Its the End of a Season...

Things happen so fast around here I am always 

behind

with blogging...

(not to mention the 4 kids and husband that I have to keep up with).

Instead of this post being WAYYYY too long,

I broke it up into a few updates over the next few days.

I had a REALLY long one, 

then went in and broke them up.

The cool thing is...

I can schedule when you get them!

So here is the first one.

The next 3 are done 

and will be scheduled shortly

and hitting your inboxes later this week!

The "end of season" stuff is in full swing:

Scouts

School "year"

this season of sports

church classes

Summer is officially upon us!

And our days of nice weather are 

behind us...

we got a reminder of what Texas summers are like

Saturday

OH.MY.STARS!

I am NOT looking forward to this!

I can only pray it is not a record breaker 

AGAIN

this summer!

Scouting

About 10 days ago, we had our end of season

pack meeting with the scouts.

We had it on the "festival grounds" of our church.

Your church has "festival grounds"??

Yep!

Don't get too excited though - 

it is just because the church has no more room for 

ANYTHING 

on its TINY property where the church is.

The festival grounds are on

 a beautiful piece of private property donated

(or sold dirt cheap)

to the church years ago!

It has a builders house on it

(gorgeous!),

a 4 car garage/shed,

a sheltered picnic area

complete with bathrooms

and then acres and acres of rolling beauty!

You can see snip its in the pictures below.

Our Pack invited:

first responders,

firemen,

a couple of sherrifs

AND

2 real life, honest to goodness

TEXAS RANGERS!!

I was so excited about the Texas Rangers!

One of them even talked funny like some of the

folks back home and I got so excited,

til I found out he was from West Texas

and no where near "home".

Haha!

Each of the groups above spoke for a minute or two

about what they do:

most of the responses were 

"I am so and so and I do what he tells me to do"

Then the captain of each group 

got up and said

"I am so and so and I tell all of them what to do"

That got a chuckle out of their captive audience.

Then they broke the kids up into groups

(dens)

and we got to walk out and see their

cars/trucks

and

TOYS!

(No - no one got put in handcuffs!)

And this bad boy was whipped out

at the request of one of the big kids

in the group...

a DAD!

I was really impressed with the care he took in 

unloading it, 

then handing it off to his partner to check

before he turned toward the kids

with it.

My Mercy!!

J is mesmerized about something here...

Again,

the Texas Rangers were

BY FAR

 my favorite!!

I took this pic specifically for my dad!!

The kids got to take turns climbing in the firetruck! 

Even Ms. Priss climbed in there!

Here is our pack and the pack leaders

and our community helper friends.

A even found a little friend,

the two of them enjoyed 

messing with this light during the

presentations.

What humors me - the little girl on the floor

is only a year older than A...look at

the height difference!!!

Yep - she's petite!