FALL TEXAS TRIP: Day 17

Today we had a few things on our list to accomplish. The first of which was to take the almost half hour drive across town to visit The Paper Place, my very favorite store in Austin. I get almost all of my cardstock there that I use for making cards. I am usually able to visit their clearance corner and purchase enough cardstock for six months. But today, their clearance section was really ... depleted. I was so disappointed. I did purchase some paper that wasn't on sale, but none of the colors were ones that I was counting on for re-supply. I purchased a few calligraphy pens too because they have such nice ones there.

During our car ride, Karis Danielle NEVER stopped talking (I am NOT exaggerating). She was making up an elaborate story about having 10 pet alligators. She had names for all of them. And then her story switched to one about herself marrying her friend Alex and the 100 children they were going to have ... but only 10 babies. If I'd had a note pad with me, I would have taken notes so that I could re-tell all of the ins and outs of her very funny story. At one point, she was telling me about her four boys who were named: Tommy, Trolly, Kiwi, and Kwame (as in Kilpatrick?). She made up songs all throughout her narrative and she was very entertaining. I rode in the back seat of the van, sitting right next to her so that I could carry on a conversation with her. However, she really wasn't one bit interested in a two-way conversation. She was perfectly happy to just ... talk!

Just after 11:00 a.m., Grandpa Jones dropped Karis and I off at the community pool for an hour of swimming. He had a few other errands he had to run, and he really doesn't enjoy swimming very much. But Karis sure does ... and so do I!

They have a beautiful swimming pool/splash pad/fountain area at the community building where they live. It's a few long blocks from their house, probably close to one mile away. Karis and I had it all to ourselves. There is a button you can push to make the fountains work, otherwise, you can just leave them off. Karis pushed the button right away ... so ... look! We had so much fun.

Yesterday, I emptied a bottle of dishwashing soap and saved the bottle. We used it as our very own fountain.

Karis used the detergent bottle to water all of the places around the pool that needed watering. And then we got serious about swimming.

Once she had her goggles in place, she was over and under and swimming and spashing and ... what a little fish she is!

I decided I would stand underneath one of the buckets that were filling up with water just to see what it would feel like to have that much water dump out on my head ...

Karis didn't want any part of that whatsoever. Grandpa had returned to the pool by this time and took some pictures of our fun time.

When Jackson came home from school, we got out my art crate and did some drawing together. We also cut out some pictures with our cool scissors.

I'm glad I brought all of this stuff with me ... it helps to have fresh art supplies to stimulate creativity. Jackson really enjoyed himself. I love the pictures he made.

Right about dinner time, this beautiful storm moved into the area and we got a real hard rain.

So ... this was our last day being primary care givers for our three Austin grandchildren. We've hardly seen Olivia! School occupies her weekdays quite thoroughly. She left home this morning at 6:20 and isn't expected back until almost midnight tonight. Friday night. Band. Football game. The game is an away game (about an hour's drive) or we would have tried to be there again.

Andrew and Sabrina are expected home just after lunch time tomorrow. The little kids are pretty excited about it. We will all want to hear about their cruise. We'll be staying on here in Austin, attending church again with them, and then driving back down to Bandera Monday morning for a few more days with our family down there. It may be a few days before I get back to posting any more about our trip ...