davejenbarnes

We’re headed back out to Sweet Berry Farm again this morning, this time with Daddy.

Here are 3 quick pictures of our trip yesterday morning.

Maybe Little Post

Every once in awhile something (like finding a machacado con huevo taco here in Austin or remembering the $450/mo rent for 1100 sq. feet) reminds me of when we lived in Rio Grande City that *almost* makes me wish we still lived there.

I headed to our small group last night minus the boys.  James and Lowell seem to be coming down with something so they stayed home with Dave.  It was more important for them to get a full nights’ rest.  I know that Lowell needed his rest because he took 2 naps on me in the rocking chair yesterday and the night before.  Falling asleep on a parent on the rocking chair is usually an honor he reserves for Daddy, not me, so I know know know he needed that rest.

Anyhow, back to the being by myself part.  No, let me back up a little.  David fixed a roast in the crock-pot yesterday.  I normally eat my roast with plain ketchup.  It’s always been good enough for me.  Ketchup wouldn’t do last night.  Nope, not after Amy fed me a roast beef sandwich on Friday with Rudy’s BBQ sause.  Ketchup will not do any longer.

But we didn’t have any Rudy’s BBQ sause.  No sirree.

So, as I’ve mentioned twice already, I was by myself last night.  Amy’s house, where small group is hosted, is about halfway between us and a Rudy’s so I went ahead and took the drive out to Rudy’s and walked in a few minutes before they closed and grabbed a big bottle of that delicious sauce and proceeded down the queue to the register but not before I grabbed two 1-liter glass bottles of Mexican Coca-Cola.  If you’ve never had a coke from Mexico, you should.

Now I know people who live for a Dublin Dr Pepper and this is along the same lines as that.  Dublin Dr Pepper is formulated with sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup and it makes it That. Much. Better.  Same deal with the Mexican cokes.  Sugar.  Pure Sugar.  It makes it oh, oh, so gooood.  And they’re usually found in tall skinny glass bottles.

When we lived in Rio Grande City, we had a big plastic soda bottle case.  We would head over the border every other week or so to the coca bottling plant in Miguel Aléman and get a case of full coke bottles for, like, no kidding, $4 — that’s 24 liters of joy for under $5.  The cokes from Rudy’s were $2.59 each so I paid for 2 what I used to pay for 2 DOZEN.  They’re not worth it for that amount of money on a regular basis, but it helped justify a 9:20 pm run to Rudy’s 18 miles away, and… I know David and I each got our $2.59 worth of enjoyment out of them.  Mmmmmm

Lotsa hiccups and kicks these days.  The baby (yes, we actually refer to this little one as “the baby” despite having both a girl name and a boy name decided… which I know makes us sound strange but I promise that I have already begun to bond with this child) is head down and I can actually tell what body parts are where, thanks in part to the gargantuan size of my belly and the fact that this is my third pregnancy in three years.

I am so thankful that the people I know in both Katy and Spring are alive and well.  Katy was not in the path of the eye of the storm but Spring was.  I am thankful that Austin was utterly unaffected weatherwise and was able to keep so many people from Houston and its suburbs safe, even sunny.  Ike was a very North-South kind of storm and did not affect us at all to the East.  I am thankful that we have electricity (and therefore air conditioning) and clean water, food, and gas in our cars.  I’m especially thankful for my clean dry bed, sheets, this roof over our heads and the ceiling fan on at night!

While all our playgroup kids are in daycare/mothers-day-out/preschool on Tuesdays now, this is one thing we have found that is tons of fun and usually completely void of others:

video courtesy Grandma (who was here watching the boys while I had a midwife appointment).

That means that all the parks and splash parks and pools are void of preteens running rampant once again.  I took the boys to the splash park across the street from our neighborhood (just far enough away not to be walkable) two days in a row and actually remembered to take a camera with us this morning.  I’m sure I would have gotten great pictures yesterday as they did more playing and less hanging on momma, but I did manage to get some of James that I like.  Lowell wasn’t into being photographed and always had his back to me…

And I think he looks like he has wings here…

You’d never be able to tell that we have storms in the weather forecast for today.

James and I made a quick trip up to Dallas to see Kambry and the cousins (and family and their pets) and James had a blast.  He returned home quite sleep deprived but very glad to see Daddy again.

Happy Birthday, Kambry!  We can’t believe you’re FOUR!

photo by Dave