FALL TEXAS TRIP: Day 5

We picked up the children this morning and headed on over to Sunshine Community Church to meet Jesse and to worship together. This is the clear BLUE sky of our morning ... see the mountains? Aren't they beautiful?

We forced the kiddos to gather by Jesse for a photo op ... I usually hate posed pictures because they look so ... fake! But this didn't turn out too badly I guess. To the right of Jesse (behind the boys) is the sound board that Jesse controls during the singing and praising part of the worship service. He really enjoys being there. We met a lot of other folk who think highly of Jesse, who work alongside of him ~ it's nice to put faces with the names that Jesse talks about.

The children are dismissed from the worship service to their separate classes after the first two songs. Matthew and Christopher got to be in a classroom together this morning. I took Emma down to the second grade room and when we entered it, there were three other students ~ ALL of them boys ... and a very nice teacher. But Emma hadn't ever met any of them before and looked a lot less than happy about being left there. So I stayed too. And a little bit later, another small girl joined us with a name I have never heard in my life. I had to have her write it down for me because I could NOT figure out what she was saying. Her name was Monserey. We had a real nice time in class together. Our first "project" was to write a HAPPY sentence and then draw a picture to go with it ... we were supposed to think of something we were thankful about. So I wrote: "I'm happy I got to go to Texas!" and then I drew some mountains, a long winding road, and a blue van (which was pathetic looking in my picture). Emma's sentence was: "I got to play with my grandma!" She drew a picture of her and me playing checkers. We got to share our pictures with the others in the class and talk about being thankful for the good things God gives us. I was very thankful to be at church with my grandchildren!

This afternoon we did a lot of repeat stuff together. It was a pretty HOT day and we decided to just relax and enjoy being together. Here are a few more pictures ...

We got out a bunch of drawing supplies from my art crate and made beautiful pictures!

Christopher takes such delight in drawing dragons, dinosaurs and sharks ... here if a very good dragon he drew while looking at a picture in one of my art books.

I love this picture of Matthew. He fully participates in whatever we are doing. I used to kind of wonder WHERE Matthew was sometimes ... he seemed a little bit in a world of his own ~ but not so much anymore. He is an active force to be reckoned with sometimes. He really enjoys games, puzzles, drawing ... and puts everything he has into a project.

Well ... the day went by too quickly (again), but we still have quite a few left in El Paso. Tomorrow is Labor Day. We are going to try to take advantage of the water park over at Biggs Airfield in the afternoon. I'll try to put up more pictures tomorrow evening.

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!

FALL TEXAS TRIP: Day 3

We've arrived in El Paso! After a beautiful drive all through New Mexico today, we drove up in front of Jes and Di's new digs at about 3:00 this afternoon. The children were not home yet from school, so Jesse took us over to the base to check in at the Lodge. We were thankfully able to get a nice room here ... at least through Wednesday. We are on a waiting list for the following two days, so we'll have to see if we can remain on base or have to check into a hotel off base for the last two days we are here.

I've tried to pick out just a few pictures to show you tonight of the children ... as usual, I didn't take one single picture of Jes or Di ... yikes! I'll try to make up for that tomorrow. It was Emma's birthday two weeks ago, so instead of mailing her presents to her and NOT getting to watch her open them, we just brought them with us, even though it meant we were LATE giving them to her. She didn't seem to mind at all! Plus, Diana saved Grandpa and Grandma Hand's gifts for Emma to open today as well.

This is a drawing kit that I purchased for Emma at the John Ball Zoo Gift shop last week. It has step-by-step instructions on how to draw a bunch of cute zoo animals and came with colored pencils and nice drawing paper too.

Here is Emma after she opened up her Rainbow Stunt Streamers (I got this at the Meijer Garden Gift shop last week) ... she was excited to go outside and see what they could do ...

Emma was very delighted with the patterns you could spin and twirl around in the air ...

This is Matthew. He was five in April. He was a little bit sad that it wasn't HIS birthday. But I had brought cool motorcycle toys for he and Christopher to kind of ease their pain ... I forgot to take a picture of those toys, however ...

Grandma and Grandpa Hand gave Emma a bunch of beautiful gifts ... great PJ's (beautiful!), some pretty shirts, socks, a great paint set, and this very nice set of paint brush PENS. Emma was really pleased!

These are some gel-stickers for windows ... pretty birds ...

Emma decorated several of the windows of her new house with them ...

We played outside for a little while before dinner tonight. Several neighborhood children joined us ... nice kids, all of them. We met Gabriel (sitting down in the blue shirt), Matthew (the boy in the black shirt), and his two sisters: Nakyla and Yuna.

Emma was anxious to show me the very nice game box her folks had bought for her. NOW we can play Princess Checkers! There are little crowns to put on each princess who makes it to the back row ... very cute.

We made a bunch of paper airplanes and launched them, as well as playing with our parachute guys. It was a little too windy this afternoon ... so both parachutes ended up on the roof, as well as a few of the airplanes. We're hoping the wind does us a favor and blows the parachutes back down over night!

This is another picture of Emma decorating the windows with her gel stickers.

This is a nice picture of Chris taken by Grandpa Jones ... who inadvertantly cut the top of his head out of the picture ... that's OK, though ... it's still a nice picture.

Diana made a delicious spaghetti dinner for us tonight. Here is Matthew finishing off his drink.

We had a bedtime story tonight. I did a repeat just to see how much of it the children had remembered from the last time I was here! We read again about Zaccheus ... and they remembered lots of the details of this great story. And then Emma asked if she could read us just a short story ... so she did! She read about the little sick girl that Jesus healed.

This picture is for you, Grandma Hand! I asked the boys to smile real BIG and say "I love you, Grandma Hand!" and this is what I got ...

I'm looking forward to a really nice few days here in El Paso. It's the holiday weekend. Jesse has some extra time off. So we're going to spend it together. I'll try to show you some pictures of their new house in days to come ... it is much nicer than the one they had been living in since moving to Ft. Bliss. And can you believe it? We actually had good internet access tonight with successful photo uploads! Wow. I'm impressed!

FALL TEXAS TRIP: Day 2

We had another long travel day today and are resting for the night in Amarillo, Texas ... YES! We are IN Texas! However, most of the day tomorrow, we are going to be driving through New Mexico before we get back into Texas once again very near El Paso. Anyway, the last time we were in Amarillo, it was under a blizzard warning ... six months ago! As we traveled through Oklahoma today, though, the temperature was in the high 90's all day, and once it even registered 100 degrees on our outside temperature gauge! The picture above was taken early this morning as we were pulling out of Rolla in some light fog. I loved driving through the Ozarks this morning!

How would you like to climb this tower? I'm not sure anyone does anymore. It reminded me of the forest ranger cartoons (Yogi Bear) I used to watch as a little kid.

We really had a truly unremarkable day on the road. Nothing much was happening! This billboard reminded me of two gentlemen I worked with back in 1974 ... Sam and Bill, at Child Evangelism Fellowship ~ they drew the cover of the children's magazine each month and I was secretary to the editor! Just a few years after I worked with them, they went on to be "Jonathan and David" and then "Precious Moments." They were (are) really talented folk! I'm not sure how they ended up moving to Missouri.

I'm not sure why I'm posting this billboard ... except I did a doubletake ... those two people looked so REAL on top of it!

This scene above is a typical small Oklahoma ranch. I think we saw 100's like this one today! Oklahoma takes awhile to drive across. And the wind was very strong. The van was shaking like crazy! I'm glad we are safely in Amarillo for the night. We hope to make it to El Paso sometime tomorrow afternoon. I'm not sure where we are staying yet when we arrive and just what the internet access will be like, but I will try to keep in touch!

FALL TEXAS TRIP: Day 1

We're on the road AGAIN! We left home this morning, just after 7:00. This is our SEVENTH road trip to Texas since the fall of 2007. So we're getting pretty used to it!

Packing for a trip like this is ridiculous! You can't believe the amount of totes, suitcases, crates (of games, puzzles, toys, etc.) camera cases and backpacks are tossed into the back of our van! It looks like we're never coming back!

We made good travel time today. We had thought perhaps we would skirt past the rain, but by mid-morning, we were driving through quite a bit of it! This is one of the pretty bridges that cross the Des Plaines River (in Illinois ... just outside of Chicago). I love bridges like this one.

We reached St. Louis where I tried to snap a few pictures of The Arch with the window down and the raining pouring in on me! I have plenty of pictures of The Arch, so I wasn't too terribly disappointed about not getting any good ones today.

Another rainy picture of the Mighty Mississippi ... but what a great bridge! We've stopped for the night in Rolla, Missouri. We've stayed in this same hotel on prior trips. We liked it here, knew it was clean and comfortable, so we checked in for the night. Would you like to know a little known fact about Rolla? First of all, it is pronounced just like "Raleigh." When they were trying to decide what to name this settled area back in the mid-1800's, one fellow who farmed in the area thought it ought to be called "Hardscrabble" ... yikes! Whatever for?!! And a railroad official thought "Phelps Center" would be a lovely name. But there was a gentleman, a "nostalgic N. Carolinian" who requested it be named "Raleigh" ~ the name was approved, but they decided to SPELL it like the gentleman had PRONOUNCED it ... hence, R-O-L-L-A ... ah, these southerners!

Well, more rain is predicted for our travels tomorrow. I'm hoping we drive out of it into sunny skies, but ... even if we don't, I'm glad to be on the road again ... heading to Texas to see our family there. I'm very thankful we are able to do this!