A trip to Waco Zoo

Getting out of the house was a necessity and Zekey had been asking to go to the zoo for a long time.  It was one of his character chart goals and he had achieved it a while back, but the weather was uncooperative.  So, off we went.  I forgot my larger capacity memory card, so I didn't get very many pics.  

The strangest thing I saw was the crazy amount of buzzards all over the place there....weird.

Creation Appreciation Sunday

We decided to go to Colorado State Bend Non-denominational Church yesterday. ;)  It was LOVELY.  We were relaxed the whole time.  We took our time getting packed and ready to go, driving and enjoying ourselves there.  We loved every minute of it and had a good drive home.  We enjoyed our time with each other, the Lord and His creation.  Yay!  Of course, I took a ton of pics:

 Zekey discovered a vine they could swing from...

 Brea didn't see anything wrong with rescuing a hot dog off of the ground and then devouring it.

 Ailey had to have a turn on the vine and sported an almost plumber's crack in the process, ;p

 Brea in one of the cutest swimsuits ever!

 Trying to tame the plumber's crack!

 Sam at his post roastin' wieners.

 That's a studly man right there!

 Exploration time

 Had to ford the river to get where we were going....the wagon floats!  Who knew?

 Brea stuck with me....

 more exploration..

 Boys at large...watch out!

 Ler wasn't too keen on the rocks.  They kept shifting under her feet making it difficult for her to maneuver...

 Hoh yeah!

 Rocks are fun.

 Here I am! :D

 What is it with boys and the need to throw really big rocks?!

 Voyage of the afternoon treaders.

 Brea decided she needed to be in my lap.

 See my rock?

 My posse rejoined me...

 While I was sitting there...these juvenile fish, prolly trout or some such, kept coming up and nipping at my, ahem, rather longish leg hairs.  Very interesting sensation. :/

 Braden was pretending to be battling the current... ;)

 The trek back to the van was a bit chilly...bbbrrrrrr!

The girls caught a ride with Daddy. :)

Be my Valentine!

Sam and I had plans to go to the Valentine Banquet hosted by and benefitting our youth group at church.  On Monday, Braden woke up with a sore throat, but I thought it was just drainage.  Later that day, he had a fever, but I was still just observing.  He slept that night okay, but when he woke up this morning, his throat was worse and he was still feverish. :(  He was having a very hard time eating and drinking and I was thinking he might have strep, so I called the doctor, got an appointment and away we went.  My suspicions were correct and we got the necessary antibiotics, but we had a bit of a pickle.  We had already paid for the banquet and childcare.  So, Sam came up with a great idea!  He suggested I take Zekey as my date and he would stay home with Braden.  Ailey and Brea could still go into child care.  I was running around trying to get stuff for the bunnies and the prescription for Braden and decided to pick up Rudy's for Sam and Braden's Valentine's Day feast.  Couldn't let my guys go hungry on Valentine's!


I got back and purtied myself up.  Sam helped me get the kiddos ready and into the van.

There's my little Breaboops!

Here's Lerloo all gussied up, too!  I've been really loving her hair like this lately.  She has, too, for that matter. :)

Here is my handsome date!

I asked him what he was thinking about when we first started eating our salads and he pointed to the chocolate cheesecake sitting in front of him!  Haha!

After a very patient, but undoubtedly excruciatingly long wait, he finally got to dig into the chocolate yumminess....

He was very happy about it. :)

He sat all the way through the whole 2+ hours.  I think there was one other kiddo in the dining area, but we weren't close to her.  He ate all that focused attention up!  Everyone was talking with him and paying him compliments and he was loving every minute of it. I asked him two separate times if he wanted to go into the children's area and play, but both times he said he would rather stay in with me!  I loved spending this time with him. It was very special and this type of thing seems to be his main love language. :)  I'm thinking we may be doing more of this type of thing with each of the kids.  We go on mommy or daddy dates with the kids one on one to the store or running errands, but this is pretty unique.  I'm thinking Daddy needs to have a tea party with his Gracie!

We ended the night by rounding up the rest of the crew and heading home.  It was good all around.  The girls had a good time, Zekey and I had a good time and Sam and Braden had a good time.  This was a great Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

A Mac Adventure

For some time now our Mac has been slowing down and we have had issues with the cdr/dvdr drive.  I had called about the drive before our warranty ran out last year, but since the nearest place was in Austin and it would mean we would be without our computer for a time as well as the driving there and back twice in a short period of time, we just didn't make it in to get it fixed.  Lately, it all seemed to get worse, so I called Apple to see if they would just sell me the part and maybe I could replace it myself.  You can laugh if you want to, but I could probably find a youtube video on just exactly how to do it.  I'm just sayin' ;)  Anyway, the phone call didn't go exactly as I'd planned.  Because I had called in about it and they had recorded it on our account and it had been within the warranty period, the guy I talked to got permission to open a ticket to fix it fo free!  I know right?!  Yay!  Doing a dance of exuberant happiness!  Okay, so, I had a choice of taking it in to an Apple store or having a certified technician that contracts with them work on it.

I went with the technician because he is located in Georgetown.  I called up Tyrosys Corp. and explained what was going on per the instructions from Apple.  Grant, the owner, was able to look my unit up on their records and verify everything and we agreed that I would bring it in on Monday, leave it there and come back Tuesday morning-ish;) to pick it back up.  I got there, with only a slight commotion where the kids were concerned.  (Ailey is also a seatbelt Houdini and I had to stop to address that concern.)  Grant had told me on the phone to call him when I pulled up so that he could come out and carry the computer in for me.  Yeah.  I'm a fan. :)  I followed him in to make sure of the arrangements and told him that I noticed the screen was a bit hazy and he confirmed my suspicions that it was probably dust.  I asked how that generally gets taken care of and he said that it gets cleaned when you bring it in for its yearly maintenance.  Hold up....what?!  I didn't know we were supposed to be doing any sort of yearly maintenance!  I didn't get that memo.  Oops!  I was used to the yearly upkeep of a pc, which means you hope it runs well for the first year, makes it through the second and then you most likely will have to get a new one after that...  Okay, so I told him that since it was there and he was gonna have it apart anyway to go right on ahead and maintain it. :)  So, I left it with him and had to stop at Taco Bell for a potty break and lunch for all four of us under $8.  Yep.

That night was pretty weird without the computer.  No emails, no surfing, no ability to work on lesson plans for co-op, no netflix, no zoodles for the kids, no facebook for Sam....weird I say!  Our computer is way too integrated in our lives....gonna have to ponder on that, I think!

Tuesday dawned bright and early thanks to my two girls who had apparently made plans with each other to both be awake before 7.  Really gonna have to work with them on that! Since, Braden's homeschooling on Monday went nearly up to bed time because we didn't get any done that morning, I decided to do several parts of it before we left to go pick up the computer.  It actually worked out well and we got a good amount done.  Then, we all loaded back into le van and headed back to Georgetown to go and pick up our very much-missed computer.  This time it was smooth sailing all the way there.  It helped that I had the ipod with the kids favorite music on there...like toby mac and their collection of vbs songs from all the vbses they attended this past summer.

When I went in, he got the computer and gave me a run-down on everything he did.  Apparently, we had a whole colony of dust bunnies inhabiting our computer.  Ahem....oopsy!..sorry 'bout that!  3 years of no maintenance = dust gone wild!  We also were at 62% fragmentation.  Nice.  He repaired that.  Yay!  He also informed me of some other good practices that would help our computer live a longer and fuller life.  The fragmentation was due, in part, to our having our computer fall asleep if no one was using it after a couple of minutes.  Basically, we had our computer in a narcoleptic cycle that was throwing it into what amounts to computer bipolar disorder.  Another oops.  After that, Grant also gave some suggestions for future upkeep, like upgrading to more memory and getting an external hard drive to back everything up and then to upgrade our hard drive in the future.  He gave me a price list and I must say that it is all very reasonable.  I really love it when I find a place/person that gives me straight answers, does honest work and has decent prices for fixing things.  I found a mechanic, I have a favorite vehicle oil change/inspection garage and now I have a mac repair/upgrade/whatever-else-needs-to-be-done-on-our-computer guy.  I'm on a roll!

Before, I give all the details about this company, I do have to add that on the way back, Ailey was again practicing her Houdini tricks and I am considering investing in lots of duct tape.  Okay, moving on....

If you have a mac (or a pc, cuz he works on those, too:) and you want a calm place (unlike the Apple stores, which are always crazy busy and super noisy) to take it in to get it diagnosed/fixed/upgraded, here's the link for the Tyrosys website:

Tyrosys Corp

and here's the address and phone number:


2913 Williams Dr., Suite 220
Georgetown, Texas 78628
Phone Numbers:
512-686-0469 main
903-640-4951 fax


They also have a Dallas area location:

406 N. Center Street
Bonham, Texas 75418

Phone Numbers:

903-640-4900 main
903-640-4951 fax

Don't forget to tell Grant I sent ya! *

*(Disclaimer: I was in no way compensated or am I likely to ever be compensated for this unabashed plug for Tyrosys Corp.  I just happen to like the service I received and thought someone else might like to have the same kind of great experience I had.  AND telling him I sent ya just lets him and his staff know that word of mouth advertising is at work!)

A River Sort of Runs Through It

We decided to go to Colorado Bend State Park to just hear a whole lotta quiet for an afternoon.  Its an almost two hour drive, but we get to drive through Lampasas, which has some really neat old houses.  The rest of the drive is through the countryside and then it takes fo'eva to get to the river from the beginning of the road to the park.  It is also nearly all caliche "paved".  Now, some of you remember the, um, incident regarding our previously-ours motorhome pulling the van on a tow dolly taking on a concrete barricade in a construction zone and not winning, while at the same time making the passenger-side door crunchy where it meets the wheel well.  Kay.  Because of the aforementioned crunchiness, there is a bit of a gap in that area and basically it makes a mini wind tunnel.  Now picture this through your mind... super dusty caliche road for about twenty minutes at around 30 mph, mini wind tunnel sucking in said super dusty caliche road for about twenty minutes at 30 mph.  Normally, our dashboard is a slight gray color due to the dust build-up on the black that gets cleaned a good 2 times per year, but because we had a minor "sand storm" in our car for, say it with me now, twenty minutes at 30 mph, it is now a powdery white color, along with every other surface on the interior of our van.  Sam was also powder-coated since he was the one sitting on that side of the vehicle.  I think he did a good rendition of Sean Patrick Flanery as Jeremy in Powder.  
On the way back, we did get a clue and plug the hole with a towel.  Yep, that was much better. :)  Especially, because it was now me who was sitting on that side. ;p  We got to the park, finally, and enjoyed ourselves for about an hour/hour and a half.  After that, the kids who decided they needed to fully immerse themselves in the water of the not-so-at-this-point-in-our-drought river and then came to the conclusion that they were cold once out in the wind.  I was getting fatigued carrying Brea in the Moby and sweating profusely because of same Moby, while hiking over rocks and sludge in the river and at the same time keeping Ailey steady on her feet.  When we decided that it was time to head back to the van so that I could chill and feed the Boopster while Sam took the boys on a walk, we got out of the river and part of the way up the bank when Ailey decided to poo-bomb her britches.  By this time, Brea was getting fairly fussy as well and I was just done.  Poor Sam!  We just decided to go ahead and call it a day and head back home, with a soothing ice cream stop on the way back.  Let's just say, we are glad we have a parks pass! :)

Here are some pics of our white-ish water adventure (Totally rockin' my sun-protector, too! Don't be hat'in', cuz you know you wanna rock one, too!):

 Don't you just hear banjos playing here...