VACATION post...at last!!!

I have a girlfriend in southeast Texas that we were going to stay with and she only lives 15 minutes from my uncle John and his family. Then there is my mom's family who live in the north central part of Texas (I think) and that was 3 and 5 hours from my friend Sam, so we did a road trip tour of Texas. Ready or not, here we come.

Mom and Toby came on the trip with us and at the rest areas the kids took turns walking Toby. Micah was not going to be left out and let you know it loud and proud if she thought she was going to miss an opportunity to "hold it" (the leash).

I love how this rest area had a little park for the kids to burn some energy on. If it were up to me they'd all be this way!!! Unfortunately half of them barely had toilets. Well, as you can see it got crazy hot while we were there so we went off to a water park. With a total of 8 kids it could get expensive really quickly but Sam found some water park that cost $5 per person and it was great!!!

My cousin Laurel was able to come with us and what a help she was! Two extra eyes were priceless that day, let me tell you. The girls loved her and had a great time playing with her. I think perhaps she enjoyed herself too!

Now Micah surprised us. She may be the baby of the family but she still takes on so much. She wanted to go down the water slides and she did great. She went down, got up, walked around to the stairs by herself and went up the stairs to do it all again. She loved the slide and I loved that she could do it all by herself!

I certainly wish that the water park by our house was as cost effective as this one was. The kids loved the water (that did not exceed a foot in the kiddie area) and mostly loved the fact that they didn't have to wait on me or Tim to do their own thing.Elijah and Caleb, who I don't have a picture of for some reason...hmm...they got to walk the water park by themselves. I'm telling you, this park was awesome! If I had to, I could see Elijah no matter where he went and that allowed him to have some independence and it allowed Tim and me the comfort of knowing what he was doing all the time. It was the best of both worlds.

Levi wasn't given that same freedom, though he didn't seem to care. He was too wrapped up in his poor foot. He was such an active little fish jumping in and out of the water but he caught the bottom of the pool with his heel and it scraped him up pretty bad. I felt badly for him for a couple of seconds, but apparently he needed more. Thanks Sam! Then there was Titus...let's just say that Paul was taking care of things perfectly!

Thursday evening we went to my uncle John's house where he had rented this awesome bouncy slide. It was so hot that we burned our feet on the ladder going up so we decided to wet the whole thing down and that worked wonderfully. It really is true the saying "slippery when wet."

Besides the slide, uncle John and Amy had this pool blown up for the kids to cool off in. There was also this baby pool that Micah rather enjoyed with Aiden, uncle John and Amy's absolutely adorable grandson.

Thank you uncle John, Amy and Laurel (and Carrie) for a fun visit with you.

Later that night we were able to celebrate Eden's 5th birthday along with Keaton and Bailey who were born one week before Eden was. They each had their own "princess-like" cake and they loved them, bling and all!

I couldn't help but get all three girls a matching shirt for their birthday. Sam, how about triplets? Just a thought.

We got to do a good amount of swimming at Sam and Paul's house, one of the most anticipated events by the kids. Levi was thrilled that there was so much gear to put on. It just fed his imagination.

Even Titus began to enjoy himself. Now, he didn't let us throw him around, but he did eventually let go of us to "swim" by himself. Micah, on the other hand...well, remember how much of a independent she was at the water park? In the pool we were throwing her up pretty high and dropping her into the water and she loved it! She'd push away from us in order to try and kick her legs to swim by herself. It was so cool. I suppose she could learn how to swim if we had pool access here at home!

On a side note, one of the reasons this post took to bloomin' long to do was because all the videos that I wanted to add to this for some reason wouldn't load. Every time I got on to add to my post I'd get so frustrated with the dern thing and so I'd just save my work and exit only to pick it up again a week or so later to the same end. How frustrating is that??? There was some great video.

When we left Sam and Paul's house we drove north to Celeste to visit uncle Jeff and his family. They didn't have much for little kids to do but they did run through the sprinkler one day. That was the day we learned what fire ants were. Micah got around 20 bites all over her chubby little feet! If it wasn't so sad it would have been funny the way she started "dancing" to get them off of her. It was cute! Is that mean?

We had beautiful weather the whole week we were in Texas, but not even 20 minutes after we left we hit black and green skies and a whole bunch of crazy rain.
Fortunately the rain didn't keep the kids from sleeping or otherwise traveling nice and sound. Now, being that it is 2am and I was so bent on actually finishing this post, I am starting to fall asleep while typing and that makes for some interesting words...did you know I start typing what I'm dreaming that way? It's cool.

On that note, I have a month of stuff to post. Hopefully John Paul won't be celebrating any anniversaries before I get to his wedding!!!