FALL TEXAS TRIP: Day 4

We had a very nice day in El Paso today ~ would you like to see some pictures? I brought a basketfull of sand toys to play with and asked if the children knew where there was a playground in their new neighborhood. Christopher said he knew a playground that was right by his new elementary school. So we walked four blocks in the blazing hot sun (although it was only in the mid-80's today) and arrived at the kids' new school. The playground Chris was thinking of was ... the school playground. Emma was just sure it was locked when school was not in progress ... but we were very happy to find out they had forgotten to put the padlock on for the weekend!

We had the whole playground to ourselves for more than two hours. First thing, the kids wanted to show me all of the cool things they knew how to do on the playground equipment.

So they climbed and "monkeyed" around for awhile ... but then we got serious about digging and making sand molds ...

Isn't this a beautiful picture of Chris?! He is SO hard to get a good picture of ... he is SO fast and sometimes such a tease! He'll see me focusing my camera on him and then make a horrid face at the camera instead of looking sweet. But today, I was able to get quite a nice collection of Chris pictures to show you!

Do you like his shirt? It says: "I love aliens ... they abducted my sister!"

Here is Emma working hard on digging a nice deep hole where we could retrieve our wet sad from. You need WET sand in order to make a nice sand castle. We dug very deep at the playground today!

The next bunch of pictures is in no particular order ... after we played for a few hours at the playground, staying in the shade as much as possible ~ and once our water bottle was completely empty and we were SO thirsty that we walked the four blocks back home ~ once we got there, Jesse got out the kiddie pool and filled it up with water and all of the kids got their swim suits on and cooled off in the water. I also got out the sidewalk chalk so that they could draw nice pictures when they were NOT swimming.

Christopher drew us some really nice pictures. He loves sharks. And I LOVE his drawings!

See Matthew's drawing? He started out telling me he was going to draw a hammer shark, drew one end of it and explained to me that this was the "hammer part of the shark" and then went on and did the same thing at the other end. He then said he messed up his hammer shark and was going to turn it into something else ... but I can't quite figure out what he turned it into!

Another nice picture of Chris ...

Grandpa Jones took this picture of Emma cooling off in the pool. It wasn't an unbearably hot day today, but it got mighty warm!

It's a good thing summertime is almost over ... because it looks like there are several leaks in the pool ... yikes!

Matthew really enjoyed doing his chalk drawings today. He was quite intense and careful to follow the pictures in my art book as carefully as possible.

Christopher likes to have the whole pool to himself so that he can show us how good he swims. It's kind of a small pool, but he's right! If just one person is in it, there is room to swim!

After supper, all of the kids went out back to show us the hill behind their house. They were riding their bikes down it, having races, and just enjoying themselves.

Their neighbor Gabriel was back over to play. And we met another friend of theirs ... Cassady. I have enjoyed getting to know some of these neighbor friends!

Grandpa and I didn't stay very late at the house tonight. I think we are still tired from that long drive. But we are resting up at the Lodge and are excited to take the kiddos to church tomorrow to worship, and then spend another day together. I'll try to post some more pictures of our day tomorrow evening!