Home Again Home Again Jiggety Jog

Sorry, no new pictures. We made it to St Louis about 1030 PM (before the time change) so actually 1130PM and by the time I had my shower it was probably closer to 130AM before I got to bed. After Church we went to a Science museum for a short time before heading home. We intended to go to the zoo but both parking lots were full and people were walking over a mile for curbside parking. We decided if the parking was that hard to find we didn't want to deal with the crowd that all those cars brought. I would have to spend more time watching my children than looking at the animals.

Jolene keeps saying she doesn't want to go home, she wants to stay at another hotel. (No Thank You) If it wasn't for today being Sunday and needing to get up for church we probably would have pushed through till we got home just to be there. At this point we have approximately an hour to our house, Lord willing.

Some things about Texas that stood out to us are: speed limits on main roads are 70 during the day and 65 at night. This includes roads like 604 in Ohio or 91 in Illinois. They have large shoulders for slower moving vehicles to move over and let others pass.

McDonalds in Texas know what "Spicy" means. Up North you order spicy chicken and can't tell much difference from the regular. On their dollar menu I ordered 3 double-cheese burgers and 3 spicy chickens (children weren't with me to ask what they wanted)! I ended up eating the chicken and feeding the buns with the fixin's to the children. One bite told me they knew what spicy really means :)

I can't remember if I said this earlier, but our children thought that every person that wore cowboy boots and a hat were real cowboys!

We drove through mostly run down communities. Houses very unkept and some falling in.

Texans are very proud of being Texans. Texas flags everywhere. Billboards advertised specifically to Texans. We bought Texas Shapes pretzels. The Lone Star on Interchange overpasses. I didn't take notes but these are some of the things we remembered.

That's it for the Texas Adventure 2007 unless something noteworthy happens in the next 20 minutes.

I don't know when I will be blogging again as I get to go back to turtle-speed internet and no long hours in the van to compensate.

San Antonio, Texas

"Remember the Alamo"

San Antonio Riverwalk

River walk boat tour

Our tour guide told us he had family members fight at the Alamo. "Yeah" he said, "it was my aunt and uncle a couple of weeks ago, they about got kicked out."

This is at Cabella's near Austin. It was a neat store to look around.

They had a pretty neat target game. Whatever target you shot closest to would move. You would get points for hitting the target right on.

This was pretty common even on our vacation days.

This morning we were up early, we loaded the van before we woke the children, had them dress quickly, ate breakfast and were on the road around 8:30 AM. We stopped at a couple growers so Chad could look over their planters now that they are done planting.

Now we are on the road with our ultimate goal being St Louis for church in the morning. Don't know if we'll make it that far, perhaps will stop short and finish driving in the AM. We hope to be in our own beds Sunday night. It will be interesting to see how this next week will go. I did buy some frozen meals to help us get back on track quicker than me having to cook right away although I am looking forward to some home-cooked meals.

South Padre Island, Willetts, and Zapata

This is how the children have been sleeping, with Jubilee in the pack-n-play.

Here we are at South Padre Island. Just a little wading...

...a little playing in the sand...

...building a moat, and...

...OOPS! a little swim...

I was blessed to have the privilege of seeing it all happen and getting a couple quick shots in.
Jared thought it was as funny as I did. Thankfully I knew they would end up wet and had dry clothes waiting in the van!

Jolene didn't fall, she was sitting and loving it all.



Jubilee took awhile to warm up to the sand and the Gulf. She didn't like being dirty, but when Chad got some bowls and buckets out of the van to play with she warmed up pretty quickly. She never did like the Gulf but was quite pleased with the mini-lake Jesse dug.

The whole crew!
We had lunch in Alamo, Texas with Roy and Donna Willett our neighbors from when we lived in Woodhull. Funny how we come all the way to Texas to see someone who lives an hour to an hour and a half away at home. We enjoyed a good lunch and visiting. They sent us away with a lemon from a neighbors tree. LL envisioned having it in her water, but it's about 8 times as big as a normal lemon. We will have to wait till we have a refrigerator to store the unused portion.


We arrived almost late for church last night, Sony and Dorothy Schultz (Gary's parents) from Oakville, Iowa invited us to stay in their camper since we did not yet have a hotel room. They have a small house they live in so we had the camper to ourselves, it worked out very well.

This is the group we ate breakfast with, they spend their winters in Zapata, a few live here full time.
Dorothy is beside Jubilee and Sony beside her.

Jubilee gets woken up every morning and short naps on the go, it will be nice to get back on routine when we get home. This was at breakfast this morning.

Texas State Aquarium, Corpus Christi, Texas

Tuesday we visited the Texas State Aquarium, also in Corpus Christi. This has been a highlight of our trip. They had various shows throughout the day featuring ocean or river life.

They had a neat entrance to the aquarium.

The favorite of course is the dolphins. We watched two shows because they don't have the dolphins jumping in each show. It was definitely more educational than Sea World type of show, not quite the entertainment (jumping and such), but for a fraction of the cost.




It was too crowded for me to see this show without crawling in front of everyone, so from what the boys tell me this diver was feeding fish. Why he had to be in with them I didn't find out.


This was just a cute place they had for children to poke their head through and the fish would be all around them.

Baby Alligator

Petting baby alligator.

Interesting tidbit we learned.

Stingray Shuffle - Stingrays aren't out to hurt you, when you step on it's head it's response is to swing it's tail in defence. The tail has sharp barbs on it. They said it feels like fire and has to be surgically removed because when you pull it out it is like a sarated edge knife cutting everything in it's path. When you are in shallow water where stingrays can be found, you keep your feet on the bottom and shuffle them instead of walking, they will get out of your way! At the aquarium they trim the barbs like fingernails and we were able to pet them when they swam by.

USS Lexington, Corpus Christi, Texas

Monday morning we drove to Corpus Christi and toured the USS Lexington. It is a retired Navy Ship turned into a museum. It was very interesting, the children enjoyed it too which is a good thing. A lot of times we fear that we are going to spend a lot of money and they are going to be bored.


These are pictures of an old brigade (jail). I didn't get a whole lot of interesting pictures so thought I would put these in of the children.

This is in the women's berth's (sleeping quarters). Sorry if I spelled that wrong Mark.

We stayed at the Knights Inn and had a gulf view from our room. Chad and Javan watched the sun come up the next morning.

Ringger Farm

Kyle, this picture is for you!

On our way to Bastrop, TX, we had the detailed directions on our personal laptop e-mail, but Chad liked the map on his Precision Planting computer. So we were high-tech all the way. :) We arrived at the Ringger farm late Wednesday night and Chad left again Thursday morning to go back to Hillsboro and then returned late Friday night. Saturday we spent exploring their 50 acres and taking naps.

Their property was all fenced in so the goats just followed us around, the kids (children) ha ha thought that was pretty neat.

Jubilee loved the animals. She has no fear. She would follow them around (even the donkeys!) pointing at them and even patting them when she could get close enough.

Hogan milking a goat.

Javan trying to milk a goat.

This is the Ringger family. From left to right is Serenity, Hogan, Gideon, Eli, Dale (father), Boaz, Amy, and Jasmine. We stayed in their cabin at the farm but spent quite a bit of time at their house in town. Saturday evening we had supper at their house and then a singing afterward. Greg and Wendy Braker from Lamar were there from Lamar, MO. Greg was the minister for Sunday services.

Gideon and Dale

Jubilee and Jasmine

Hogan and Jesse are just a couple months apart, the boys all enjoyed playing together.