Dave pulling Isaac around in the makeshift sled on Facebook, so she offered to let us use a real sled.  :)

I didn't mind being cooped up inside all week at all.  Dave built a fire every morning, and Isaac and I worked on lots of "projects" around the house...making Valentine's, working on a few little decorating projects, organizing the bedroom that will be the next nursery, and finishing paperwork for our adoption homestudy update, which was yesterday afternoon.

And, we knew that everything must be getting back to normal late on Friday because we heard/saw airplanes again.  (We heard on the news that DFW had cancelled over 2000 flights this past week.) 

Here's Isaac pointing them out to us.  :)

 This was quite a week of winter for us Texans...and, though it's not supposed to be anything like this past week, the forecast is calling for snow again this Tuesday and Wednesday!

Record-Breaking Snow in North Texas

We've never seen our house covered in so much snow! More snow fell yesterday, February 11, than has ever fallen in the DFW area! We also set a new record for the most snowfall in a 24 hours period. (I have Rush on in the background as I write this, and even he just mentioned it, so it must be big news, right?) We do have pictures of our house covered in snow from March of 2008, and we also had a lot of snow this past Christmas Eve...but never have we come even close to over a foot of snow!

I was glad that I never got rid of my Sorel boots, either; several years ago, I considered giving them to Goodwill since I had never needed them here in Texas...but I am really glad I kept them, especially when Isaac and I took a snowy trek this morning through our neighborhood. His little head isn't quite big enough to see over the top of the carrier, so it was cute how he kept his head lifted high for our entire walk so that he could see! When we got home, his cheeks were so rosy--it was adorable!

On our walk, we saw that a lot of our neighbors lost huge trees. The snow was so heavy on them that a lot of them cracked straight through the trunk...they almost look like they were hit by lightening! Dave shook all the snow off of our crepe myrtle early this morning so that its limbs didn't break.

It was already snowing when we woke up yesterday morning. I had a doctor's appointment downtown, and it took me nearly an hour to drive down there. I'm glad I didn't cancel, though, since the doctor's office was nearly deserted due to cancellations, and I was able to be seen quickly. Dave came home from Decatur around 4:00 in the afternoon and started shoveling the driveway with a yard shovel, since we don't even own a snow shovel. We tried to take Isaac outside for a few quick pictures, but he was hungry and wasn't quite as excited about the snow as we were! Dave also made this snowman at the shop in Decatur yesterday afternoon...we've seen a lot of cute snowmen in our neighborhood, but none of them have quite the same flair as this one:

I think it's pretty funny that Dave and I, having grown up in Colorado and Minnesota respectively, still get so excited about the snow...but we haven't had any true winter weather for a long time! It makes me miss hot chocolate, ice skating, sledding, and all the other wonderful wintery activities that were such a huge part of my childhood. We'll have to take Isaac to visit his Grandma & Poppa Rinn in Steamboat a lot so that he gets to experience all those fun winter activities, too!