Our newest Aggie

 Allia opened her acceptance letter from Texas A&M last night! We are so excited and proud of her. Whoop! (That was quick considering we just submitted her application a month ago).

Fire Station Tour

Our homeschool group went on a tour of one of the newer/larger fire stations. The kids really enjoyed it and learned a lot! It was a very busy day with a park picnic after and then choir in the afternoon but definitely worth it.

Pumpkin patch

 We actually found an afternoon that everyone was free (at least for a little bit!) so we took advantage and made our pumpkin patch visit. Allia took some photos with her nice camera, and I took some snapshots, while everyone picked pumpkins and threw the football in the big field.

Cecilia wanted to take a photo too...

We are hoping some of the pumpkins survive the warm fall we are having so we can make lots of yummy pumpkin bread after Thanksgiving. We will see!

Fall Gathering

We had a visit with family at Lito and Lita's house and met some cousins visiting from the Dominican Republic. It was short due to such a busy weekend but lots of fun!

Homecoming

Allia and Mariana both missed the chance to go to homeschool homecoming after mistakenly not being put on the waiting list for tickets (they sold out in August!). But thankfully some sweet friends from church asked them to their school homecoming. They had an awesome group, and a friend of ours took some beautiful photos of them before they headed off to dinner, the dance and hanging out afterwards

A little getaway

 Austin had a conference in Dallas, so we left the older kids here for school/jobs/etc. and took the youngest 3. Conveniently, the conference was at the Ritz-Carlton, so that was where we stayed! It was really amazing!

We arrived late Sunday afternoon and quickly checked in so we could go visit with the K family. The hotel was beautiful, the room spacious, and they even had a coloring book and hotel scavenger hunt for the kids with a stuffed animal reward for completing it. All the door opening and fanciness took a little getting used to but we "Dallas-ed up" as Austin started calling it. (I even wore my big dangle earrings!)

 They were already hard at work while Austin and I readied the room. Thankfully it had plenty of space for all of us, although sleeping in one room with these guys was not my favorite part of the adventure since I am a light sleeper. But it wasn't TOO bad. ;)

 Fun dinner with friends

We left Anastasia to stay the night there and headed back to the hotel. Austin and I explored the hotel after getting the two little ones to bed.

The next day we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast since the conference started closer to lunch. We did a bit of school and then headed over to hang out some more with the K family.

We went back to the hotel that afternoon for a swim and then dinner with Austin. The pool was nice and heated so it was a great chance for the kids to have some more fun and me to squeeze in some exercise. It was on the second floor terrace which we thought was cool.

 The next day we ventured out of town to meet up with some neighbor friends that moved away earlier this year. We had a nice little visit with them before visiting the zoo that afternoon.

They loved the meerkat and decided we need one for a pet. :p We also learned that a porcupine is a rodent.

That was expensive lettuce but totally worth it. What a cool experience!

We went for another swim before meeting up with the K family for dinner out on the town.

We thought we were checking out the next morning after breakfast, but Austin discovered he had to host a zoom meeting at 11:30. So after receiving permission for a later checkout, the kids and I walked to this nearby park to play for a while. These giant building blocks were so fun!

They were intently building creations when a littler fellow decided to start crashing their stuff. I reminded them about how when we had smaller people in the house we would build towers for them to crash so they could have fun too without destroying our creations. So they started doing that and probably had more fun with that than their own building. Sebastian kept trying to build the tower taller and taller. The little boy's grandmother even complimented them on playing so well with him. :)

We had lunch at a favorite cafe of mine nearby, went back to the hotel to check out and headed home. It was such a fun getaway and a nice chance to focus on fun with the younger kids. I had plenty waiting for me when we arrived home so it was a crazy end of the week but totally worth it!