FALL TEXAS TRIP: Day 10

We left Fort Bliss at 7:00 Friday morning ... what a beautiful morning it was too! We were looking at a 500+ mile trip from El Paso to Austin, pretty much driving ALL day across I-10. We've taken this trip so many times now that I've pretty much stopped snapping pictures. Except the mountains never really look quite exactly the same two days in a row ... so ... it's hard to resist trying to catch their "mood" on any given day. It's hard to leave the mountains behind, because with them are Jesse, Diana, and the little ones ~ so it's always always sad for me.

We did have much to look forward to, though, so when I had sad thoughts I prayed for the ones I was leaving behind, asking God to help me look ahead to the fun stuff coming up! Our goal Friday was to make it to Austin in time to see Olivia play her flute in the high school marching band. We drove into Sabrina's driveway at about 5:30 in the evening and thankfully had a little time to refresh and clean up before getting back into a vehicle to drive to the game.

High school football is a really really big deal in Dripping Springs. Olivia has been playing the flute since fifth grade. She is now a freshman in high school. Making it into the high school marching band is quite an accomplishment. The marching band here in Dripping Springs won the competition last year and are known as the 2009 champions ... NOT the football team ... the marching band. And Friday night was the first night the marching band had their brand new uniforms ... so Olivia was really excited about all of it.

Our pictures are less than optimal ... because we were so far away from where the marching band was seated. Plus, for the first little while the sun was directly in our vision so we were shooting into the sun, never a good thing. Most of the pictures I've posted are from Grandpa Jones's camera. His telephoto is 10x better than mine.

For awhile, the Dripping Springs Tigers were ahead 16-0 and we were actually thinking they would be victorious ... but they ended up on the short end of the score at 33-30. It was a good game, though, that we didn't stay all the way through. Sabrina knew how tired we were from our long drive and once half-time was over (where Olivia and the marching band did their show), we were able to go home and rest ...

This is the only picture we snapped of Sabrina and Karis the whole night ... for the most part, we were focused in on Olivia, trying to get her in our sights!

This is the Tiger mascot ... Jackson has an entire Tiger costume that he is going to wear one of these Friday nights to a game. Right now, it's been too HOT in Texas to even think about wearing a Tiger costume. We were wondering how the poor person inside this costume was doing with the heat ... it's still in the 90's in good ole Texas.

We were really impressed with the quality of music and the expert marching we saw with Olivia's band Friday night. She just loves being a part of this group of kids. We're so glad for her!

Well, I'm playing catch-up with these posts and I'm two days behind! I have over 200 pictures to look at from down in Bandera yesterday. Grandpa Jones and I were at Nick and Rachel's to celebrate THREE birthdays there. I can't wait to show you how much fun we had!