FALL TEXAS TRIP: Day 11

Yesterday we spent the day in Bandera with Nick, Rachel, and FOUR grandchildren. The drive from Austin to Bandera is unbelievably beautiful ... just breathtaking ... mile after mile! Afterall, we were in the hill country of Texas for the whole drive!

Today we decided to celebrate THREE birthdays, all wrapped up in ONE! Because of the long-distance situation we have with ALL of our grandchildren, it's difficult to be with them on each of their birthdays. So this year, we combined as many as we could so that we could have a birthday party and enjoy as much fun as possible.

Nia turned THREE in late August. Nathan will be FIVE in early October. And Lottie will be TWO very early in November. Rachel got the house all decorated and baked three separate cakes! We arrived at about 11:00 in the morning, but the actual birthday party wasn't to start until about 6:30 that evening. Grandpa Jones and I brought some balloons for everyone to play with ... and it actually felt like we had an 8-hour birthday party!

I have uploaded a completely obscene and ridiculous amount of pictures to show you ... but you should have seen how many I DIDN'T upload ... hundreds! It's just that we are only visiting a total of three days with our Bandera family the whole entire time we are in Texas this fall ... so they are (and we are) getting a little bit jipped. So I decided I would just upload extra pictures to make up for it.

This is Liam Calvin. He is just shy of six months. He was an "early" birth by almost six weeks and now he is nearing six months. He has RED hair ... not quite as red as Lottie's ... but definitely RED. He is a little cutie.

There are a few more pets hanging around their place this time. The cat Nathan is holding is the daddy cat to the two kittens (there were four ... but two have found other homes). The kittens are about six weeks and they are adorable. Their names are Cain and Abelle (Abelle is a girl). The little kids have such fun playing with them.

There is a little donut shop in downtown Bandera that has the most yummy donuts. Grandpa and I brought a little bag of them to share with everyone ... here are the kiddos eating them up.

This is Nathan Paul balancing the daddy cat on top of his "Boo" bear.

I also brought a bunch of balloons to blow up and just have fun with. Nathan was trying hard to blow up his balloon and then got the idea that blowing into a straw might just do the trick ... but ... it didn't! We blew up a bunch of balloons and batted them around the house. And we used some balloons to just blow up and let go zooming through the air ... blasting off, etc.

Lottie Caroline is approaching TWO. She is "into" everything. While Rachel was frosting one of the birthday cakes, Lottie reached up and got her little hands on a tiny bottle of food coloring ... YELLOW food coloring ... on her hands, face, floor ... but everything cleaned up quite nicely ... with a slightly yellow tinge!

This is Rachel after the clean-up process, loving up Lottie a little bit ...

I caught this little kitty napping ...

I think Liam looks quite a bit like Lottie at this age ... but also, we compared pictures of Nathan when he was just about six months, and there are many similarities. Liam is a very sweet baby. Grandpa Jones was just in his glory having an infant to cuddle with all day.

I don't know how to describe Lottie and really do her justice. She has such an interesting personality. She really asserts herself and joins in with the older kids always, doing just about everything they can do.

Isn't she a doll?

This is Nicolas making a balloon "scream." I really had no idea such awful noises could come out of a balloon. The kids thought it was great. We pretended there were dinosaurs growling and crying, etc. The sound was really quite atrocious!

This is Nia Madelynn. She is just about my favorite age for a little one. THREE. They are just such fun at this age and say the cutest things. We had a lot of fun with Nia yesterday.

This is Grandpa and Liam. Grandpa did quite a bit of holding and caring for Liam yesterday. He is unbelievable with babies.

The other kids were into playing rougher games with Rachel and Nick. Here they are all lined up to jump from the coffee table to the couch ... or to the pile of pillows on the floor. They got such a kick out of doing this. Finally, Rachel had to just give each of them one more time to fly into her arms and be hurled to the couch ... she was getting too tired to keep it up!

Bandera's boast is that it is "The Cowboy capital of the world." Did you get that? The world! We drove into Bandera to eat an early dinner at a fabulous little Mexican cafe' and passed by a bunch of cowboys shooting at each other ... with guns that smoked and made loud noise ... and cowboys were falling down all over the place! I guess they do these little shoot-'em-up re-enactments almost every weekend ~ well, I guess if you are the Cowboy capital of the WORLD, you have to do something to live up to your reputation.

I love this Noah's Ark boat made by Melissa and Doug! I'm tempted to purchase one for my three-year-old room at church. We played for such a long time with it, making all of the animals go into the ark two-by-two.

Nathan ~ always enthusiastic as he pretends ~ I love this picture of him.

Well, finally it was time to open presents! There was quite an assortment to be opened! The kids had presents from Rachel's folks, Rachel's grandma, their Uncle Kyle, their friends, as well as Grandpa and myself. Just to explain, I am known to these Jones grandchildren as the "granny with the trains" and Rachel's mom is known as the "granny without the trains." So as the gifts were being opened, Rachel would try to designate which granny and grandpa gave which gifts. Nathan's response to each gift being opened was: "Oh, wow! Thanks! This is the BEST present EVER!" And then he would run and hug us ... we would have to keep saying to him that we were NOT the giver of that particular gift. We just happened to be fortunate enough to be there and get the credit ... no! But we did enjoy the fun.

Nia received this darling apron I think from Rachel's folks. Nia loved it. Just to clue you in ~ the theme of most of the gifts was play KITCHEN stuff ... you'll see as we go ...

Lottie and Nia both received these great hats from ... Rachel's folks? I'm not sure! Both of the girls loved wearing them and actually kept them on for a very long time.

This is Nia showing me her apron AND her hat ...

They received lots of nice books ... isn't this a cute title? "The Llama who had NO Pajama!"

Another beautiful picture of little Nia Madelynn ...

Nicolas and Liam ...

Grandpa Jones and I purchased a kitchen set for the kiddos, as a combined present ~ the wooden one made by Melissa & Doug. Nicolas had to put the whole thing together the night before. But then many of their other gifts were accessories for their kitchen. They got a cute donut set, a pizza set, a birthday cake, fuits and veggies ... all of them real sturdy and colorful and fun to pretend with.

Hopefully Liam will be able to play with all of this stuff as he gets a little bigger!

These are the three little cakes Rachel made for the kids. They were very pleased ...

Nicolas, after all of the trash had been picked up ...

The children played and played with their new kitchen and food ... for a very long time. They had a few friends over for their party too ... but I'm not sure I've posted any pictures of them.

We sang "Happy Birthday" and tried to get all three names into the mix ...

Here is Nia, washing the vegetables ... these pictures are not exactly in order ... but I really do not care!

Nathan set up the pretend birthday cake and presented it to me and asked me to sing the song and blow out the candles ...

Nathan got a really BIG dinosaur puzzle that Rachel and the children put together before we left. I loved the colors and the size of it ... puzzles are so good for kids!

This is the hammock that is in the corner of the great room of the house ... it provides lots of indoor swinging and relaxation for everyone.

Sigh. I don't feel I have done adequate narration for the really great day we had yesterday. My brain is ... kind of ... exhausted from the last 11 days of almost nonstop activity. I guess I am getting old! We had such a nice day in Bandera. We hope to return there a week from tomorrow and spend another two days together. I have more to catch up with our trip, but it is just going to have to wait for another day!