Dog/House-Sitting & Life.

This year, our church hired on a new music minister, John. We are so grateful for him and his wonderful family to be here and a part of our church. Anyway, so in the last few months, we've gotten to know them better and better because in June, they were FINALLY able to move into their house down here.

All of that brings me to say that we are spending the week at their house, mostly to take care of their dogs Radley and Annie, while they are out of town on vacation. While it's only 15ish minutes from our apartment, it feels almost like a getaway of sorts, just because it's a really nice house and it's in a super-quiet neighborhood. I actually managed to not step outside once today, though I did let the dogs in and out while trying to dodge the mosquitoes.

I continue to suck at blogging because I've been staying much busier than usual, yet I have nothing to write about. Boo.

This past week was fun. My church does an annual day-camp for kids ages 6-12 and we take them to places all around town. We took them to putt-putt golf, bowling, the swimming pool, a wildlife park the movies, a local boardwalk with rides and so forth as well as this place called Palm Beach. Palm Beach has sand and everything, but it has pool water instead of salt water.

I was able to invite my 4 year-old nephew, (Ethan) to the movies to see Toy Story 3, (yet again) and to Palm Beach. He loves the beach, but hates the idea of fish and other marine animals swimming in the water with him, so this is actually ideal. He LOVED it, and told me repeatedly how it was his favorite beach. Travis was the one who was able to bring him, and I'm glad that they got to have a little one-on-one time together, even if it was just the drive to and from. That's about an hour round-trip in the car. Ethan asked around lunch time to go home, because he was really tired, and oh, was he tired. His poor eyes could hardly stay open. He did make sure to tell me that he wanted to come back.

On Saturday, I got a call from Robert, (my nephew's dad & my sister's fiance) and he was letting me know that they were going to take Ethan to see Despicable Me and that we were welcome to come. He decided not to tell Ethan that we were coming, and he enjoyed the surprise. I didn't think it was going to work out though, because the theater was allegedly sold out of tickets. The theater that we went to is small and usually not too busy, so I was in disbelief. I decided to just buy tickets for another movie and then we would go see if there were any seats at Despicable Me, and sure enough...there were several. I figured if they didn't have the seats, it only cost a few dollars so we'd just pass the movie altogether, but it all worked out. The movie was really good. I feel like a kid lately because I keep watching these random kid movies. I've seen Toy Story 3 twice this month, Despicable Me on Saturday and today, I finally watched Up. Apparently I really like kid movies.

On Saturday after the movie, Travis and I ran by the grocery store to get ingredients for pizza. Sarah and Robert brought Ethan over and we had semi-homemade pizza and played Phase 10 while Ethan watched Toy Story 2. When it was over, he wanted to play Phase 10, too, so we just handed him a stack of the cards and let him make up his own game. I swear, I've never seen a kid love numbers like he does.

This past week has also been interesting because I have two friends that have had a baby in the last week (one today and one last Tuesday) and I have another friend, (mjokisch) who is having her daughter, Emma any day now...just so many new lives being brought into the world. It does give me a hint of baby fever, but I definitely know that we aren't in the right place for a baby right now, and I will just have to get past it, like I have before.

In other, much more boring news, my apartment is finally clean. It has taken me forever to find the time to get it done thoroughly, and I am so glad that I did. It feels so good to have it clean again, though I'm not there right now to enjoy it. I still like the idea of going home to a clean house!

Lastly, we're going to New Braunfels this weekend to go tubing on the Comal river. Holy heavenly goodness, it's going to be wonderful.This is by far my favorite thing to do in Texas. I have yet to find something that's quite so refreshing, relax and constant fun as sitting in an inner-tube floating down the river that's freezing cold while you're being warmed by the sun. Oh...it's so good. I cannot wait! Travis and I are going of course, and my best friend Kim and my brother Bryan are joining us as well. I still haven't developed last year's pictures, maybe this year I'll take the camera from this year AND last year to get those pictures. ;)

Goodnight. :D