A Few Vacation Days!

Last week, we took a few days for a little vacation to have some fun and see some of our family.

We visited Lane's sister, Torri, and her husband, Roger, for a day in College Station. We got to get our food fixes from several of our favorite restaurants from college, and we also got to show Dane around the Texas A&M campus for the first time. That was lots of fun. I got to introduce him to my old boss in the Accounting Dept. at the campus bookstore, too. It was good to get to visit with her for a few minutes. While we were there, we were able to take Dane onto Kyle Field, the home of Aggie Football! Whoop! They were letting people on the field, which doesn't always happen. I guess because it wasn't striped yet. Anyway, we let him get a little bit of a feel of what it will be like when he's both a starting linebacker and running back on the Aggie football team for the seasons 2024 - 2027! Roger works for A&M, so we also got to see his great new office.

Torri took Dane and me out to visit with her two horses, Tess & Scout. Dane wasn't quite ready to ride yet, but he did pet Scout a little bit. It was great to get to spend some time with them as we passed through on our way to Galveston (I mean Torri & Roger-not the horses).

Next stop, Houston, Texas. We spent a couple of days at Lane's parents' house before heading on to our final destination of Galveston. While in Houston, we got to go and visit Lane's Grandpa and his wife, Marcia. They recently moved into a new house, which is so nice. It was great to spend the afternoon with them and to share a wonderful brisket meal with them. Yum! Dane also got to play at the Splash Pad park in Wren's & Skeetz's neighborhood. It's a really neat place to have closeby their house. After church Sunday morning, we loaded up the car and headed with Lane's parents to Galveston.

We had the best time! We basically went to two main places - Moody Gardens and Schlitterbahn waterpark. If you've never been to Moody Gardens, it is definitely worth the trip, and it is a great place for kids of all ages and adults! We went to several 3-D IMAX movies, which Dane tended to sleep through. They also had a dinosaur exhibit, with sounds and motion. Dane wasn't quite sure what to think about them, and frankly, neither was I. Three pyramids make up Moody Gardens - the Rainforest, the Aquarium, and the Discovery museum. We went to the Rainforest and Discovery museum on Monday morning. Dane loved all of the animals, and he especially loved sharing all of his new experiences with Mr. Monkey, his trusty compadre! We have several photos of Dane posing Mr. Monkey for pictures. It's really cute and funny! I also thought that it was funny that he kept calling the flamingos, "mosquitos".

Monday afternoon, we saved the huge Aquarium pyramid for the entire afternoon. It was really great, and we all loved seeing the fish and penguins and seals. Dane especially loved the seals, and he kept backtracking through the aquarium to go back to see the seals. Unfortunately, the trip to the Aquarium ended in tradegy, well at least for me. In the last room at the top of the pyramid, they had a viewing room that had stairs down the sides and big, deep steps in the middle that you can sit on. Well, I was carrying Dane down the big, middle steps, and I didn't judge one step right and I went down wrong on my right ankle and really sprained it pretty badly. It popped probably 6 to 8 times and I fell down with Dane. He rolled on down the steps, and thankfully, was not hurt or scared at all. I, however, was not so lucky. My ankle immediately started swelling, and I had to be escorted out of the place in a wheelchair. Even that part was kinda fun, though. As Lane pushed me down the ramp in front of the place to the car, he ran me down the ramp as I held Dane, and Dane thought that was really fun!

So, needless to say, I spent Monday evening depressed in the hotel room, while everyone else went swimming, wondering whether I would be stuck there the rest of the time.

I iced and rested it pretty well that night, so that I could hopefully still get to go to Schlitterbahn on Tuesday. If you don't know it, I love roller coasters and waterslides and anything that will give you those great momentary thrills, so I had no intention of missing Schlitterbahn, and I didn't! Somehow, I managed to hobble along all day long and had a blast! Dane loved going down the little slides over and over and over and spraying me and Lane in the face with the squirting water. He absolutely loved being in the tubes on the Lazy River, and he pretended that he was "driving the boat"! Lane, Skeetz and I got to go down some pretty daunting slides that were really awesome, too!

As usual, the food was also a major highlight of the trip. I would definitely say that the key word for almost every meal for Dane was shrimp! That boy can down some shrimp, let me tell you. At one place, called Shrimp & Stuff, we think that he ate about 12 boiled shrimp. And that's the funny thing - he doesn't want it fried, he wants it boiled. That place was off the beaten path, and it ended up being a great, affordable choice with really good food. One of our big, budgeted items for the trip was a meal at, hands down, one of the best restaurants in Texas, if not anywhere - Gaido's. It's a little pricy, but for a special occasion, definitely worth it. Their bisque, either lobster or shrimp, is SOOOO wonderful. Their bread's great, their desserts are great, well, basically everything is great. It's right on the seawall, so the view is even great, too! And, Dane had about 10 more shrimp there. The other great meal we had there was at The Rainforest Cafe. I had never been to one of those restaurants before, and I really liked it. Dane loved it because we were surrounded by fake elephants and monkeys and birds and real fish. It was fun and they also had a fun river ride connected to the restaurant. He had hotdogs there, though.

Anyway, all in all, we had a wonderful time, in spite of my minor, although quite painful, setback. Hope you enjoy the slideshow!

Pensacola Mission Trip

We got back from our mission trip to Pensacola, FL Saturday afternoon. It was a great week, and I think it was a good experience for the youth. We worked with an inner city ministry there, and the students helped run a neighborhood VBS in the morning, and they went door to door and had Bible studies in the afternoons. We are so proud of how they all did and the good work that was done there. They were a blessing to those communities and I know that our students also gained some very important skills this week that will help them to be bold in their Christian lives.

Lunch on the way in Vicksburg on the Mississippi River

Of course, most of the pictures that I ended up taking centered around Dane, so most of them are of him. Big surprise there, huh? A couple of nights we had our evening devo at the beach at sunset, so that was really neat, too! Some of the pictures are from that.

We went on the trip with a group from the Daingerfield church, and Mama and Daddy came along as sponsors for the week. So, it was great to get to spend some extra time with them. My best friend, Andrea, also lives in Pensacola, so I was able to spend a little bit of time with her, too, which was great!





We're really glad to be home after a very busy month, but it has been such a blessing to get to spend time with our kids from church and to see them grow spiritually and also grow closer to each other.

Bible Camp & Cincinnati Wedding Trip

We have had a whirlwind last week and a half! Last week, we all went with some of our youth from church to a church camp in Missouri called Little Prairie Bible Camp. It was a good week, and the kids had a lot of fun there. Lane was a counselor, and I was one of the camp cooks. I know, very scary! It was pretty hard work, and I have developed a new appreciation for anyone in the food industry, especially cafeteria ladies! Our day in the kitchen started at about 6:30 or 7:00 each morning, and usually ended anywhere from 9:30 to 10:30 each night, non-stop. Needless to say, I was pretty wiped out by the end of the week, but I got to spend a lot of time getting to know Trisha and Donna, my fellow cooks, a lot better, which was great!

Dane and I left Kilgore a day earlier than the rest of the group, so that we could split the 10 hour drive up into two days. We drove to Little Rock and spent the night there and waited on the rest of the group to catch up Saturday to make the rest of the trip. We had a great hotel room with a full kitchen and living area, so it made our time there very nice. Saturday, while we were waiting, I decided to give Dane the kind of vacation that I most enjoy and would have gotten with my parents growing up...a day of history - a trip to the state capitol building and Presidential Library and Museum! Yes, I know that he is not even 2 years old yet, but Lane and I have really worked hard to travel to different states and historical sites with Dane, so that he can say he's been there to all of these places. After this trip, he has traveled to 17 of our great 50 states, so we're sure that he's very proud of this!

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center,

situated on the banks of the Arkansas River in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Anyway, so we're driving up to the Arkansas capitol building, which is beautiful and is a smaller version of the nation's capitol building, and I realized that we have never actually taken Dane to the Texas capitol building yet, so there was no way that Arkansas was going to be the first. So, we just drove away and we'll try to make it back there later. So, we headed to the William J. Clinton Presidential Center for a tour. I've been to the Johnson and Bush libraries, so I wanted to go to this one, too, while I had the time. I'm not a huge fan of Clinton - I just like history. I really was hoping to see more there about his growing up years, but I never saw anything about him before his 1992 presidential campaign. Maybe I just missed that part or something. So, I was pretty disappointed in it, as a whole. Before we met up with the rest of our group, Dane and I dined at our favorite place together - Luby's!

We all made it up to camp, and we had fun and Dane did fantastic! He loved playing with all of the kids and he just made himself right at home!

Dane loved getting to ride his tricycle around, of course, with Mr. Monkey!

Lane, Dane and I left camp early Friday morning and headed to Cincinnati, Ohio, to attend the wedding of our friend, Caleb Miller. Lane was supposed to be an usher, but when we got there, Caleb asked him to be a groomsman, which was pretty cool! Caleb is a linebacker for the Cincinnati Bengals NFL team, so it was neat to get to see some well known people from the team and organization. The wedding was beautiful and was held in a restored cathedral in downtown Cincinnati, called the Verdin Bell. Both the wedding and reception were breathtakingly beautiful and swanky, and it was nice to enjoy the fancy environment for the evening. The reception was held at the "Hall of Mirrors" ballroom in the Hilton Hotel there in downtown "Cincy" as the locals call it. The bride's father, Jeff Ruby, owns several nice restaurants in Cincinnati, so to say the food was great would be an understatement for sure!

The Verdin Bell Cathedral

The Reception

Table Centerpieces at reception

The Cake!

Wearing our party hats at the reception

The Spencers at the reception

Brent & Jill

Me, Jill & Rachel

At the reception dinner, the seating was assigned, and when I went to look for Lane and my table assignment card, I couldn't find it, which I thought was strange. So, I just asked the coordinator with the assignments just to make sure that we were at the same table as Clint & Rachel and Brent & Jill, which we were. When we got to our table, we saw this nice, older couple sitting at our table, too, which we thought was a little strange, seeing as how the rest of us at the table were younger. Well, we introduced ourselves, and Lane turns to me and whispers, "That's the owner of the Cincinnati Bengals, Mike Brown." Finally, later in the evening, after the Browns had already gone home, we realized that they had accidentally picked up our seating card and were actually supposed to be seated at the table with the other Bengals coaches. So, that was cool to meet them. After Lane told me who he was, I recognized him from watching Bengals games on TV when they show him in his private box at the game. Of course, Lane kept talking to him about the possibility of us being related and if he needed any more family to work in the Bengals organization!

Our friends, Brent, Jill, Clint, Rachel and Roselyn came to the wedding, too, so it was nice to spend a long weekend with them. We all arranged to stay at the same hotel together, and the hotel was nice enough to put us in rooms close to each other on the same floor. We also got to go to church together Sunday, which was special.

Dane & Roselyn got lots of good playtime in.

Hanging out with Jill and Rachel in the hotel room

Shopping and relaxing at Newport on the Levee with Rachel & Roselyn and Brent & Jill

Notice Mr. Monkey on Dane's shoulders

The boys all went with Caleb to the Bengals stadium and locker room for a tour Saturday morning. I think that this was the highlight of the trip for Lane. If you don't already know, Lane is a HUGE football fan, so getting to do this was probably one of the most fun things he would want to do. I know that it meant a lot to him to get to take Dane with him, too! They took pictures in front of the players' lockers and tried on several of their shoes and hats! Dane wore the quarterback, Carson Palmer's shoes, as well as the Crocs of the kicker, Shane Graham.

Lane & Dane at the Bengals stadium

Dane and his fairy godfather, Brent, in the security room of the stadium

At Chad Johnson's (Ocho-Cinco's) locker

Dane wearing Carson Palmer's Air Force Ones

Dane wearing Shane Graham's orange Crocs

Lane wearing Reggie McNeal's hat

Rolling around some Bengals dirty laundry!

Lane, Dane, Caden and Caleb at his locker

Lane said that at first when they entered the stadium, Dane kept on saying, "Mavericks Basketball!" over and over, until...they walked out of the players' entrance to the football field, and he said that Dane got SO excited and ran out onto the field and looked up and yelled, "Football! Football! Touchdown Time!" and just started running down the field. Lane said that Dane ran the entire length of the field and back and then proceeded to drink an entire Gatorade! Needless to say, they had a great time and I'm so glad they got to share those fun times together!

Fun on the Field!

Monday morning was definitely the high point of the trip for me. I had my first massage! I had an hour long Swedish massage, and it was absolutely wonderful. After being on my feet all week at camp, it was just what I needed to work out all of those cricks and creeks and sore feet! I would definitely recommend it to anyone!

Monday after lunch, we started the trek back to Texas and drove to Memphis to spend the night. We had planned on going to Graceland, but at $30 each, we decided we really weren't that big of Elvis fans anyway. So, we headed on home to Texas and made it home by 6:00 Tuesday night. Even with all of the fun we had, there's no greater feeling than to sing "Texas, our Texas" as we crossed the state line in Texarkana!

Sweet boy ready for bed

Playing with Daddy at the McDonald's in Hope, AR

We had a great time together, but we're so glad to be home now. We have another big week coming up next week. We're going on a mission trip with the youth group to Pensacola, Florida. We will be working with their inner city ministry and will help do a VBS and some door knocking. Please pray for our safety and that we will all learn a lot from these experiences and that we'll all grow closer to God and to each other. I'll post more when we get back from that trip.