Monday, August 30, 2010

What is That Thing?

A couple of days ago we found our first Texas bug to identify.  My husband was outside working and called for me to “Come out and see this.” I wasn’t sure what “this” was going to turn out to be. It turned out to be-this:

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Handsome guy, isn’t he? I think he looks kind of like a stinkbug on steroids.

We called the boys out to take a look and they were pretty impressed. I went online and discovered this is commonly known as a  Leaf Footed Bug, from the True Bug family. They have thick thighs with spikes on them and make a loud noise when they fly and can emit an odor when bothered. I’m glad we didn’t bother him, other than to snap his photo.

Not a bad way to start off our nature study for the year!

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Sunday, August 29, 2010

My First Official Texas Blog

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I wanted to start my post with a picture of the beautiful blue sky here in Texas. This was taken on a drive to Austin last weekend. While we were there we visited the Whole Foods grocery store, which is also their U.S. corporate headquarters. This store was huge! The bagger informed me there are three levels of parking, with enough room to house 1,000 cars. If you happen to park on the lower two levels, they will send your groceries down the dumbwaiter and valet them into your car at no charge. We had arrived there early enough to get a front row park, but I thought that was a pretty neat service.

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Life has also been very full around our new home. We’ve been spending plenty of time cleaning, unpacking, making runs to the Super Wal-Mart, looking for missing boxes and doing more cleaning & unpacking!

We have managed to squeeze some fun into our days, so that we’re not so tired from all work and no play. Our county fair started on Thursday and ran through today. We quickly learned that this little fair is a really big deal. It is in it’s 122nd year of running, and is the longest consecutively running fair in Texas. Businesses close down and school is let out on Friday so that everyone can enjoy the kick-off parade! We took ourselves down and found a cool spot on Main Street to enjoy the show.

Here’s the kiddos waiting for it to begin:

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Here are several shots of the parade participants. I found some of these to be very unique and unlike anything I’d seen in a parade before.

The first picture is a of the Jr. Texas Rangers. The next is of the Fair Queen contestants. We’re learning there are queens for every festival, fair, farm bureau, chamber, well, you get the picture.

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This is the H.E.B. float. H.E.B. is a large grocery chain around here. It’s a great store, and carries a ton of organic and gluten-free items, which makes me very happy!  My husband said the police car belonged in Mayberry.100_2313 100_2314

Conman especially liked the little cars and scooters, and bugged me to take pictures of all of them. 

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When was the last time you saw one of these driving down the middle of Main Street?

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This seems to be a slogan around here. They even had it painted on some of the horses.

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This gentleman was representing Luckenbach, which is about 10 minutes away from us.

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Lyndon B Johnson State Park is also right down the road from us. Their float represented life from the past.

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And last, but not least, the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine made an appearance. What fun!

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We spent that evening at the fairgrounds where we watched the queen coronation, ate plenty of fried foods and ice cream and wandered through the exhibit buildings. Conman was so excited that he got to ride some of the carnival rides, and we realized this was the first time he’d been to a fair. Back in California, we just didn’t take the kids to the fair, and we certainly wouldn’t have taken them down the midway at our local fair. Here, the fair was the midway.

Saturday morning my mother-in-law and I checked out some local yard sales. It was so nice, because everything is within a 10 minute or less drive! I found some Southern Living and Country Living magazines for a dime a piece and a set of 6 cute little glass jars for $1.00. I’ll probably use them to hold scrapbooking supplies.

This morning we started the day out at what we hope will be our new church. We’d attended it a couple of times on prior visits and were pleased to see it hasn’t changed much. We met quite a few people and received an invitation to attend the small group meeting this week and I was invited by the pastor’s wife to her scrapbooking day at her house. We greatly enjoyed the service, and the fact that it was a much smaller congregation than what we were used to. We finished up the afternoon with lunch at Cracker Barrel, where the boys took on a game of checkers on their front porch.

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Tomorrow holds a few errands to continue getting us situated. We plan on signing the boys up for the AWANA club that is just starting at a local Baptist Church and Laina is excited to start volunteering for the SPCA.

Whew-that’s a lot for one post, but I think I’m all caught up!

Till’ tomorrow~

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Friday, August 20, 2010

We Made It!

I'm without internet until probably next week, but I am visiting a relative so I snuck away for a minute to update y'all! We finally made it to our new home in the lovely Hill Country of Texas on Tuesday evening. It's been a little crazy and I won't bore you with the details, but we are here.


Thanks so much to all of you who have sent warm wishes my way for our move. I appreciate all of them!


I'll be back to posting soon!

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Moving Day!!

We have successfully made it to the first stop on our journey. We've stopped to visit with family in San Diego on our way out of California and intend to hang out with them tomorrow, enjoying a day of rest. Monday morning we will head out on our way again and hope to make it to El Paso.

I've taken the picture of my fluffy cat, Dallas, off my sidebar as he isn't moving with us. My aunt, who is a big animal lover, has had her eye on him since I adopted him, so he was my gift to her. I know he'll be in a good home and will have plenty of room to roam and some other animals to keep him company.


Time for bed. It's been a long week!

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Just an Update

If you've been following my blog, then you've noticed my little car is only 3 days away from officially leaving California. You've probably also noticed it's been a while since a real post has come through.

Things have been crazy busy here. We've been packing for what seems like forever. My husband has been driving all over creation looking for tires to fit his large work truck, getting cars serviced, tires rotated, running final jobs, trying to find extra drivers for our vehicles and doing who knows what else before we have to leave.

I've been doing very important things like getting my hair cut and colored, getting a pedicure, buying snacks for the trip, making the final bank run, eye dr. and ortho appointments, dr. appointments and spending hours on the phone arranging things like health insurance, auto insurance, home insurance, utilities, cancelling current utilities & phone, and saying goodbye to friends and family.

So far we've had a nice dinner with my mom and stepdad, a bbq-rib cookoff with friends and a dinner out with my brother. Tomorrow we're spending some time with my aunt and little cousin, and Friday morning I'm meeting another friend for coffee. Friday night we'll be hosting pizza at our house and having some friends and family over for a final send off. Whew-busy, busy!

But we are very excited to finally have the big day arrive. I wanted to say thanks to all of you who keep checking to see if anything new has been posted by me. I promise real soon I'll be back in the swing of things. I have a wonderful beach day to share, a homeschool convention trip to dish about and I also was going to share why I've been reading about gluten-free diets. Not to mention the new school year coming up and what I've got planned out for curriculum.

Be back soon~