Oh, my! Where to begin on the wonderful 3 plus days we spent in the warm state of Texas. You must realize that I have over 700 pictures (pared down from nearly 800) so I apologize ahead of time for the length of this post.
Thursday morning dawned bright and beautiful. We all went out on the back deck to enjoy the sunshine, and play with little dude Hercules.
Later that morning John and Josiah played a competitive game of chess.. not sure who won this round.
That afternoon, Mandi's sister Angie stopped by to say hi with her adorable little daughter, Selah.
Isn't she just a doll?? She was a very sweet, happy baby, and loved all the attention, being passed around for everybody to hold.
Later that afternoon John and Mandi took us all to the beach, and the threesome were kind enough to let me snap a shot of them before we ran off.
The beach was lovely, we drove right out to the edge of the water. The wind was a bit chilly, but the sunshine counteracted that nicely. Some of us waded in the water a little, but it was SO cold. If you stayed in long enough your legs became numb, so that it actually felt nice! :P
God's creation never ceases to amaze me. Beautiful doesn't begin to describe it.
John wanted Hercules to get used to water, so he carried him into the ocean.... and dropped him in. The poor thing panicked and just dashed onto shore. Afterward John would run right along the water, and Hercules would be sprinting perfectly parallel to him, but about 10-15 feet up shore. Definitely not a swimming fan.
Soon after Hercules swimming lesson fail, John and Josiah had a race up the dunes, with us girls and Hercules following on behind.
King of the mountain! Quite the view from up there.
We had quite the neat collection of sea creatures, including sand dollars, star fish, and pieces of coral.
Before we left, we decided to take a walk out on the pier.
There was this dashing little egret, that desperately wanted to sit on the rail, but also didn't want to let us get too close. So he would stand there all brave until we were almost right next to him, then off he would sail, circle around, and land farther down on the rail. Only to repeat this process again and again.
There were all sorts of neat sea birds about. Including different types of gulls, egrets, and pelicans.
We finally decided to head on home (after Hercules had a dreaded "bath" to get the sand off) and can now say that we have been on a beach in January. :)
Faith, Josiah and I had fun tagging along with John to take Hercules to puppy school that evening. Hercules is such a well behaved puppy, the best in class I think (of course it did help that he was dead tired from his run at the beach..). We had a wonderful dinner prepared by Mandi, and then had some delightfully deep conversations and some random take away games (only version of chess I'm good at) before heading to bed.
Thus ended our first full day in the strange land of Texas.
To be continued....
~Chs