The Summer Adventure and Quiet Vacation...

Well, its hard to believe but the house is quiet because the four hooligans have just headed out to spend the next couple of weeks... yes WEEKS! with their grandmother Mawmaw and family in Houston. They are basically gone for the rest the month of July. They should be back the last weekend in July unless plans change.

They are going to the Zoo and down to the beach in Galveston for a weekend. Who knows what other fun and exciting things they will do! They always have a good time. I do miss the amazing museums in Houston... Childrens... Natural History... Fine Art...

Hubby and I are going to try to go out to dinner to some places we just can't do as a family either because it isn't as kid-friendly as we'd like or is too expensive for a family of 6. We might try to maybe see a movie or so. Of course Hubby has to go out of town for a week in there for work.

I already miss them and they've only been gone a few hours... its gonna be a long couple of weeks.

Very quiet but long...

Pedernales Falls

I've come to the conclusion that I'm an Oct to April camper... not a July to August summertime camper. At least not in Texas. Its just too damn hot during the summer here! BLECK!!

A friend's family and our family just spent the weekend camping and enjoying the beautiful state park of Pedernales Falls. Her three kids are the same age at Child #1 & Child #2 and they all have lots of fun together. The water was high (from the recent rains) and cool. The temperature was hot. Very hot. But it was the flies that were the worst. Swarms of them at a hint of food. Yuck. I'd forgotten about how nasty they were last year we camped here. The family that was with us last year had a screen tent that we set up over the picnic table area so we weren't bothered while we ate. This time Hubby and I ate dinner on Saturday night after the kids while walking around. The flies were just so horrific that we had to keep moving around or they would just... ick! Definitely putting a screened tent of the list of MUST HAVE for the next camping trip.

Definitely enjoyed sleeping on the air mattress over the thin mattress pad from last month. A bonus was having an electrical outlet to plug into... with an extension cord and the box fan that we brought. Having a "breeze" really does make a difference when its hot out, especially when you are trying to sleep.

The nice bathrooms and showers are also wonderful too. Its amazing how much better you feel even in the heat after having a nice cool shower to rinse the funk of the day off.

Most of Saturday was spent lazing around down on the river in the cool water. Everyone enjoyed the water and had fun.

No one was seriously burned this trip. A few spots of being "sun kissed". So I think we've gotten the kids into the habit of using sunscreen and keeping hats on their heads.

Some how we ended up not taking a SINGLE photograph. How did that happen?

Now I just need to sort through all the laundry and re-pack the camping gear for the "next" trip.

Who's amazing? Who's amazing? Yep, that would be me!!

We are a Star Wars family. Hubby and I grew up on the original trilogy... I still remember seeing the first movie in the theatre. We have all the movies on DVD and the kids love the animated series The Clone Wars... they watch the DVR'd episodes over and over and over.

And over and over and over... you get the idea.

Out of all the kids I think Child #2 is truly the biggest Star Wars fan. He got a bunch of Star Wars Legos for Christmas last year and his birthday this year... I did lots of sniping auctions on eBay. His favorite book is the Star Wars Lego Visual Dictionary... I think he's got every page memorized. Anytime he is sitting reading, that is the book he's got with him.

Well, the Star Wars in Concert is coming to Austin next week. I really wanted to take him but tickets are $65 each... eek! So needless to say that isn't in the budget.

KLRU our local PBS station had a give away for two tickets to the show... and I just won a pair. Unbelievable! Talk about total luck.

So I mentioned it to Child #2 and that we only had two tickets. One would be for him and one would be for either Mommy or Daddy. He didn't have to make a decision right now about who would take him... he could think about it for a while. Without a moment's hesitation...

"Daddy!"

Okay so I'm chopped liver??

Seriously, who is it that finds Star Wars books for him? Who reads those books to him? Who searched and sniped for the specific Lego sets that he would want off of eBay? Who takes the time to carefully swipe under the furniture and pick up any rogue Legos laying around before vacuuming any room in the house? Who listens to him wax on and on about various characters? Okay so we both do that one... Who took the time to record as many of the Clone War episodes as possible? Who found out about this concert? Who tried to get tickets? Who won said tickets??

Yeah, that would be me... guess I'm not amazing enough to be that special parent. Sigh... its hard sometimes to not be jealous when they pick the other parent...

Enjoying the beach

Well, we were talking about going camping with the kids before the weather turned really hot... yeah like it isn't already hot here... but we are talking the scorching oppressive heat that is a Texas summer day. So going to Pedernales Falls State park was gonna be the choice of camping location when I heard the morning guys on the radio talking about camping on the beach at Port Aransas. Hmm camping on the beach, the kids would sooo love that. I remember camping on Pismo Beach CA when I was a child, it was awesome and an experience I wish my kids could have. Soooo in light of recent events in the Gulf with the British Petroleum oil drilling platform exploding and continuing to pump millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico maybe its a good idea to hit the beach sooner rather than later when the oil sludge starts washing up on the sand. I've never been to Port A before so it would be an adventure for me too.

All week the weather forecast kept saying scattered thunderstorms for the weekend. Great camping in the rain isn't fun and at the beach really isn't fun. So we kept watching and hoping that it wouldn't rain. Game plan was to load up and leave Friday morning-ish and stay until Sunday afternoon. Its a four hour drive from Austin. Friday the day went out every direction but how we planned. So we thought we'll leave late afternoon and get there Friday night setup camp and go to bed. As the day progressed we decided we'll sleep at home and get up really early (by 5 am) and head out to get to the beach by mid morning. Yeah that worked... 5 am and its a massive storm outside, thunder, lightning and a gully wash of rain. Good thing we threw a tarp over everything loaded on the roof rack of the truck or it would have been a really unpleasant experience with a wet tent. Needless to say both Hubby and I rolled over and went back to sleep until the storm was over a few hours later. A friend of Hubby's was also at Port A with his family (staying in a condo) and he texted message that it was storming really bad there right about the time we had been planning on arriving to the beach. Sooo because of the Hunter Family tradition of getting a late start on a trip totally worked in our favor. If we'd gotten down to Port A on Friday we'd have been in the rainstorm in a tent with 4 freaked out kids aka we'd have been sitting in the Land Cruiser watching everything get soaked. Or if we had gotten up at 5am and headed out we would have been in the middle of that storm... don't know if the kids would ever want to go camping with us again... don't know if I'd ever want to go camping again. LOL!

So we finally got on the road and heading to Port A late Saturday morning. We did a leisure drive down and stopped at a local Farmer's Market on the way and picked up some peaches and a watermelon.

Hubby decided that he wanted to camp as far away from other people as possible... so instead of camping at Mustang Island State Park where there are shelters and electrical plugins and BATHROOMS... he decides we need to truly camp further down the coast at Padre Island National Seashore... about 4 miles down the beach away from any civilization. seriously?!?! So we didn't even get to have one of those semi-sheltered picnic tables. We were on the empty beach. Yeah got to teach the kids how to make a "cat hole" because there weren't any bathroom facilities.



It was early evening once we picked a spot. The kids went down to play "near" the water on the beach while Hubby and I unloaded and set up the tents. At one point I looked up and with the sun low in the sky and looking over the seaweed dune line between us and the kids I could see them jumping and hopping along the sand all carefree and joyous. It was that perfect Kodak home movie moment... of course the camera was in the truck at the time and the kids all wanted to pose once Hubby got the camera and tried to catch them unaware.

It was beautiful to see though.

After we got the tent set up and a fire going we enjoyed hot dogs and then later of course s'mores. I think that is really the reason the kids love to camp. LOL!

Kids also got to chase a little sand crab around for a few minutes. Especially once it vacated the tent.

Kids went to bed while Hubby and I enjoyed the evening and the stars. We even got to see a little sand mouse scurry around in the darkness.

Sleep wasn't the greatest because we couldn't use the air mattress, the pump that uses the car plug didn't get packed... so it was sleeping on a thin pad... not that great, I'm an air mattress camper now.

A good time was had by all though we made a few discoveries on items to always take with us camping... a good sun cover being one of them.

Everyone got burnt except for Child #2 who kept reapplying sunscreen every couple of minutes... he had a distinct bluish cast from the Avon "disappearing blue" sunscreen. Guess he learned from last year's camping trip to Pedernales Falls where he got blistered on his back & arms. Very bad mommy for not noticing that he'd taken his rash top off and was out of the water/shade most of the time!! Boy doesn't take his rash top off now.

Hubby and Child #1 got it the worst on their backs... definitely two crispy critters.

So I'm about to cook some mushrooms and I reach into the butter box in the fridge and...

This is what I find. It was whole last night when I cooked dinner.

Child #4 also known as the three year old butter junkie strikes again.

I originally thought it was Child #3 who was gnawing on the butter lately because the previous one I found was a stick that had been unwrapped, gnawed on and then *perfectly* re-wrapped and put back into the butter box. Very very sneaky.

Mouth VS Coffee table... coffee tables wins

What happens when a boy is so happy to have a peeled Easter egg? He doesn't see the pillow that was on the floor when he rushed around the couch and he trips...

Hitting the coffee table with his face.

Knocking out four of the baby teeth across the top of his mouth.

And biting his bottom lip almost all the way through.

Causing his older sister Child #1 to yell OMG!! when she sees all the blood pouring out of his mouth which in turn scares Child #2 causing him to cry more. Which causes his mouth to open wider and Child #1 then sees missing teeth and yells OMG again... which really scares the crap out of Child #2. Which makes him cry even more causing blood to flow all over his chin.


So I grab a towel, ice pack and load everyone up for a trip to the ER.

Apparently there was something in the air today... four other children had facial lacerations from falls within the two hours we got there. That was the longest wait we'd ever had at Seton NW. A doctor came right out and did a quick check to see the extent of his injury (he was okay) while I was at the front desk and then it was about 15 minutes before we went through triage and then it was another 40 minutes before we saw the ER doc. Thankfully Hubby met us at the ER and he took the other three kids home while I stayed with Child #2.

Child #2 even fell asleep in my arms while we were waiting.

No stitches were needed for his lip and we did a quick x-ray to see if he swallowed either of the two teeth we couldn't account for. X-ray was clear and they sent us home with some pain meds.

Thankfully they were baby teeth and were going to come out soon but definitely not the way you want them to come out.

Coffee table always wins.

That particular coffee table has now won against Child #2's mouth and Child#3's head which accounted for 4 staples when he was about 20 months old. Not to mention the plethora of bumps to various noggins over the years... and various bruises to my own shins.

Yep, coffee table always wins.



Sadly he didn't get to enjoy his boiled egg either. Doubt he'll want to eat one for a while.

Crossing the Divide

Crossing the Continental Divide in Colorado on April 2nd. Hard to believe we were in 75+ degree weather a few days earlier in Texas.