The Texas Hill Country

After our fun weekend in Aggieland, we decided to extend our visit to that part of Texas! We went on to San Antonio, but the kids weren't very impressed by the Alamo. They were ready for the next day, our trip with my sister and her family to Sea World! Shamu has reached rock star status in our house, and the build-up to seeing him live was huge!

As you might imagine, a whale that size (and there were 5 of them!) can make quite a splash. The majority of us were smart enough to stay dry, but Chris, Zachary and Megan wanted to sit in the "splash zone"! After the Shamu show, they were soaked and smelled kind of fishy, but a good time was had by all!

Hannah and Alex have gotten to be good buddies, and they spent most of the day walking together (aren't they cute?)!

No one actually rode this particular ride (the daddies thought the line was too long) but that didn't stop the kiddos from imagining the screams they would have let out if they had!

After spending a long day in the Texas heat, with tons of walking, and feeling slightly sunburned, we decided to spend the next morning at the Natural Bridge Caverns. Caves are cool, right? Wrong. The humidity in those dang things is like 80% and we had to walk for miles up and down steep, slippery rocks with 5 kids in tow. It was interesting, but I think we might need to wait until Owen is comfortable walking that far by himself before attempting it again. Those who know me well, know that I'm a klutz. Imagine then, me holding a wiggling, 35 pound child, while walking on a slippery, steep terrain, where if you fall, you might go 100 feet into the center of the earth. Not a pretty picture.

Here are Kevin, Karen and the kids before we went in, when we didn't know what was in store!

Here we are, close to the end (sorry for the bad quality, it's a picture of a picture). We were so tired and sweaty. Only 1/2 mile to go at this point (that's sarcasm, by the way)!All morning in the caverns, and all the kids wanted to do was climb on the dinosaurs in the parking lot!All in all, we had a great little vacation with the kids. Not much longer and school will be starting back up (not that any of us are complaining). Who knew that mom wasn't much fun day in and day out? Little things like this and spending time together make me happy, though, and I hope we can do more fun little trips like this. The older they all get, the easier it will get, right?