FALL TEXAS TRIP: Day 8

Our time in El Paso with Jes and Di and the children is quickly coming to a close. Tomorrow is our last day already ... always hard for me. There is such a sad disconnect in families who have to do the long-distance thing. There is no getting around it ... 1600 miles is a really BIG distance. But while we were here, I was hoping to have a little one-on-one with Jesse ~ so we made a date for lunch today, just the two of us. I took this picture of the mountains as we were driving back to the house after lunch. I'm so glad we were able to get this special time together. It was good to catch up on Jesse's life, hear about some of the good things that are going on, and talk about some difficult stuff too.

Tomorrow, I hope to take some pictures of their neighborhood and nice new house ... this flower picture was taken on our way to walk the children home from school. I ran ahead of Grandpa Jones and Diana to get this snap ... see Diana walking in the background?

This is Matthew in his third week of Kindergarten. So far, he seems to like school just fine.

And here is Chris. The school day is over ... NOW what are we going to do?!

The kiddos played outside for awhile before dinner tonight. Grandpa Jones snapped some pictures of them while I was cooking ...

There is a small hill behind the house where all of the children love to play ... sometimes when you watch them out there, it's like an episode right out of The Little Rascals ... the things they think up to do!

Since we hadn't played with my playdough one single time during our visit so far, we decided to do that after supper tonight.

We had a nice time together sitting around the table making stuff with our playdough tonight. I love just talking with the kids about their day and listening to what they are thinking about.

This picture of Christopher is ... SO PAHMAN ... his facial expression ~ I have seen that exact same one on both his dad and his uncles!

Grandpa Jones took this beautiful picture of blue-eyed Matthew ...

We had a nice long storytime tonight ... FOUR good stories! Everyone was tucked in a little after 8:00. We'll do it all again tomorrow, treasuring every single moment we have left here in El Paso, making memories that will take us through to ... the next time!