It's the Holiday Season!

It's that time of year again - the most wonderful time of year! The cold weather has arrived (and left and arrived again). This time of year it never stays too cold for too long. A week or so ago, Paul had a piano recital, so he had to dress in his Sunday best. Not wanting to miss out on an opportunity to do so, Becky got the other boys dressed up as well, and we got some photos for our Christmas card this year. Here are the boys, looking fine and dandy:

And even though we got a lot of great smiles, this last photo sums up how they felt about their photo shoot... yeah. Merry Christmas!

Cold Turkeys

The last couple of years we've headed up to Missouri for Thanksgiving, but this year we couldn't make it due to work scheduling issues. But we wanted to do something fun with the extra days off, so we decided to go camping for the holiday. We had our turkey on Wednesday and used Thursday to drive to Guadalupe River State Park to hang out and camp. I was surprised to find out that camping on Thanksgiving is apparently a popular thing. I'd originally tried to get a campsite at a couple of other parks, but everything was booked up. Either way, Guadalupe River turned out to be a pretty nice place to spend some time and camp out. We weren't as prepared as we should have been, specifically for the cold weather that hit us. On Friday morning, the temperature read 37 degrees, so it was fairly cold for those of us who have been living in steady 80 degree weather for quite some time. The park has a pretty nice area down by the river, which itself was extremely calm and crystal clear. The boys enjoyed throwing rocks, climbing in the trees, and even wading in the chilly water.

 

 

Remember the Rain!

If you're going to go to San Antonio, you're going to remember the Alamo. We'd been before, but since we were right there anyway, we thought we'd better check it out again - and it's FREE, so you can't beat it. We also wanted to check out the Tower of the Americas, the second tallest observation tower in the United States (next to the Stratosphere in Las Vegas). At 750 feet tall, it's up there. The boys enjoyed a couple of 4-D movies and the waterfalls all around the park, and of course we took the elevator to the top to see... well, not much. The rain wouldn't quit and the cloud coverage was pretty heavy up there. It still was a cool view, but it would have been better on a better day.

The view from the top! Amazing!! 

Somehow this giant grasshopper got all the way up here. Uh, if the grasshoppers are jumping this high in Texas, we may have a problem...

I paid a quarter and all I see are clouds!! This is going on Nolan's Yelp review...

Running in the rain! 

There's the Alamo! When I saw they had a special exhibit on Jim Bowie, I thought we were going to get to listen to some classic glam-rock, Ziggy Stardust, Changes, or at least Space Oddity. Turns out all they had were really big knives. Oh well, still a nice exhibit.

The Hill Country

So we thought we'd be the only ones crazy enough to venture over to Lost Maples State Natural Area last weekend, due to the pending overcast skies and high chance of rain. It was a risk, because it was a three hour drive for us, but we reserved the hotel to stay in San Antonio and Lost Maples had been on my list of places to see for a while. There are a lost of state parks just west of San Antonio, including Garner State Park which we'd already been to. Lost Maples is famous around here for being one of the few nearby places you can go to see the leaves change colors in the fall. Autumn isn't much of a season in South Texas, as it's more of an extension of summer, so seeing something like leaves changing is different. Well, we were wrong about being the only ones who wanted to see it. Even in the light rain, the park met capacity limits at 10 a.m. and the rangers wouldn't let anyone else in. We got there at 11 a.m. Good times. But as I said, there are a lot of other parks nearby, so we went back toward San Antonio and stopped at Hill Country State Natural Area. It was down a long, narrow dirt road that made you believe the hills were going to have eyes by the time you got to the state park. A blown out tire would have cast us immediately into the middle of a horror movie. Ok, not really. It wasn't that bad, but the park was off the beaten path. There were a handful of other adventurers out there, riding horses, hiking, and otherwise enjoying the misty, humid weather. We took what I assumed to be the premier hike to the top of the towering 1,800 foot mountain and got a decent view of the hill country.

Nolan had too much H-E-B Hill Country Fare Grape soda. Gotta get that energy boost to get up the mountain.

Enjoying a picnic lunch under a tree in the park in the light rain before a hike in the park on an Autumn day.

Doing the same.

This view of the Hill Country is brought to you by H-E-B. At least, I imagine it was in some way or another, since everything else around here is.

At the top of the mountain! Or hill... whatever you want to call it.

Paul always enjoys these outdoor adventures. We do frequently have to tell him to "take a hike" or "jump in a lake" so he really does love it.

Baseball is Back!

While Major League Baseball is long done this year (with another disappointing finish for the Indians, though they did have an amazing year), baseball around here has just begun! Normally, Fall League starts in September/October, but due to the hurricane slowing down the opening of the fields, it started just a little late... or maybe a lot late. At this point it might as well be called Winter League, since we don't end the season until close to Christmas now. But I'm not complaining, because the weather has been fantastic and it's normally extremely hot for fall baseball around here. We've also been able to play on the new fields here, so the kids (or mostly me) have been excited about that. As of this post, Nolan has been playing excellent at first base and he's the power hitter for his team (he probably should have moved up to the next level because he's definitely old enough, but we'll get there in the spring). Adam has been doing incredible at Short Stop and managed to get on base most at bats. My record as a head coach (all-time) is hovering at .500 though. When I coached Paul's Indians, we went 1-9, then Adam's Nationals went 10-1, and after two games, GP Red is 1-1. Maybe we can go on an historic 8-game win streak to end the season though! We'll see...