Day 6: Driving & DeEtta

We managed to get away from the Kearse's today shortly after noon. Chase and Gerren were especially sad to leave their new friends. Chase, Hannah, and Kaylee really hit it off, and Gerren and Zachery had a blast together. They were two peas in a pod!

We headed for San Angelo, TX, to finally meet "live and in person" my friend DeEtta. I have known her for almost 10 years online! Now wanting to meet an online friend may seem strange to some people, but you would have to experience the great relationships we have on the Support4Homeschool loop to understand this. It is unlike any other loop I've ever been on, and it is an incredible privilege for me to get to meet some of these ladies.

DeEtta and her husband, Mike,and 5 of their 9 kids took us all to Mr. Gatti's for pizza and games. Here are the moms and kids before going in.


The game room was a blast for my kids. They've done a lot of driving over the past 6 days, and this was just pure fun!

Landon and Jared had a lot to talk about as they are both Civil Air Patrol members.


Carys loved this merry-go-round. I understand it's one of Stacia's favorites, too.


Landon, Jared, and Mike rode the bumper cars. This game room was much better than Chuck E. Cheese, and the food was better, too--a nice pizza, pasta and salad buffet.


Here are Nolan and Stacia in the climbing gym.


The "big" boys (that includes Mike!) like the racing game.


Gerren had 319 tickets. Here's what he bought with them.


Gerren and Chase asked to go swimming when we got back to the hotel. We hadn't had a chance to do that yet, so they hit the pool for about 45 minutes. Thankfully it was an indoor pool as the weather has been cooler than normal for this time of year.


We're headed to Carlsbad Caverns in the morning!

Day Five: San Antonio

We got a late start this morning. It is a big job to get 9 kids out of the house, especially when they're so happy just playing with one another! Anyway, we did eventually get on the way and headed for Lackland AFB to see some planes. The boys took a multitude of pictures, but I only posted a few for the readers' sanity!

Landon shows Joshua something on this plane.


Carys had fun riding in the stroller with baby Caleb behind her.


Landon wanted his picture taken beside almost every plane!


We didn't even come close to looking at all Lackland had to offer, but we ran out of time.


Next, we headed to the Alamo. We had a limited amount of time here, too, and a limited amount of patience left on the part of the little guys. The Alamo is the most visited site in Texas. It is really something to see. They do a good job of telling the story.


We also took a boat ride along the Riverwalk. This is a picture of the girls. I hate this picture of me, but I had to post a picture of the girls. Hannah was 10 in March, Chase will be 10 in May, and Kaylee will be 9 in October. These three have had a great time together!


This is a picture of the boys. Gerren was 13 in March, Zachary was 12 in March, Joshua will be 4 in June, Landon is looking away in this picture (15 in February) and Caleb was born this past November. We missed Andrew (14 in March) who was visiting his grandparents this week.


Greg and the Kearse's dad, Allan, have been friends since they were little boys. They grew up in church together, and their families even vacationed together. So, we always enjoy getting together with them, although it's not as frequently as we'd like. Allan's parents still live near us in Florida, so we get to see them once in awhile there. And we've managed to visit them twice in Texas and once in South Carolina. God has been so good to give us longtime Christian friends.

Well, tomorrow we head to San Angelo to meet for the first time live and in person a sweet woman who has been my online friend and owner of a huge homeschool email loop I'm on for almost 10 years!

Day Four

Well, I'm a tad slow posting Day Four happenings as we're staying with friends and there is just too much fun to be had! (And not much quiet time!) When planning this trip, I tried to choose stopping points for overnight stays along the way where there was something interesting to do or see there, no matter how small. That was the case with our stop in Beaumont, Texas.

We got up and piddled around in the morning. Then we went to see the Fire Museum of Texas. It had some really neat old fire trucks and equipment and the world's largest fire hydrant.








After that, we headed around the corner to the Edison Museum. It was a small one-room museum about Thomas Edison. Do you know he had 1,093 patents, more than any other American ever? Amazing! Even though it was only one room, they had some neat hands-on displays for the kids. They could type a message and hear it played in Morse Code. They could watch an old, old movie. The displays were really neat.







Best of all, both of these museums were free and took only about 30 minutes each. It was a perfect way to have a little activity in a day of driving.

We hit the road about 11:10 am headed for San Antonio to stay with some dear friends of are who are stationed at Fort Sam Houston there. We stopped along the way to have lunch in the car. Landon decided to take some pictures of the "normal" things we do. LOL!

Day Three

Today began with the boys heading out for a couple more hours at the Naval Aviation Museum. The girls stuck around the hotel and packed, read, etc. Then we took Greg to the airport to get his one-way rental car home, after which we headed west. After driving about 3-1/2 hours, we stopped in Denham Springs, LA, to have lunch/supper with Ginger and her girls. Ginger is an online friend from my wonderful homeschooling email loop, Support4Homeschool. I've been a member of this loop for almost 10 years, just 4 months after it's inception. I think there were only about 200 members when I first joined. There are 2000 or so now! Anyone, this has been the year that I'm getting to meet so many of these wonderful ladies live and in person. I met Emily (who lives pretty near to me in central FL) in October. On this trip, I get to meet Ginger and DeEtta, one of the loop owners. I WILL get to meet Yvonne in Tampa and Lisa in Jacksonville someday! :-)

Here are the three attempts we made at getting a picture of the uncooperative children. My kids are on the left: Gerren, Landon, Carys and Chase. Gingers girls are on the right: Morgan and Brooke.







Gerren took this picture of Ginger and me. We were more cooperative!


After a fabulous lunch at Cocodries, we drove 3-1/2 more hours to Beaumont, TX, where we're spending the night. We hope to see a couple of local sights in the morning before heading to San Antonio. Keep reading!

Days One and Two

Well, we are finally on our way. Day One consisted mostly of driving. After seeing a play at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater Friday morning with our friends the Pillsburys, we headed to the Ocala Airport to pick up Greg. He left his truck there as this is where he has to return his one-way rental car. We left there about 4:30 p.m. and headed for Pensacola. We wanted to get a good chunk of the drive out of our way so that we could spend the entire day Saturday at the Naval Aviation Museum. So, we drove about 4 hours to Chipley, FL, where we stayed in a nice Comfort Inn & Suites. We had dinner at Zaxby's in Tallahassee as we didn't want to spend too much time. We'll probably stay at this hotel again next month as our niece Rebekah will be graduating from the Baptist College of Florida which is very nearby. We didn't know this at the time or we would have planned to see her on our way through.

One of my requirements for hotels on this trip was a complimentary breakfast. When you are feeding 4-5 people, every little bit helps. So after breakfast, we headed for Pensacola at about 8:15 am. The Naval Aviation Museum was FABULOUS!

Landon loved it, of course.


This is the actual space capsule from one of the Geminis.


Gerren really enjoyed it, too.


Admission to the museum is free. We saw an IMAX movie called Fighter Pilot. Carys slept through this. They had a really neat play area for the little kids which was a lifesaver where Carys was concerned.

It had this neat plane they could play in...


and tons of tables with bead mazes, magna doodles, etc.


We had lunch in the car. This is another cost-saving attempt by mom. Some things I choose to spend money on (like staying in a hotel instead of camping :-), so I save money where I can. We all have our limits, and those of you who know me well know that camping is where I draw the line! LOL!

The museum had a neat treasure hunt for the kids where they would find certain things and stamp their guides at each station. Chase and Gerren loved this part!


This shot is from the second level. It doesn't do justice to the site of all the planes hanging from the ceiling!


There were TONS of old planes that the kids could actually get in.




This is an actual anchor in front of the museum. It is amazing how HUGE they are!


Tonight we plan to eat at McGuire's Irish Pub which was recommended to me by my e-friend Ginger who lives in Louisiana. We hope to meet up with her tomorrow afternoon on our way through LA.

Trip Planning in Full Gear

No time to blog! I've been so busy getting ready to leave Friday. On top of that, I administered standardized testing for my homeschool group Monday through Wednesday mornings. Friday morning, we have tickets to a play in Clearwater. So we have to spend tomorrow packing, so we can leave pretty much as soon as we get home from the play. Despite my busyness, the kids have found time for some fun, like...

teaching Carys to do an impression of a buzzard (!) look at that face! ....


playing dress up...


doing Carys' hair (and taking pictures of it)...


taking pictures of themselves (!) ...


It's obvious that everyone around here feels comfortable helping themselves to my camera! I didn't take a single one of these pictures! :-)