Parade

 Each year there is a Children Giving to Children Parade and Texas Parks & Wildlife have a float.  Lydia & Caleb got to be a part.  It was a beautiful day and the place was crowded.  They walked from the Capital to the River on Congress.  Gloria and I met up with Harvest and friends and enjoyed all the different groups.  Caleb said Lydia smiled and waved the whole way!

 Gloria wanted to dress like Mrs Claus.  here she is waving at Wonder Woman!

Walking back to the car, we admired the shiny limestone wall :)

Fall Leaves!

 Our Bradford Pear Tree is shedding its leaves and on a nice warm fall day, its super fun to rake them up and jump in them with Summer!

At the Austin Science & Nature Center, we met Maryam there and Gloria enjoyed her preschool class on reptiles!

Happy 6th Birthday to Lydia!

Dream & Visions

Dreams and Visions:  Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World?  By Tom Doyle with Greg Webster

I like stories (I loved my anthropology classes at A&M).  You might think I read a lot of fiction (and you would be right) but nothing, not even a vampire-werewolf-love triangle, can hold a candle to real life stories of faith, forgiveness and finding your way.  They are my favorite type of stories and Dreams and Visions by Tom Doyle is full of these types of stories.  I love that he begins but stating that these are NOT fairy tales, but that he himself or someone trusted close to him, know these people and know these stories are in fact true. 

The stories are grouped by location in the Muslim world:  Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Israel-Gaza-West Bank, Afghanistan and America.  A brief history or other important information about the country is given but the focus is on a person and how their lives were changed by a vision or dream by Jesus Christ.  I was surprised by how many Christian background people also received these and how the dreams also promoted them to fully surrender to Christ and live for him whatever that meant in their situation.  And that is a serious undertaking for these no matter their background; the only story I had previously know was of the Saudi martyr, Fatima, whose amazing poem I had read.  After the inspiring and encouraging stories, the book ends with a little ‘preaching’ or as I would call it, a call to action especially for American believers.

This is an excellent book, both entertaining and convicting and I highly recommend it to anyone, whether you already have Muslim friends or are in the group that is still a little nervous about them. 

I got this book free from BookSneeze, Thomas Nelson Publishing by agreeing to review it on my blog.  

Last stop

 Back in Salado Bill and family were already there.  On Thursday we had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at Granddaddy's then played with rocket balloons in the backyard.  The kids enjoyed the wagon.  Caleb got another deer.  We watched Bernie-so funny, then headed off back of our respective 'states of Texas:  snobby Dallas and the People's Republic of Austin with women with leg hair.'

Beaumont!

 We arrived in Beaumont just before Christy and family from Georgia and realized we didn't pack enough warm weather clothes!  The weather was great and we spent lots of time at parks.  Heidi's kids were sick so we didn't see them on Monday.  Christy's family have been geocacheing and discovered there are tons of them in Beaumont parks (they have an app on their iphones) so we went on an adventure and discovered it (see the camo duct tapped container in Gloria's hand).

 Tuesday-we had a wonderful thanksgiving dinner and Nathaniel was a wonderful organizer of the kiddos, the did chalk on the driveway, played a charades type theater and enjoyed running around.    

 Wed (I was there, see I'm in this picture) Gloria wasn't feeling well but we went to a nice huge park where at first she just laid in the shade, after a while she got some energy to enjoy our chicken tender birthday lunch for Linda including decorating cupcakes.

 The park had a fun playground and also a stable and the kids LOVED seeing and trying to pet the four horses (and one donkey zebra mix!).

 It was time for us to go so after saying good bye and packing up we headed back to Salado!

Deer & a date

 We just returned from being gone for a week and a day for Thanksgiving break.  Lydia had Friday off for the F1 race (we missed the traffic and helicopters) and the whole week too.  Caleb took it off as well (yay for comp time) and we were on the road to celebrate Thanksgiving, hang out with family and lots of sick people.  First to Salado where we visited Granddaddy in rehab, Kathy was there too.  Saturday morning Caleb 'caught' a deer as Gloria says with his arrow (yay for local grass fed red meat).  Then the girls stayed with mom (while Kathy got to see Baylor beat #1 Kansas St) while Caleb and I drove off into the Hill Country for a former co-worker's wedding.  We ate in Burnet and enjoyed the winding country roads and arrived in Ingram.  Before going to the wedding we checked out an art gallery that has a 2/3 replica of Stonehenge (that you get to go inside) and an Easter Island head.  I walked around by the river and saw tons of butterflies on yellow flowers.  Caleb listened to the Aggie football game on the radio.

 Then we went to the wedding.  It was beautiful-outdoors (good thing I dressed warm, the sun was nice but once it was down it got pretty cold) with cypress tress and the sun setting on the river.  Several friends who formerly went to HP were there.  After the ceremony there were fajitas, cake and dancing.

We took the city way home to avoid deer in the dark and when we saw the lights of Austin, it felt like home. Back at my parents we stayed another day before heading to Beaumont.