A Little Bit of Life

Life is busy and full for us! That is my main reason for not keeping up with our blog.  Below are some pictures to highlight what we've been up to these last few months!

Camping:

This Spring we went on a campout to Brazos Bend State Park. This was Ezra's first campout, and he did great! At the campout he was about 4 months old which is a perfect age for camping! Small enough to be held all the time if needed, but not mobile to get into dirt and trouble. So EASY! This was our first time camping with two children. It was fairly easy since Ezra was in that easy stage of baby-hood. This Fall may be another story, though.

We took our Johnny-Jump-Up with us. John scaled a tree to hang it. Here is Ezra suspended in the air!

We visited the nature center one morning. We got to pet a snake, and an alligator! 

Learning the difference between and alligator and a crocodile.

Hiking to the lake.

This is the only large alligator we saw up close. Maybe 8 feet from the sidewalk to the lake. The alligator was probably about 5 feet or so long.

Shooting at a range:

TWO!

It was a family affair.

Around the house:

Story Time!

James in disguise as Mr. Potato Head.

Exploring the outdoors.

Ezra has learned to pull himself up to a standing position!

Ezra started solid foods last week. He dislikes the pureed foods, so he went straight to soft whole foods. Yes, that is a french fry. :-)

Peek-a-boo!

Playing with Legos.

We replaced one of our large kitchen windows this month! The old one James broke by hitting it with a paint brush (the metal part). We also put up new blinds!

James showing off his tie.

My little helpers!

Russian Performance:

John was in a performance with the Russian group, Uzori. This was their 20th anniversary performance. Below is from the Ukrainian welcome dance, Hopak. 

Here is a link to watch the dances on YouTube! John is the guy with the long/peppy hair.

Three year anniversary:

We celebrated our third anniversary on June 4. We went to IHOP for breakfast,  then spent the rest of the morning at the butterfly exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science.

Our fearless boy.

A butterfly landed on my pinky finger!

We got to see so many different types of butterflies up close!

John and I went to dinner (alone!!) to the Carriage House Cafe. It was a unique place! It is full of antiques. We enjoyed the delicious food, and walking around the restaurant seeing all the antiques! The owner of the restaurant was an antiques dealer before opening up the cafe which was a carriage house way back when.

Driving by you may never know this is a restaurant.

This is tatted!

From our table

A Traveling We Will Go - Part 1

In mid-January, we took a trip along part of the West Coast.  We were gone from January 15th-29th.

Our trip went well.  James did very well despite being in his car seat for so long. John did all the driving, and I was back and forth from front to back either navigating for John, or keeping James amused. We had a small box of toys that he would go through throughout the day, and eventually I would just end up giving him the whole box loaded with the toys for "something new"! Keeping the box in the car even when we were in other places kept the toys fairly 'new' and exciting for the day(s) of driving.

James being cute :)


On our first day we stopped in San Antonio about 1pm to tour the Alamo.

 

In front of the Alamo.

 

 

This was a shrine on the property of the Alamo. We weren't able to tour the inside due to floor renovations. The architecture is pretty intricate!

 

 

The sprawling live oaks were around the property. They are huge!!

We left about 3:30pm to our reservation at South Llano State Park in Junction, TX (The LAST town of civilization before El Paso!) and arrived at our site at 5:30pm. We tried to quickly get camp (Tent, and camp stove to make dinner) set up despite it being really cold.  John had a realization of how cold it was when after I had washed dishes from dinner, he went to pick up our soup pot off of the park bench to put it away, and it was frozen to the bench! This was in a span of no more than 10 minutes.

 

James and I warming up and getting the tent ready so we can go to bed.

 

 

The next morning the camp ranger said the temperature dipped down to 14 degrees! John's contacts were even frozen in the solution in their case! Thankfully we had a heater and plenty of warm blankets, so we survived the cold. We have that out of our system, so we won't be camping in weather that cold anymore! We forgot to look at the weather before we left home...Next time we will remember to check!

 

 

Our camp. You would never know that it was 19*F when this was taken!

 

 

Our hose froze...After letting the water run, it finally spit all the ice chunks out. :) The piece on the bottom left was at the opening of the hose.

 Despite the freezing temperatures, the night sky was like nothing I have ever seen before! Such a clear slate blue night sky - And so many stars!! With no lights around us, we could see nearly every constellation in the sky! God's creation is so beautiful! Living in the suburbs, there are too many lights around us to see very many stars.

The next evening we arrived in Alamogordo, NM, to stay with a family from the A Candle in the Window Hospitality Network. (To learn more about the Candle in the Window Network, visit their website.) They were a very sweet family of eight. We actually stayed with a different family than we originally planned to stay with due to the first family coming down with a virus, so we stayed with some friends of theirs.

 

The sweet family (minus the husband who had to leave early for work) that we stayed with for an evening.

We arrived in Chandler, AZ. at 5:30pm on Thursday to stay with my Pepere (Grandpa) for a couple days. The first morning we stopped at the house I (Megan) used to live in. It was fun to reminisce and for John to be able to see some of my past!

 

My old bedroom is the front right window.

 

 

James enjoyed playing with Pepere's dog, Old Cyrus.

Later in the morning we went to a place called "Hole in the Rock" (Quite a fitting name for the place). It's a large rock formation with a large hole in it. At the top, we were able to see the whole city of Phoenix. It was quite a view!

 

Hole in the Rock before going up.

 

The city.

 

At the hole in the rock.

 

John, James, and my Pepere!

 

All of us.

 

John and James looking out from the top of the rock over the city of Phoenix.

 

Me and my Pepere!

 

My Uncle Nathan was able to visit with us the few days we were there.

This was taken the morning we left.

We left Saturday morning at 8am to drive to California to visit my friend Ali in San Clemente (south of LA) in the early afternoon, and then to San Diego in time for dinner with John's Grandpa.

 

Us with my friend Ali. We met at a beautiful park in San Clemente.

Camping - Fun, Fun, Fun!

The weekend of October 12th we went on a camping trip to Pedernales Falls State Park just West of Austin. It was an enjoyable weekend marveling at God's creation and fellowshipping with friends and family.
The days were warm, and we did have some heavy rain in the middle of the night Saturday,  but we stayed dry. Hooray for big plastic tarps!

James did great on the trip! He loved being outdoors, and he really liked the camp fires! Just like his Father! :-)

Packed and ready to load the van!

On the road! James passing the time. :-)

We brought his Johnny Jump-up (which he LOVES) ans it was a good thing we did! It served as an extra place to put him aside from being held.

At the overlook to the falls. It was really low this year so it was more of a cascade than a fall.

James really liked the backpack! 

Checking out the water.

The scenery was beautiful! Here is a cave with a large boulder stuck in it!

A stick holding up the rocks. ;-)

Enjoying the views!

James ended taking his morning nap. He gradually was getting hunched down in the carrier as we walked and climbed. He's just starting to wake up in this picture taken between the carrier and John's back.

A big boulder to climb!

James checking out a puddle.

I climbed through a small cave and climbed out the other end.

On our drive home, we saw a rainbow!

Look closely - It's there just above the cloud!