It seems like I blinked once and half of August was gone. We haven’t been doing too much outside because the weather has finally started acting like August. 😉 The mornings have been relatively cool-ish (in the low 80s), so that’s when we really try to get out and do stuff (after dousing ourselves in bug spray, of course…because the mosquitoes are really bad in the mornings and evenings). This week, our outdoor outing was to the zoo. I had to get the annual car inspected so I could renew the registration, so I decided that since we were getting an early start with that, we might as well head over to the zoo afterward while it was still remotely cool. We got there about half an hour after they opened and it was not crowded at all, which was wonderful! We’ve also tried to squeeze in early morning back yard play. School starts a week from Monday, so we’re just soaking in the last bits of summer. 🙂
Wearing her brother’s old hat and old shirt. 😀Getting in some swing time.I love that they have a fun back yard to play in. I’m so grateful for Paul’s hard work that keeps the grass nice and for his skill in building things (like the swing set).Tickle attack!!Playing catch.All ready for church!Riding the Komodo dragon. 😉I think it was this picture that made me first realize just how big he’s getting. He’ll be ten in a couple of weeks!It would be interesting to go through my pictures and see just how many I have of her in front of this wall. She insists I take her picture every time. 🙂Of course the macaws started grooming each other right as I took a picture, haha. Their coloration is so beautiful! Abigail was calling them “rainbow parrots”. 😀The big one on the big hippo and the little one on the little hippo. 😉Checking out the emu.I think this was the first time I realized our zoo had three rhinos.Elephants!She was excited that the elephant was cool enough to climb on.This miniature mongoose was very curious……and so was this little girl. 😉The caracal was a little grumpy…it had its ears back and was showing everybody its teeth.He thought it was neat that the moon jellies’ tank lighting would change, making them stand out in the water.Zoo train fun! Guess who’s into making silly faces for the camera?I did get a normal picture afterward, though.My sweet boy. I also love the area that the zoo train travels through. It’s really beautiful! We love living in San Antonio. 🙂She took some of her play food to make me a “carrot cake”. The play soup was her “candle”. I love her imagination!
We’re coming to grips with the idea that school will be starting in…two weeks. Oiy! As a result, we tried to squeeze in some fun things this past week: a trip to the zoo…playing outside when the evenings allow…it’s going to go too fast! Monday’s weather was a little sketchy (we had a ton of rain fall out of the sky all at once), but the rest of the week was rather nice (other than the heat and humidity, but one can’t really escape that in August, haha).
Monday morning, we drove to the store. Halfway there, it started pouring. We waited about ten minutes once we got to the store to see if it would quit, but it didn’t, so we turned around to come home. I was at a stoplight and glanced over in shock. The lane next to me was completely covered in deep water. My lane had a little water in it, but not nearly as much as this lane did…so yeah, this is how much water fell in about twenty minutes or so! Later in the day, it stopped raining, so I headed back to the store. This same area was clear and almost dry. Crazy!Big puddles call for jeans and boots. I usually don’t wear long pants in the dead of summer, but that day I did!After a crazy busy day, I was so happy to realize it was taco salad dinner day. I love it when dinner comes together quickly!It hit the spot after a crazy Monday.I got a new fancy jar to hold some of the kids’ treats. It looks nice in my pantry, makes it easy to see how much we have left, and was only $10!D’you remember the fancy brownies I made with their fancy butterscotch sauce? I poured the leftover sauce into a jar and have kept it in the fridge for moments just like this. Yum!A zoo trip would be incomplete without a butterfly picture!The fossa was actually out (and chewing on a ball…so this large cat was acting rather like a dog, haha).The clouded leopard looked rather regal sitting on its perch.The caracal was just chilling. 🙂In front of one of several waterfalls at the zoo.Hippo time!This vulture is not an animal that is officially part of the zoo. There is just a bajillion of them that happen to hang out all over the zoo, haha.Abigail loves the pelicans…a lot. 🙂On the carousel. Joseph opted for the lion……while Abigail picked the seahorse. 🙂Last night, the weather was as perfect as can be for August. It was still a little warm, but there was a hint of a cool breeze that drove away some of the humidity and all of the mosquitoes. It actually felt a little refreshing!They were enjoying playing with the bubble gun.She made a “campfire”. She was trying to stand up the biggest weed so that it looked like flames. The sunshine coming through the trees made it feel a bit magical outside.She was using a blade of grass (that had a bushy end) like a paintbrush and was painting the leaves. 🙂This weekend was a tax-free weekend (meaning that a lot of things won’t have tax added to them), so I went to grab clothes and shoes for the kids for school. Abigail asked for boots and well…I couldn’t help but comply.11:30 at night and it’s still in the 80s. 🥵It wouldn’t be so bad except for the humidity and dew point. Those make the air feel heavy and sticky. The toads love it, though. We have so many in our yard this year! This guy is about a medium sized one (I’ve seen bigger and smaller) and kind of cute! I think he’s about 3-4 inches big.
Nine years ago today, we were in the middle of what I have labeled “the BIG move” (from California to Texas). We broke up the drive into three days. Paul drove our U-Haul and I followed behind in our car with Joseph (who wasn’t quite one yet). We knew we wouldn’t have very good cell phone reception during a lot of the trip, so we literally used a set of walkie-talkies to communicate. 😂 When we got to San Antonio, we settled into an extended-stay hotel and started our house-hunt. Three days into it, we found our house and started the escrow process. Less than a month later, we were moving into our home. It really was a whirlwind of a time (especially since we also bought our station wagon two days after we moved into our house). It simultaneously feels like just yesterday and forever ago (every time I look at how big Joseph has gotten). It was really hard moving so far away from family and everything I’d known my whole life, but we settled in relatively quickly and love it here. I just make sure to call my momma once a week to help ward off any pangs of homesickness. 😁
As for the other part of my title for this post, Abigail has been really into helping me with pretty much everything this week…whether I needed the help or not. 😂 I’ll let the pictures explain.
All dressed up for church. Abigail insisted on wearing the crocheted dress that a good friend of mine made for her…almost two years ago now (I think). It was a little short, so I made sure she had shorts underneath ( as well as a shirt since the top of the dress was a little spread out).The first installment of “I’ll help you, Mom!”: helping take out the trash.The second installment of “I’ll help you, Mom!”: loading the dishwasher. She did this while I wasn’t looking. I had to take stuff out to rinse off and rearrange a few things, but she was so stinkin’ proud of herself for helping. 😁“Just because it’s Thursday” flowers. 😍The final installment of “I’ll help you, Mom!”: watering the plants. You might wonder why she’s so…soaked. Well, I was watering, pruning, weeding, etc. outside and she was with me, playing. I was using the sprinkler for a bit to get some of the dry parts of the lawn and well, you can probably see where this is going. 😂 I didn’t notice until she was already soaked, so I just rolled with it. Then she wanted to help me water my geraniums. Never a dull moment with this child!I gave her a Mickey Mouse ice cream bar and ran upstairs to put away a few things. I came downstairs to find her making “ice cream soup”. Hoo-boy. She sure knows how to make a mess. Luckily, it was all on her plate (and face and hands, of course), so it wasn’t really that bad to clean up. Baby steps, I suppose. 😂You might live in Texas if you’re drinking a shake from Whataburger while wearing a Buc-ee’s shirt. 😂The only one in our family that is a “born-in-Texas” Texan is totally fine with her parents’ California roots. I think Abigail is wishing for cooler weather…either that or she just likes to push buttons and flip switches. 😜 Thankfully our little fireplace has separate switches: one for light and one for heat. Abigail knows she’s only allowed to flip the light one. Frankly, the sight of it is making me wish for cooler temps, too! A little picture swapping: I moved my driftwood photo over next to my flower photo. There had been just a stock photo of the moon there before (to go along with the book quote above), but I like that I now have both of the nature photos that I took at the Gulf grouped together.I had an updated family photo printed and I put that in the spot where my driftwood photo was previously. Now that wall is all family-related, which I like as well. 😊
