The 13th was a nice relaxing day. I got some pictures of the animals hanging around here.

Hummer the llama. He was extremely skittish when he came here but he is has been trusting people a lot more and venturing further in his field.

(Oops…I forgot to post this last night. Here is yesterday…)

Every day we have woke up since being here Zoe excitingly exclaims “Mama! The SUN is out!” It’s the best start to her day.

Mason and Zoe in the sandbox. You have to get out there first thing in the morning to beat the heat. It’s in a great position too to be in the shade.

We got a wonderful treat today! Greg’s sister, Jentessa, lives about a hour away and today she came over to see us! It was great to see her and visit. She almost left with a kitten :o)

~ Merriann

So, you get another one today since I am playing catch up. Don’t forget to scroll down to see the 1st one.

Today we got the see the big town of Poolville. As the history story goes back in the day it was a booming town. It received it’s name because of a “pool” of water that never dried up. The towns people always had water. Well, it has dried up now for the most part but, one famous store remains…Willhite Seed Co.

They are a famous watermelon seed supplier shipping all over the world. They even had a little article written about them in the latest issue of Mother Earth magazine. We’re talking BIG people.

The post office is just beside Willhites (with a whopping 284 boxes) and down the little alley to the right are 2 small churches and around the corner is the elementary and high schools. Apparently there’s a town square right in front of Willhites but we were so busy with the famous seed company we forgot to look out the other window in the car to get a picture of it. Well that’s it folks…that’s Poolville, TX.

~ Merriann

Our afternoon swim was interrupted with a trip to the emergency room. Zoe ended up needing stitches in her arm after falling from the pool deck and cutting her arm on the metal pole. Luckily it was a nice clean gash and didn’t hit any major veins. We were able to get the bleeding to stop within a few minutes and wrapped in up to head to the hospital. According to the doctor she got three stitches but, we have decided it was really 5. How can you not count the knots on either end? I mean after all, they had to stick the needle through there and it is holding her skin together. I didn’t get any pictures at the hospital. Zoe wasn’t real excited about them at the time and the doctor and nurses didn’t seem like they were either. I probably should have snapped one anyway but I didn’t. Oh well.

So, we are on day 3 of our trip here (starting our second full day). But lets start with Day 1. Our trip started at 2:00 am on Wednesday morning as we threw the final things into bags and headed for the airport. It was my hope that Zoe would fall asleep again on the way down but no such luck. She was wide awake and ready to go.

First thing first…find our plane.

Once we got to the airport, got our bags checked, got through security and found our plane we had about an hour till boarding. We passed the time going on the people movers, finding unusual artwork (below) and grabbing a bite to eat.

Zoe was very excited to get on the plane. Everything went pretty fast (no having to wait for hours and the runway). But, not quite fast enough for Zoe. As we were rolling out she asked about 50 times, “Are we flying now?” Nope, not yet.

On the plane and ready for take off

She did great on the flight and even slept for about an hour. I was very happy I brought our headphones. I forgot they have a number music stations you can listen to and she loved it. We did have a fun experience in the bathroom on the plane. Zoe learned to ask what a button does before pushing it. While she was sitting on the toilet she pushed the flush button and, of course the loud suction noise followed. Shock shown on her face as she grabbed hold of my leg and tried to stand up but there really wasn’t room (I was surprised we were both able to make it in there at the same time). How long this lesson will last will be discovered when we returned home.

We landed early and only had to wait a short period of time for the other plane to leave our parking spot. We got our bags and met my sister and were out of the airport in no time. We made a “quick” trip to the store to get 4 things and ended up leaving with a basket full but, we grabbed something to eat and started for the house.

Overwhelmed by the animals at the house Zoe took a while to come inside. Once we got things kind of situated we had just enough time to change for a swim. Sis and I took a little too long getting out there and first so Mason and Zoe started racing on the bikes. Is this not the coolest bike ever? This bike is awesome! Serious off road tires and adjustable for a lot of growth.

Zoe & KC

(I know it looks terrible but he jumped right in front of her last minute)

And we finally got in our swim. At first she had quite the death grip on me when I got in the pool with her but she quickly loosed up and became more and more brave. She hung out by the ladder when I didn’t have her but she loves going under the water and popping back up.

Zoe & her cousin Mason

So, that was day one. Long day and a lot of new stuff but tons of fun. I know it was crazy detailed but it was more for my benefit than yours :O) Although, I do hope you enjoyed it. More to come tomorrow.

~ Merriann

This last weekend we headed down to Lake Retreat for their Helping Hands weekend. Lake Retreat is a Christian kids camp and conference center. Each year over Memorial Day weekend families volunteer to head down and work on various projects they need to complete for the new camp year to begin. We arrived Friday afternoon. Played games that night and got up nice and early for the Saturday work day. They weather was perfect (especially since most of the projects are outside). Sunday is play day. They open the lake for a while and you can take the boats out. Greg did a little paintball (one of the highlights). Monday morning projects were finished up and after lunch we headed home. Tired and ready for our own bed. It was a great weekend and we are ready for next year!

Some highlights…

Everyone lends a hand.

The masive tire swing!

Zoe was able to drive the bobcat and clear some logs and brush.

~ Merriann

It probably hasn’t seemed unusual that we haven’t posted in a while since I am not the best consistent blogger out there but, this time we had a reason. Our computer decided (just on a whim) to stop. It just froze up, turned off and had the slight smell of burning electronics. So we had the lovely time of being without a computer for a little while. (and anyone who knows Greg understands how even a short time without a computer can be a very long time) He was lucky to have a computer at work he could check. I, on the other hand, did not. All the best stuff was posted on Craigslist while I was out of commission :O). But we are back now and all is good. I am fortunate to have married a man that does the whole computer thing and just builds us one instead of having to actually buy one off the shelf. It saves a lot of money.

This also happened at the same time my car, Ginger, (yes we name our cars) needed to have some work done. And of course once you take them in for what you know is wrong they will inevitably call you with more things. We paid them to take care of some of the bigger issues and Greg took care of the other things himself. (he just gets more and more handy)

Well, that’s about it for now. There are no pictures today. We have misplaced the cord to get the pictures off the camera. Our laptop had its own little spot for the card. Now that I know its missing we’ll find it soon.

~ Merriann

So, we are officially going to the Virgin Island in July for my sister-in-law’s wedding. Wednesday I spent about 4 hours total getting tickets. I will tell you it was not a pretty process but now I know how it all works so if anyone needs help on their next trip, give me a call. I would advise you to not contact customer service on the matter.

But, that part is done and we have the tickets we wanted. Zoe and I will be leaving a week before Greg and going to visit my sister in Texas. I am very excited to be able to visit with them. It has been too many years since we have seen each other. She has what I am sure will look like a mini farm (the mini part may be disputable :O) and Zoe will have a blast with all of that and the pool. I will let you know later what it is like being 7 months pregnant and in Texas in July. I told Zoe we would be going on a plane and meeting her Aunt and cousins. She informed me the ant would bite. Hmm…we’ll work on that one later.

Greg will meet us at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport and we will all leave together to go to St. Thomas. (that was the challenging part of the plane tickets since our connecting flights had to match up.) We will be spending a week in St Thomas and them returning home.

Right now we are trying to figure out where we are going to stay. The hotels are really pricey. When we were in Hawaii we really enjoyed having a condo with a kitchen and washer/dryer. The kitchen made our food bill much cheaper and easier. Even on vacation you can get tired of having to go out to each for every meal. We are looking into those now in St. Thomas and I think we will be able to find a better deal with the condos.

I am very excited about going now. Once you get over the initial shock of price its not so bad.

~ Merriann