{pretty, happy, funny, real} Botanical Gardens, Aggie Game, and Catch-ups!

 

~Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life~

Every Thursday at Like Mother, Like Daughter

Please excuse my long catch-up post!

{pretty} 

 A few weeks ago was our first St. Francis Nature Club at the local Botanical Gardens.  We hadn't visited since around April.  The bugs were bad and it was still really hot, but it was so nice to get out of the house that day.  I've had quite a bit of cabin fever the past few weeks.

 

By Mary Clare...

I love this one of her helping them down the stairs.  He's concentrating so hard with his tongue out!

Lunch time!  Why can't my kids sit on the benches?  They always want to be ON the table!

This poor tree is irresistible to the kids!

I think these were by Ellie

My cute crew!  Hopefully we'll get to make a couple more Nature Club visits before baby arrives!

{happy}

On October 19th, we took the kids to College Station on the Texas A&M/Auburn game day!  I'd been wanting to go for a game weekend, and our last game we attended was 5 years ago.  So we walked the campus, watched the Corps march-in, saw a few old students (my FIRST graders are now COLLEGE FRESHMEN!), and went to our church's big Tailgate party!  It was a great day, except Steven came down with food poisoning halfway through :(  Poor Daddy!

Here are the kids under the famous Century Tree

In front of the Academic Building by "Sully"

The Fightin' Texas Aggie Band!  Whoop!

The Corps of Cadets March On.  Steven was a member of the Corps, so he suggested going to watch this.  It was like a long parade! 

Reveille, our mascot

Steven and Steven :)  I can't believe we didn't get photos with my old students or our Aggie Catholic friends at the tailgate!

Checking out the horses of the Parson's Mounted Calvary, of which Steven was a member.  None of the same horses ~18 years later!

One more of our Aggie kids!

And of course the day wouldn't be complete without a trip to St. Mary's, where we met and were married :)

{funny}

This is how crazy our car rides are!  And this was before Daddy got sick and Mommy had to man the wheels.  Always an adventure!  We'll be maxed out in Daddy's car once baby arrives!

We sat down to watch the Corps and looked next to us to see a friend and fellow homeschooler from The Woodlands whose oldest son is a fish in the corps!  Small world!

Road trips almost always include a gas station stop.  Tommy picks out powdered donuts every time and eats the whole tray in a couple minutes!

 {real}

Here are some other little "real" moments of the past couple weeks, too.  iPhone pics...  

With the boys at Academy.  Lots of fun :-P

 Morning games...

Afternoon games...

I noticed MC had gone through all the newborn girl clothes and sorted and labeled them <3 br="">

The extent of our Fall/Halloween decorations.  Not really my favorite season, but maybe one day I'll get a few more things to please the kids!

Cole Park fun with the boys while the girls were at Nutcracker practice and Daddy was hunting.

Funny photos found on my phone...

And lastly, a real moment that makes me cry.  Some of our dearest friends here who were also transplants have moved back to Washington State.  I am so very sad to see them go, but happy for them that they're back home again.

We went to give some goodbye hugs yesterday at another friend's house where they were staying.  One of theirs was napping and another friend joined in the photo here.  The B family and our B family actually both have 2 girls and then 2 boys (but theirs are ages 6 and under), and they're also expecting #5.

Tommy and their little guy W are too funny.  They wanted to take the picture with their eyes closed.

And these two got into quite a bit of mischief.  They had quite a few "weddings" and lots of silly games!  We'll miss sweet little C and all her siblings.

Okay, that's enough before I start crying again.  I'm really homesick and emotional these days.  If you made it this far, thanks for tagging along while I caught up on photos.  Of course I'm still behind on the Disney recap, but I think I might have the rest of our September and October days covered.  Yay!

Hope you've had some pretty, happy, funny, and real moments in your lives this week!