Our Trip to Texas part 1

We spent from January 7th to the 20th visiting Texas and what a good time to go with the temps hitting single digits in Woodstock. Our first stop was Houston where it was in the 70s for one day before dropping down into the 50s for most of the week -- still lots warmer than Virginia. We spent plenty of time at the park and just hanging out which is pretty much our favorite thing to do when we go visiting our family. Larry helped Madeleine with her math homework and we played a little euchre. I reread most of the Narnia stories which Madeleine had on her bedside bookcase. (Thank you, M, for giving up your room for us. You're the best!)

Me with Ella and Sophie at the park closest to home.


Paka with Sophie, Mia, and Grace. Their favorite thing was playing Katie the Lion which involves the monster chasing all the jungle animals.


Mia and Grace getting ready for the big jump.


And there goes Mia


Mia and Grace enjoy arts and crafts.


Paka helps Madeleine with her math homework. Don't worry, M, you'll get it.


And here's the big geocache safari with some friends. If you've never tried geocaching it's like a treasure hunt and is getting to be a big deal all over the country. Wherever you live there's probably a cache. Some have just a log to note your find; others have little trinkets to trade for things you bring in exchange. All you need is a hand-held GPS and a sense of adventure. There are hundreds of thousands of caches all over the world -- even in Woodstock. In fact Alice and Chris made one last summer while they were visiting called Double Play that gets lots of nice comments on the geocache website. Learn about this fun hobby here.


And Grace enjoys another park near Madeleine's school.


Mia is a mountain goat!

We had lots of other adventures which I'll blog about during the next few days (or weeks).