When I woke on Friday morning I scrambled for my camera and headed out to our balcony. I slept with our blinds open so the first thing I would see when I woke up was God's beautiful creations. And I was blessed.



Jeff joined me on the balcony and we journeyed around the condos for more beautiful sights.

This is one of my favorites.

After we returned to our condo we snuggled up in bed and read old e-mails from one another when we had just started dating and right before that time. It was fun to revisit that part of our lives, sometimes with three kids that time seems so far away, even though it was just eight years ago.

Oops, I forgot to post this

As we were leaving for our date we stopped to set up the camera to take pictures of us together. When we were all done Jeffrey was looking through them when I wondered off and found lots of deer. They are all over the place here. I'm not a good judge of distance but I would say they were about fifty feet away from me when Jeff took this photo.

Here we were maybe ten to fifteen feet away.

Day one of our fabulous trip

When we got up Thursday morning we had some last minute packing to do before we headed out. Jeff got a call from work and I was waiting for the bottom to fall out. I just knew something had come up and he wasn't going to be able to go. But it was a blessing instead. Someone from is job had tickets to a football game and wanted to know if Jeffrey wanted them. Who can turn down a free date night for your vacation, so while Jeffrey headed to his job I finished up the packing.

After he got back we got on the road but only for about three minutes before we stopped to eat. We went to IHOP and had a nice brunch and just started our trip off with good ol' conversation time.

Back on the road we listened to lots of music and talked some more until we stopped at a Wal-mart not to far from our condo and bought food for our stay. It may seem silly but we bought things we don't normally buy since we were on vacation. We bought some kind of fancy orange juice, bagels, cream cheese, and other goodies.

Back on the road until we got to our condo, which you already saw and can see why I fell in love with it.

After getting unpacked and all cleaned up we went to a nice dinner. If you are ever in Austin you just have to go to Moonshine. The food was wonderful. I won't even go on and on about it here but you have to trust me, it was worth the long drive to get there. It was a lovely start to our time together.

Okay, okay. I have a confession to make. I was a little miss leading. When I said things were unbelievable I wasn't kidding, I just lead you to believe we didn't enjoy our selves and that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact if it weren't for the kids we might not have come home. Okay and maybe money played a part in it too.


Okay, so here is how you need to view my trip, the same as I did. Was it something outside our means? Yes. Did we need it? Yes. Would I make the same choice again? Yes. Did we go crazy and spend a lot of money? No. So don't look at it and wonder how much things costs, just view and enjoy and be happy for us.

We stayed in this cute condo.
Here was our living room.

Here is our kitchen. Don't you just love how I am spelling things out for you like you couldn't tell that the room with the stove was actually the kitchen.
Bathroom
Bathroom again.
Our room. Sorry it is so dark. Jeff told me at the time the flash didn't go off but I was so excited about taking pictures from our balcony that I didn't want to do it again, and then I forgot.
This was the beautiful view that I woke up to every morning. Where I sat and read and enjoyed breakfast. All of the following pictures were taken from the balcony.

Unbelievable

I don't have time to post right now. I have a million and one things to do. Starting with Bear's first day of preschool (with me). He is pumped. And resuming homeschooling with Kati. And the other million post vacation things that need to be done.


I did want to share some pictures with you. After that drive I wouldn't have expected something so unbelievable. I'll post more later, but oh my!

Seriously, July, it's the end of August.

Joking, it could pay off for you too.

This is how our trip came about.........

We were lying in bed cuddling, just enjoying one anothers company, when our moment was broken by Bear yelling something, while he was suppose to be napping, and Timothy laughing at him. As much as I love my kiddo's I was bummed. I knew that my moment was over. We couldn't just lay there and talk and cuddle, any minute one of the kids was going to come climb in the bed and ask for this or that and my moment was over.

So I buried my body deeper in the crook between his chest and arm and said, "Go away with me."

And he said yes.

A bittersweet day

These pictures are old but I wanted to post them anyway. I have so many pictures of things that I just had to share with all five of you but then I never end up posting them.


These pictures are from what our church calls promotion Sunday. I don't know what other churches call it, I have been to the same church all my life. It just means this is the Sunday that all the kids move up to their next age group. And since Kati didn't really get to have that first day of kindergarten picture, you know the one, the one where your mom made you stand outside in your front yard and she licked her thumb to wipe jelly off your cheek before she took your picture, that one, I decided I would take pictures on this day. This special day where my baby girl feels all grown up to me.It didn't help matters that she wanted to take a backpack to church with her that morning. My chest nearly burst with pride looking at my big girl. And no I didn't ask her to pose like this.

?

Of course Mister personality thought he just couldn't be left out.
Here we are outside of her room. You would be proud. There was no screaming or peeling hands off of doors. I did just fine and so did Kati. She just walked right in.
Kati with her teacher. Now that I look at this picture, that lady in the background is also her teacher. I sure am good at leaving people out. Way to go Stacy. Way to get a picture of Kati with her too.