Spring Break Beach Day

Spring Break hasn't been anything special this year. Aaron and I have still had to work. The kids have been mostly home, with Bella and Abby having a fair number of sleepovers here or there. So when Abby asked if I'd take them to the beach, I thought it sounded fun!

We left early on Friday so that we could maximize our time at the coast, and we drove to Port Aransas, our favorite little Texas beach town! We swam (a little at least--the water was COLD!), built our drip sand castles, ate and lounged. Carson begged me for a kite so I left to get one for him. He had the BEST time with it--until it flew away 20 minutes later! But we watched it for ages as it drifted far far away, and we found even that to be entertaining. 

All in all, I'd say it was a really nice day--slow and unhurried. Thankful for the time I had with these kids. They're pretty awesome.

 

Snow Days!

Seems like every year at one point or another, the weather man claims that there's a chance of snow. We always get so excited, and then... nothing. So this year, I didn't put a whole lot of stock in the forecast. 

On Sunday, it started icing a bit, but nothing of substance. But that evening, it started snowing HARD (especially for south Texas)! It was beautiful! We stayed up and watched it for quite a while. 

As we were getting ready to go to bed around midnight, we realized our pipes were frozen and we had no idea where. We were out in the snow and in the well house trying to pinpoint where we even needed to thaw, and we had a blow dryer, space heaters, and more! We were so cold, but we finally figured it out. We woke up to a beautiful winter wonderland on Monday morning! School was cancelled of course. For the next couple days, we played in the snow some, relaxed, and Carson and I watched a lot of LOST. (This is all between rolling power outages, but ours were very consistent and reasonable lengths of time, which was not the case for so much of Texas.) Wednesday the snow finally melted for the most part. Abby and Aaron went to SA to stock up on groceries, because we were running low on food. Stores had been packed with lines wrapping around the building in the days previous with shelves being almost completely emptied--complete insanity--so we'd put off going. They managed to get enough to make due.

Then would you believe it? On Thursday, we got another big snow! It snowed all day long--huge, fat flakes. We were just amazed! Aaron and I went for a walk in the snow, and it was just gorgeous. 

All in all, it was a wondrous week. The kids were off of school the whole week long, and we had a great time.

I should acknowledge that we had it pretty lucky. So many (in our area and across the state) were without power for most of the week. Many were required to boil their water (we are on a well so we didn't have to). Many lost income that week. So it was hard. Our church raised almost $4000 in the weekend following to help a handful of Bandera families heavily impacted by the winter storm.

Back posted. Written 5/3/21. 

Scenic Crest

We bought a house! For years, it's been a dream of ours to move out to the Hill Country. We've looked and looked and looked. In July we decided to start looking in earnest and that we wanted to sell our house. We looked at quite a few houses. Even put an offer on one and then--after an eye opening inspection--backed out of that one. 

We came to look at this house, even though it was pretty far out of our price range. (Seems like it was around $265k.) As soon as we stepped up to the porch and saw the views and the house, we knew we were in trouble. After one walk through the house, we desperately wanted it, and left sad because we knew we couldn't get it.

We put the Sierra Trail house on the market. I kept my eye on this house over several weeks. I prayed. The price started dropping. But they weren't accepting offers that were contingent on the sale of our house. Houses like this do not stay on the market long and we just knew it would sell any day. Again, the price dropped more and we talked to Donna, our realtor, and she suggested putting in an offer since it looked like Sierra Trail would sell. So we did! Turns out they had one more offer, so we had to give our highest offer and wait. We offered more than she recommended, but we did not want to lose the house. We won and were THRILLED! 

Meanwhile we closed on Sierra Trail and moved in with the Sizemore's for a few weeks. Everything kept going wrong with the Scenic Crest house because it'd been vacant for quite a while and because it was bank owned and because things kept not working and breaking. It was a nightmare! Donna kept suggesting we back out of the house, but we just couldn't. There were several times it looked like the whole thing was going to fall through. However, at the end of the day, we ended up getting the house for $225,000 (exactly where we wanted to be), and all of the "major issues" turned out to not be such a big deal once we got in and settled.

We love our house, and as we pull into the driveway each day, we are still in wonder--"I can't believe we get to live here!"

Here are the photos from the listing. We've got a lot of work to do, but we are so excited!

Backdated. Written 2021.

Saying Goodbye to Sierra Trail

We moved into our house at 11310 Sierra Trail in the spring of 2010. We bought it for $128,000. We sold it in September of 2018 for $205,000 in five days. While we are excited for the hill country and small town living, we've grown to love this house, and finally had it almost exactly the way we liked it. Ha ha. 

Here are the photos from our listing. (Note that the super green grass is photoshopped. Ha!)

Backdated. Written in 2021.

Spring Break 2016

The up side of being at a year-round school is that we got a two week Spring Break! It came just in time, and we loved every second of it! Here's a little snapshot...

Aaron brought me a card and a cupcake to work to celebrate Spring Break.
Yes, it has been that kind of a year.

Carson learned how to mow the lawn.

Aaron and I got to squeeze in a few dates during the break too.
He's my favorite.

Since we usually do "that church thing" on Easter, that means we typically have to put off our Easter celebrations with my family off a week or two. This year we went up during spring break and got to spend a long weekend with everyone. It was great!

The kids dyed Easter eggs with Mattie.

And we spent Saturday out at Grandma & Grandpa's for our annual

Easter lunch...

...and treasure hunt!

And we spent time with cousins.

We spent Sunday morning at the church where I grew up, FBC Howe.

On our way home, we stopped to spend the afternoon with Nanny,
and we really enjoyed that special time.

We had time to finally make some progress on our master bathroom.

In addition, we spent a lot of time up at church working on projects. Our sweet kids happily came along and played and helped and hung out with us for long, long hours!

And on our last day of spring break, we had an "upside down" dinner,
with dessert (at Gables) first, and then pizza.

Only 7 weeks left and we are done for the year!