Trip to Texas--Coffey Reunion

The main purpose in going to Texas was for the Coffey family reunion.  To be perfectly honest, when I found out the reunion would be in Texas I almost stayed home and just sent Joseph.  The thought of hot, humid, miserable Texas weather in the summertime was not enticing at all.  But...the words of my Grandpa spoke to my heart...."isn't the fellowship worth it".  So we went so our kids could know their cousins.  So even though the weather was hot and miserable the trip was a success because our kids know their cousins a little better.  Thanks, Grandpa for your words of wisdom from years ago.  

Coffey family minus Aaron.

Coffey Grandkids wearing numbered shirts with their birth order.

Impromptu talent show.

Annika and Lincoln creating their own kind of fun at the vacation house.

Kimball and Rebecah cooling off in the pool.  I think
 they went to the pool everyday but one.

So many stairs!

Rebecah and Aubrey

Love my babies.  I carry them around like this rather frequently!

Morning view of Lake Travis from the vacation house.

One day Nathan and Valerie rented an inflatable water slide and had it set up in their back yard.  The kids played on it for hours!

The water slide took up the entire width of the yard.

Rebecah coming down!

Kimball and Aubrey

Wheee!

The family also enjoyed a water balloon fight.  The babies and
 I missed it since they were napping at the vacation house.

Ready for action.

Filling the balloons, I think.

Kimball getting ready to launch a balloon.

Balloons exploding all around Kimball!

Some of the younger kids enjoyed coloring on large pieces of paper in the afternoon.

We had to watch Annika and Lincoln closely so they wouldn't color on the walls!

Rebecah working on her creation

My favorite activity that we did at the reunion was visiting the Austin Aquarium.  It may have had something to do with being indoors with air conditioning, but I honestly enjoyed the animals and sea creatures.

Some interesting lizards.

The kids feeding the sharks.

Rebecah and Spencer pose for a picture.

Rebecah posing with the mermaid.  How would you like to have that as your job?

There were large bird cages that people could enter and feed the birds.
 Rebecah loved it.  Lincoln loved being up close to the birds as well, but Joseph
couldn't capture a picture of his excitement.  I stayed out because I didn't want to get pooped on!

Petting another lizard.

I love the differences between Lincoln and Annika.  Lincoln loves animals and doesn't mind getting up close to them.  Annika likes them from a distance, but gets terrified if she gets too close.  Lincoln was eager to get out of the stroller to get closer, but for once, Annika preferred to just sit in the stroller.

Lincoln with the tortoise.  

A crab of some sort.

Some pretty cool jelly fish.

Octopus Rebecah!

Kimball and Grandma posing with a pirate.

You can see Lincoln's happy expression through the aquarium next to Grandpa.

Lincoln kept closing his eyes for the flash so this was the best we could do.

A pretty "Nemo" clown fish.

Feeding and petting the sting rays.

Kimball and Rebecah relaxing in the hotel on our last night.

The kids enjoyed their Texas adventure, but we were all glad to get home to our normal routine and beds.  The day we arrived home it was a high of 75 with a slight breeze.  It felt like Heaven.

Trip to Texas--Lamb Visit

Our main purpose in going to Texas was for a Coffey family reunion, but we decided to leave a few days early so we could also visit my sister, Miriam, who lives about 2 hours from Austin--the reunion location.  

We had a nice time visiting with our Lamb cousins.  My kids said it was one of the highlights of our trip.  We last saw them in 2013.  We had a really nice time visiting them.  Saturday morning we left early to go visit Research Park on the Texas A&M campus.  It was a walking park along a little creek with ducks and turtles.  My kids enjoyed this park a lot more than I thought they would.  The ducks and turtles were just fascinating to them.  We aren't used to the heat and humidity anymore so even though we were there before 9:00 we were wilting.  I think Lincoln and Annika had the worst of it.  They were so sweaty on their heads we finally put water on their heads to help cool them off since they were wet anyway.  

Duck watching!

Joseph, Lincoln, Miriam, and Samantha

Mom and Lincoln--best buds!

Rebecah and Victoria...these two were best buds, too.  Even
though 2 years separate them they got along great.

"Come here Little Ducks!"
 Kim, Annika, Rebecah and Samantha

Still coaxing the ducks.  Samantha and Rebecah

Courtney and Kimball

Victoria and Annika playing with the doll house. 

Victoria and Annika, again.

Samantha, Victoria, Rebecah and Courtney

Kimball, Courtney, and Samantha doing Family Search together.

Sisters!  Miriam and Annette

Sunday afternoon Miriam's girls played their instruments for us...piano, violin, viola, and cello.  The girls are all very talented.  I love the rich sound of the cello.  My favorite part of their concert was when Kim and Michaela took our requests and played some of our favorite hymns.  I may not be very refined or cultured since I enjoyed the hymns over the classical pieces, but I always love listening to my favorite hymns!

Kim (violin) and Michaela (viola)

Both families during Sunday dinner.

In addition to walking around A&M Joseph and Gordon took the kids swimming in the afternoon to help beat the heat.  I don't know how Joseph and I lived so many years in the South with the heat. That's probably why I was never willing to go outside during the summer and do things, it was just too hot.  As my grandma says...You can always put more on to get warm, but there's only so much you can take off!  I think I would much rather be cold than hot.  Good thing we moved to Syracuse!

Thanks for letting us visit, Lamb Cousins!!

Trip to Texas--Plane Ride

We just returned from a trip to Texas.  We were gone 8 days and the kids experienced their first plane rides.  Actually, Kimball first flew when he was 11 months old, but he doesn't remember it.  The babies did better than I feared they would on the flights.  They still cried because they were so tired, but no one around us seemed too bothered by it.  A lot of the passengers would make faces at the babies trying to make them smile and that was greatly appreciated.

We used Jet Blue for our airline--a first for us.  I must say that I was very impressed with the Jet Blue customer service.  There were little TVs for each seat which my kids loved.  The snacks were better than just a small bag of pretzels and all but 1 flight attendant was very helpful and understanding of the babies.  On our return trip there was bad weather on the East Coast--tornado watches--so hundreds of flights around the country were delayed because of weather.  When we checked in to fly home the employee at the desk even offered to put us up in a hotel because of the delay.  She felt sorry for us because we were traveling with 4 kids, 2 of them being under 2. She said typically they don't put passengers up in a hotel for a weather delay, but she would for us. We didn't take her up on the offer because it would have meant getting home late Saturday night, but I really appreciated her kindness.  After hours of delays, we finally did make it home to Syracuse, only 5 hours later than we were supposed to.  Prayers were answered and our connecting flight was delayed, too, otherwise we would have missed our flight to Syracuse and we wouldn't have been able to get another flight for 14 hours.  Home never looked so good when we walked in the door exhausted at 5 am! 

I did lose my cell phone on our first flight or in the Orlando airport so that was a little stressful, but being without a phone is what we used to do, right?

Excited for our adventure!  Day 1 of our trip.  About 6 am in the Syracuse airport.
 And, yes, it is that bright outside at 6 am in Syracuse.  

Excited to be flying!

Seat Buddies!  Please note the little bottle in Lincoln's hand...it will show up
in multiple pictures.  He loves having little things to carry around.

A happy boy during our 2 hour layover.  The last 4 pictures are all basically the same, but Lincoln and Annika had fun singing and dancing on the seats of the airport--anything to keep them happy.

Aloha Kindergarten Celebration

A few weeks ago on June 17th Rebecah and the Kindergarten class celebrated "Aloha Kindergarten".  Since Aloha can mean "hello" and "goodbye" the Kindergartners were saying goodbye to Kindergarten as they look forward to being in 1st grade.  The kids met in the school gym and sang 5-6 songs that they had been practicing and then we went back to the individual classrooms for cake and lemonade. 

Joseph was working, but the babies and I were able to attend.  We were glad we could help celebrate with Rebecah.  After the cake and lemonade there were a few activities outside and then all of the kids went home.  The rest of the school had a full day.

This is Rebecah's class.  She is wearing a purple shirt and she
 is shrugging her shoulders a little because she saw me.  It was hard to get good pictures in the gym.

Rebecah's classroom.  Eating cake with her good friend, Danny.

One of the boards in the classroom was for losing teeth.
 Rebecah had her name up there 6 times for each tooth she lost this year. 

 

Face painting...

Rebecah with her friend, Melanie.  These two got together
a few times outside of school for play dates.

.Rebecah is excited to start 1st grade in September.  She had a great year in Kindergarten.  I think what she learned socially far out weighed what she learned academically.  It is good to know she is kind to everyone at school.