Texas Visit

We've just returned from a great visit to Heidi and William, Madeline, Abigail and Sam! 

Here's the photo album from the trip...

 

I spotted these real Texas Longhorns in a field near the DeHart's house!

We arrived on Thursday, St. Patrick's Day, in the afternoon. William's school was out that week but the kids' schools were out the following week, so that gave us adults some time to golf on Friday! Heidi and I enjoyed riding along and watching our guys golf, then at the 9th hole we skipped out and went to the really nice golf course restaurant and had a wonderful time yakking, lunching and catching up until they finished the last 9 holes and came in and joined us.

Here's cute Heidi at one of the holes. Everything was bursting out with new green leaves (see the branches above her) and we couldn't have gone to Texas at a more beautiful time!

Heidi and William

Mom and Dad

 

One of the houses on the golf course had a beautiful Redbud tree in full bloom that was easy to photograph. These trees were blooming all over!

Sunday was unusual at Glory Of Zion Church because they're spraying insulation all over the ceilings of their huge facility and it's toxic, so church was called off! Instead everyone who wanted to, gathered in the gorgeous garden on the church property for fellowship, picnics, etc. It was really fun! Madeline was invited to bring her violin and play with some of the music team as they played old hymns and fun songs on the "Threshing Floor."

The garden is organized into sections representing the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Here we're sitting on a sundial in one of the sections.

Another section has this beautiful gate. All the sections have beautiful artworks, ironwork, statues, water features, etc.

We were actually visiting our "grand dogs" as well, and this is Dolce and Mander, out on a walk. Heidi and I took them out for a nice walk before the big storm was supposed to hit.

On "big storm" day we went to the Grapevine Mills Mall to hang out and let the kids do the squirrel cage bubble things. Abby drew a lovely butterfly on her cheek.

David and Sam kept each other company while we girls did some shopping, and Madeline was able to find a darling bathing suit at Forever 21, where the prices are good and they have John 3:16 on the bottom of their bags! She's going with her high school orchestra on a trip to Corpus Christie next month so she needed a new suit.

Madeline and Abigail both have braces but are getting them off very soon! It seems like that was a short 2 years compared with how long our girls wore them!

Abby and Sam each got 5 minutes in the bubbles and enjoyed it! 

It's the last thing I'd want to do, but I enjoyed watching them tumble around in there.

The big storm finally came and really brought a steady stream of bright lightening and lots of very loud thunder, which continued all night! It poured too, but in a house sheathed with brick and double glazed windows, we really couldn't hear the rain falling. So different from our California house!

I had some money that was burning a hole in my pocket so I decided to pop for more lighting in Heidi's kitchen, where the one fixture in the middle creates shadows right were you're working! We got a pendant light for over the sink and under-cabinet lights to brighten the counter tops.

William is very handy and jumped right on it when we got home, before bowling. 

Heidi and William made a good team and got almost everything up 

before we left for home on Wednesday.

Tuesday night is William's bowling night with the church bowling team and when we're there we like to go watch. Heidi and Sam came too and it was fun.

William and one of the guys on his team that night.

Wednesday morning we all went to Panera and had a long, leisurely breakfast before we had to leave. We reminisced about when they used to live in Whittier and all the stuff we did together back then. It was sweet. I always hate leaving our family, both here and in Denver...

David and I were sitting across the aisle from each other but he had an empty seat next to him and my whole row was empty, so we spread out and had a good flight home.

Flying into LA we got a peek at the snow topped mountains, reminding us that there'd been a big storm at home while we were away. We still had a few days of vacation left when we returned so we've been relaxing, getting things done and re-orienting ourselves to home. I'm working on rebuilding our No More Crohn's website, with Erin's help, and we're almost done now, with only a few more hurdles.

Thank you Lord for family, and for warm times together.