Our Texas Vacation

When we lived in Louisiana our best friends were Scott and Jessica Swizzle. When we became friends with them they had one daughter who was 4 and were pregnant with their son. Jessica was a teacher and when she had her baby she had to go back to work when he was only 4 weeks old, so I nannied for her until school was out. I would watch him and then take him up to her at lunch time so she could nurse him and I would also pick up her daughter from pre-school and take her home and watch them until she got home from work. It was great experience and practice for me as I was pregnant with Judah at the time, Judah is six months younger than R. Jess is the one who introduced me to “Baby wise” a couple weeks after I started working for her; she gave me the book and said she wanted to try to do this. So I read the book and started implementing it. To this day she still says that I am the reason that he is such a good sleeper. Anyway, we moved 3 months after Judah was born. After they got out of the military they moved to Oregon and we were back here in Tulsa and we never got it together enough to actually go see them. Although we did see them once after we moved before they moved away from Fort Polk. We hadn’t seen them in 8 years and I hadn’t talked to her in about 6, although we kept up with each other on email, she had another daughter 18 months after her son was born and they hadn't met any of my kids except for Judah when he was about 8 months. They recently moved to Mineola Texas which is only about 4 ½ hours from me, which is totally doable! So since it was spring break J decided to take Monday off and we would go down on Friday after he got off work and we would stay the weekend and come back Monday. We got down there way late on Friday and stayed up way way too late catching up. The kids of course were up with the sun, which made for a very loooong day. It was a blast though. In my haste in packing I forgot to pack the babies shoes, so first thing we had to go to the store and buy them some new shoes, we found them some boots on sale, which we thought was fitting since we were in Texas. They are super cute and they love them.

Of course I had to buy the big boys and Avrah boots too. The weather could not have been more perfect, it was sunny and in the 70’s.

The big boys spent the days fishing.

Josiah

Jess taught me how to groom her horse Banjo

 and we all got to ride, don't worry I stayed on this time and did not get hurt.

Bailey and Avrah on Roxy (Avrah loved it and did not want to get down!)

Judah on Roxy

Josiah on Banjo (he also loved it, and was really good at it)

Cowboys?

Jeremy and the babies didn't get to ride but they were having their own adventures.

On Sunday we went to church with them and then went to a nature preserve and had a picnic, since there spring break was last week and the kids had to go back to school on Monday we decided to go ahead and leave on Sunday afternoon.
We had a great time and can't wait for them to come up here and see us too. Here are some more pics.

An outside play pen?

Love both their faces in this one.

Pure joy! Micah loves being outside

I loved this one even though it wasn't in focus and he isn't looking.. it just looks artsy to me. I changed nothing about it

Hosea

Micah