We're alive!

Hey everyone! We're alive! As you may have guessed, life has been a little bit more than crazy. I am just now finally sitting down to the computer again after 2 months of insanity, and yet I am still ignoring some of the things I need to do in order to be officially "settled" in our new home and town. There are still pictures to be put on the wall, boxes hiding in the garage to be unpacked, address changes to be made, and the list goes on and on. But, I think I have enough done right now to sit at the computer and update all of our wonderful, loving and supportive friends and family. Plus, isn't it about time I wrote a "journal entry"?!

I'll break this post up into a few different posts so that it will be easier for y'all to take breaks and even cut out the things that really aren't that interesting to you. Plus it makes it easier for me to take breaks while writing. I already have a little lady standing next to me who has woken up from her nap and can hear my even littler lady awake in her crib. Sigh. Naptimes just aren't long enough!

So, this post will focus more on our last month in Galveston and getting ready to make the move.

I had a small bucket list of things that I really wanted to do before we left our little island. Among that list was driving one of the surreys down Seawall. Gasp! I know! We lived in Galveston for 4 years and had never driven one of the surreys!!! It's not that expensive and they're everywhere! I don't know how we just never did it! Well, I sorta do. We didn't want to do it when the tourists were heavy, or when it was too hot outside. And time just got to us and we never went. So, I determined that a couple weeks before we moved we would take one out for Family Home Evening. It was so fun! It was a very nice, "cool" evening. Well, at least it was windy and that helped to push the heat away :).

It was hard to get a picture of it, but Hannah enjoyed putting her arms up and squealing as we went. So cute!

Lydia did too :)

They had a lot of fun! And so did we :).

 

Afterwards we walked around Murdochs. It's definitely the best beach shop on the island! I love all the cute home décor there! I wish I could buy it all :). And I love watching the hermit crabs (and reminiscing on my past hermit crabs: Crabbe, Goyle, Mooney, Sprout, and Draco).

Also before moving we got to celebrate a couple of graduations! The first of which was Lydia! She completed her first year of Joy School. Unfortunately she came down with the flu on the last day at school. She went to school fine, but around lunchtime she started complaining of her stomach hurting. So, she moped around during the short little graduation and we didn't get any good pictures. When we got home I took her temperature and sure enough, she was sick. Poor girl!

Ya, as you can see, she really wasn't feeling good. But we are still so proud of Lydia! She had a blast doing Joy School this year and we are so excited to start a new one in Temple :). Thank you Whitney, Stormie, Beth and Afton for doing this with us!

 

 

I'll write more about the 2nd graduation in a separate post. After all, I think David deserves at least that much :).

 

 

Other things that we got to do before leaving G-Town include going back to Brazos Bend, going to the Sand Castle competition, going on the ferry one last time and seeing the dinosaur exhibit at Moody Gardens.

 

We enjoyed one last visit to Brazos Bend State Park. It is a must see! I love it there! However, I would recommend the cooler months. Not just for your own comfort, but also for the alligators! You get to see a whole lot more when it isn't so hot and they aren't all at the bottom of the lakes.

We all got to touch a tarantula! It actually still had the venom in it. The ranger said that they actually aren't as poisonous as people make them out to be. I'm not sure I completely believe him. But it was cool in a creepy way.

And Lydia was fearless in petting the baby alligators and snakes! Go girl!

Lydia wanted a picture taken doing everything! It was cute :).

The hiking crew: David's family came out for graduation and stayed a few days. So, we have Clay, Matt, David (with Hannah on back), MaryLu and Lydia.

We mostly just saw turtles this time. It was too hot for the alligators, I think. But I still enjoyed it.

The few alligators that we did see were enjoying the water.

Hannah enjoyed taking a few steps and playing in the rocks/dirt.

Lydia, unfortunately, took a huge spill on the playground and wound up being carried with ice for the last little hike before we decided we needed to call it quits and take her home. She wound up in the urgent care that evening because she continued to complain about her clavicle area and we wanted to be sure it wasn't broken. Fortunately it wasn't. But she enjoyed getting medicine for a few days when she complained about it hurting! I think she got to the point of crying wolf just because she liked the medicine. Why do they have to make it so tasty?!

 

 

Galveston hosts a Sandcastle Competition every year. We made it our first year there and now our last! They are so fun to see though! 

This one is a "sand-witch"

A lot of the entries made fun of the cruise getting stuck out of Galveston. I guess they enjoy "potty" humor :).

I thought this was a fun one. It was called "Frost bitten".

I can't remember what this one was, but it's a fun little castle.

This one is for the "Gun Show"

I can't totally remember the theme of this one, but Lydia enjoyed sitting on her "throne"!

This one was my favorite though! Such a cool castle!

And Lydia just had to make her own castle after it was all done! She is sure going to miss all that sand!

 

 

 

One of my favorite [free] things to do in Galveston is go on the ferry. It's so fun to see all of the dolphins in the bay! And I'm actually starting to enjoy feeding the seagulls as well :).

 

And you even get cute happy babies during the snack break :)!

 

 

And we made a couple visits to Moody Gardens before we moved to try to sink in all the fun things! I didn't take pictures of most of the things there because we have been to the Aquarium and Rainforest so many times and it's hard to take them at Palm Beach. But I did get some of the dinosaur exhibit. Lydia LOVES dinosaurs. Her favorite one: the triceratops. I think it's because she likes Sara in the Land Before Time. After all, she's the only girl. But she knows and recognizes them by name :).

 

It was a "cute" baby!

The triceratops!

 

 







And the last major thing (aside from the graduation) was saying goodbye to all of our friends. That was definitely the worst part!!! I still get teary thinking about all the wonderful friends that we had to leave. I don't think I've ever been in a ward that I really considered a family before, but Galveston sure was! They are people that I hope to always keep in contact with and take an occasional beach trip to visit :). It sure made it that much more difficult to say goodbye when the Bishop stood up on our last Sunday and announced that since us and a couple other major families in the ward would be moving that they were changing the closing hymn to "God Be With You Till We Meet Again". But that's the kind of ward we were in. I truly love them all and will miss them like crazy! I wish I had pictures of everyone, but I have them in my heart (cheesy, I know).

 

Diana Hobbs, me & Stormie West

Lydia and her BFF, Miyah West

 

So, I wanted to add more pictures. But I just realized as I was looking for them that I hadn't actually taken more. Sad!!! I didn't even get one of our little goodbye Girls Night!!! If anyone has any of them, could you please send me some? And I promise that I will send pictures to y'all this week! Diana, I'm not ignoring you, I just hadn't even loaded the pictures to my computer yet. Sorry!

 

I guess that that is enough for now. There is still so much to write about, but that at least sums up most of what we did before the move. So, stay posted for the next catch up post coming soon!