Our Matthew is three today!

Today it's Matthew's special day! He is three years old! I'm going to call him in just a little bit to sing him "Happy Birthday." I can't wait to hear his voice!

Three weeks ago today, Grandpa Jones and I arrived at Fort Bliss for our visit there. It went by much too fast. I had a lot of fun with you, Matthew ~ we read a lot of books together, colored some pictures, wrote your name tons of times, did sticker books, played school, climbed at the playground, took walks, rode a miniature train, dug in the white sand, went to the zoo, ate ice cream, had lots hugs and kisses ... and I miss you, little grandson ...

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY, MATTHEW!

Kind Father: Please give Matthew John a heart to know You.
Please help him to follow You all the days of his life
and to know there is no one like You ...

Little Rock to ... Grand Rapids!

I had a bad feeling yesterday morning that Mr. Jones would want to get up early and drive ALL the way from Little Rock to Grand Rapids ... and my instincts were correct! We were both a bit weary of living out of suitcases and being away from home; and as long as he was driving, I wasn't going to put up a fuss!
We drove through a lot of sloshy-looking fields and overly-wide creeks and streams and soaked farm lands all the way through Arkansas, Missouri and right into Illinois ...
We stopped at a rest area just inside Illinois where these beautiful flowering trees were in full bloom ...
As we were driving the outskirts of Chicago last night, Mr. Jones wagered we were a mere 100 miles away from our driveway and would be home a little after 10:00 ~ but I told him we were easily 130 miles from home and it would be much closer to midnight before we were done with this really long drive. There was a lot of road work, some rain, A LOT OF POT HOLES to avoid ... but we were finally home at 11:48 (and it was 133 miles)! We came home to high wind, driving rain, COLD temps and a forecast for snow by the weekend ... ah, home sweet home ...

Galveston Island to Little Rock, Arkansas

Tonight we are staying in Little Rock, Arkansas at the downtown Comfort Inn & Suites right next to the Clinton Library! WOW, huh? I don't think we will take the time to visit the library before leaving town tomorrow morning ... nothing personal (!)

It goes without saying that we are no longer in Texas. It took all day to drive through this massive state. We took the I-59 route that Nick recommended and had a real pleasant drive. The east side of this state is completely opposite of the west side, and at times, it felt similar to driving through the northern part of Lower Michigan at the peak of summer ~ all green and lush ~ and the wildflowers all along the way were just amazing in all of their color and beauty.

But the further we drove, the heavier my heart became! We were leaving Texas! Leaving so many dear folk we love ... and who can say when the next time will be that we see their faces? Unless you have family that live very far away from you, you cannot know this heartache ... and that's exactly what it is ... my heart hurts tonight.

I had a lot of time to talk to our kind Father along our route throughout the day, so I was telling Him about my struggle ... He reminded me to give thanks instead of thinking about the sadness. So that's what I did. I reviewed the great time we had with each family here in Texas, with each grandchild and parent(s), all the fun stuff we did, the fellowship, the good conversations, the laughter and hugs ... isn't God amazingly good to us?

"Though I sit in darkness, the LORD himself
will be my light ...
the LORD will bring me out of my darkness
into the light,
and I will see His righteousness." MICAH 7:8 & 9

Overnight on the big ship ...

This is where Mr. Jones and I spent the night last night! Isn't it SO cool? Before you get too envious of us, I'll give you my critique of The Flagship Hotel ... but let me tell you first that we got a room here for $69 via Travelocity.com! I booked this room about 6-8 weeks ago. I pre-read the on-line reviews and totally agree with them. Every single person said they would return but wanted folk to know that this hotel was OLD and in need of renovation! Yes ~ it is in need of painting and wall repair ... and washing the windows would be nice ... and the bathrooms could use some updating.

But having said those negative things, let me tell you ~ it's LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION! There is no way to duplicate the experience of Room 536 with a balcony, the view, the awesome sound of the surf all night long (we left the slider open just a bit) ...
This was the view from our balcony late yesterday afternoon just after we checked in ... I love it here!
I left the hotel at 4:15 to take a nice long walk on the beach. I left Mr. Jones in the room so that he could catch up on some sleep ... I know this doesn't sound very romantic, but hey ~ he was exhausted from our three weeks of travel, and Galveston Island is not a destination he would choose ~ he's really not a beach person at all. I was just thankful to have 18 glorious hours to walk and take pictures and enjoy!
These pelicans were stealing fish almost right off the lines of the fishermen lined up along the pier! They would just swoop on down and take whatever they wished! I didn't realize pelicans were this large of a bird!
This picture shows the entire 1000 ft. pier that The Flagship Hotel sits on. It was very interesting to sleep on top of the water last night ~ it reminded me of my youth when we would spend nights on my father's boat ... plus, my mind kept flashing back to last fall when we were driving on the island during Tropical Storm Humberto that turned into a hurricane later on that night ~ the wind was SO furious and the surf SO high that night! And last night, the wind just howled outside our balcony ... it was kind of frightening at times!

There must be a billion seagull that live right here on Galveston Island! They are EVERYWHERE! People feed them constantly ~ in fact, folk were throwing food to them right off their balconies at the hotel ~ which would account for those terribly dingy windows below!
I walked the beach for two hours, taking pictures like crazy, and then my feet wouldn't go any further! We had done so much walking while in Houston with Nick and Rachel ~ I would say at least 3 miles per day ~ my feet actually ached! And what did Mr. Jones want to do for dinner? WALK down Seawall drive to find some seafood! So we walked about 8 blocks over to Joe's Crab Shack and had a yummy shrimp dinner! :) Since we had absolutely NO internet access at our location-rich hotel, we retired early to bed! I set the alarm for 6:15 a.m. so that I could take advantage of the sun rise ...
This morning, it was 80 degrees outside at 6:30 a.m. when I left the hotel with my camera. I wasn't sure if the sky was going to be favorable for sunrise pictures or not ... at first, I was a little disappointed because of the haziness ... but after viewing my pictures on the computer, I am really pleased with them!
It was a long walk down the beach this morning to get to a spot where a good picture could be composed ... I really didn't want buildings or hotels in the photos ... I wanted rocks and shoreline and driftwood, etc. What I totally forgot to calculate was the tide! I remembered where we had been a few days prior when we came to the island with Nick and Rachel. I liked the rocky place we had eaten our picnic around and wanted to go back there ... but the tide was high and so it was difficult to find enough dry beach to walk on! Plus, I had completely forgotten the fact that Rachel had mentioned that rats kind of "hang out" among these rocks ... I had situated myself on a nice rock and had taken a few pictures when I saw something "scurry" past me ... I knew it wasn't a seagull ... and soon I saw the critter ... a rat! Then and there, I decided to move myself OFF the rocks to some place a bit tamer ...
Although this was not a stunning sunrise, it was very beautiful. God paints it differently each day, doesn't He? I took over 200 pictures this morning ~ it was difficult to choose which ones to post tonight. Plus, I am without my photo editing program that I love so much on this laptop ~ so these pictures are totally unedited.

I was almost completely alone on the beach this morning ... it was so refreshingly invigorating to walk in the wind and the waves ...
"Praise the LORD, I tell myself; O LORD my God how great you are! You are robed with honor and with majesty; you are dressed in a robe of light." PSALM 104:1-2


After a wonderful two-hour walk this morning, I went back to the Flagship for breakfast with Mr. Jones. As soon as I walked into our room, he announced there was no hot water for me to shower with! I was going to add this to my list of negatives about staying in this lovely location until I went to take my shower and had HOT water! Mr. Jones must've taken his at the same time as too many other people and just had the bad fortune to run out! We left the island at about 10:00 this morning and headed on home ...

We say good-by to all of the folk in Houston ...

We worshipped Sunday morning with Nick and Rachel and the McNeil's at Houston Northwest, a church located in the northwest section of Houston (duh!). Since Nick and Rachel have only recently moved into the city of Houston, they are still seeking out a church for regular worship. They had tried Houston Northwest last week and decided to go back yesterday with all of us.
We enjoyed the worship service very much: the music was beautiful, and the young pastor is doing a series from the epistle to the Hebrews ~ his sermon was very challenging.
In the entryway to the auditorium, there is a lot of beautiful artwork ... very creative ... I liked it very much.
We intended to go out to lunch with everyone, but some circumstances changed so Mr. Jones and I went back to Aunt Peg's place to pack up and head out to Galveston Island. Here is Grandpa Jones saying good-by to baby Nia ...
Nathan gave us big hugs and kisses good-by. Grandma McNeil had been dubbed the "new" granny and I was referred to as the "old" granny ... because Nathan was having a bit of trouble having two granny's present at the same time ~ so since I had arrived in Houston earlier than Granny McNeil, I was the "old" granny ... and the newly arrived Granny McNeil was the "new" granny. Actually, none of the other grandkids refer to me as "granny" and it was kind of fun to be called that! Everyone laughed as Nathan said to me: "Bye-bye old granny." Mr. Jones, of course, had a different take on the "old" designation, but we won't go into that here!!

In and around Aunt Peg's pretty place ...

We've been staying here in Houston with Don's youngest sister, Peggy (Aunt Peg). I wanted to show you just a few photos of her house and neighborhood.
Outside of her house ... she lives on a beautiful street with all kinds of different houses ... This is her front door (or side door) depending on what you designate front or side!

This stained-glass artwork hangs in one of the upstairs windows ...
She has a beautiful staircase, doesn't she? It's my favorite thing about her house!
Aunt Peg has a wonderful collection of Heisey glasswear in this hutch ...
We took a walk this afternoon after driving back from Old Town Spring. We walked all the way down to Memorial Park. I was totally captivated by this neighborhood ... I've never seen so many different styles of architecture ... along with downright weird houses. I've decided to show you three of the oddest houses I have ever seen in my life.

This "house" is right around the block from Aunt Peg's. It looks like something Timothy Leary would design and live in!

But even weirder was The Beer Can House. Okay ~ I'm not kidding! Take a look for yourself! It would be a college kid's spring break dream pad ... or something else ...

The owner has taken beer cans and done all kinds of amazingly creative things with them! :)
And then this house is just plain odd ... some guy with a midieval fantasy life or something ...
Peg explained there are no building code regulations in Houston ~ so you have very beautiful mansion-sized homes right next to teensy tiny cottage kinds of houses (some in really beautiful shape, but others very run-down) ... so it makes neighborhoods very interesting to walk through ... I was entirely captivated by the whole experience!
And the flowers were just amazing ... I can't wait to get home and start digging in my dirt! And who is this? No ~ it isn't Thomas K following us on our journey to Texas! This is Ebony and she is decidedly smaller than Tommy. Ebony belongs to Aunt Peg and she is a darling little cat.

We have had a great time staying with Aunt Peg this week. She has graciously provided us a beautiful place to sleep and breakfast and hang out! And tonight is our last night!

Tomorrow morning, we are meeting Nick and Rachel and her parents and going to Houston Northwest to worship, and then have lunch together. Afterwards, Mr. Jones and I are packing up and heading to ... Galveston Island for one night at the Flagship Hotel, which is on a 1000 foot pier! I'm hoping to catch a beautiful sunset and then I'm getting up before the sun rises to hopefully see ... the sun rise! I'm not sure when I will post again because we will be at hotels heading back to Michigan after that ... if I have time and internet availability, I'll tell you about our journey home!

Old Town Spring

We had another really fun and FULL day in Houston today ...

We started the day with a delicious pancake breakfast over at Nick and Rachel's house. Aunt Peg decided to join us for the day! It was cold this morning (in the 50's) as we drove just a little north of town to a place called Old Town Spring ... see the sign? Old Town Spring is a little touristy (is that a word?) place with darling stores, antiques, quaint little gift shops, yummy food, gorgeous flowers ... the kind of place where I could hang out for hours and hours ... and it even had trains for Grandpa Jones!

The first little shop we stopped in was a HAT store ~ totally hats, the entire store. We asked Nathan which hat was one he would like, and he ran right up to a bright pink broad-brimmed hat which Nicolas let him wear, but we didn't photograph ... we thought we would wait for a more boyish choice in hats for our photo op ... Nathan ended up trying on very funny hats: cowboy hats, knight-in-armor kinds of hats, sophisticated men's hats, a purple viking hat, as well as a court jester ... pretty cute, eh?
My favorite store of the day was called the WHY NOT? It was the coolest toy store I have ever been in ~ and trust me, I have been in a lot of toy stores. This was just completely stocked with Melissa and Doug quality-made and beautiful toys for every single age! We had such a fun time in the store, all playing with the very best toys!
Nathan even managed to crawl up into the window display and help himself to a table-full of neat toys ... I tried to take a picture from the outside of the shop of he and Rachel sitting in the window display, but the reflection makes it hard to see them clearly ...
There was an item here in the store that I just could not walk away from! My Emma Joy LOVES pigs ... and I got her the cutest pig item to send for her birthday, even though I can't send it until August! I just couldn't leave it in the store and not buy it for her!

Queenie Nia enjoyed shopping in all of the fancy girl stores with her mom, Aunt Peg and me. We all made some fun purchases and enjoyed ourselves hugely!

We ate our lunch at The Loose Caboose! We did this just for Grandpa Jones. We didn't really want to eat there, but we wanted to make sure he had fun today too! Wasn't that nice of us?

All around Old Town Spring were beautiful flower displays ... I took tons of pictures, but I'm still not using my camera right half the time, so many of my pictures were not focused correctly. Oh well, I will learn eventually ...

While we were in town three different trains zoomed on by ~ I think Grandpa was on hand for two of them. He took lots and lots of pictures of trains and tracks and signals ... Nathan enjoyd seeing the trains too.
We spent quite a few hours just hanging out in this pretty place ... and then Rachel's parents met us out there ~ they are here on spring break to visit Nick and Rachel and the kiddos.
Nathan was happy to see his "Granny McNeil" ~ they are here for the next couple of days.
Mr. Jones, Aunt Peg and I were exhausted at this point and went back to Houston soon after the McNeil's arrival. We wanted to give them some time to rest after their long trip from Grand Rapids, and have a nice evening just visiting together ... but we certainly had a great day at Old Town Spring!