Jackson School Pics

Thanksgiving Feast






Mammal Day



Book report about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table




Chapel



Grandparent's Day





What a great year Jackson has had at school! We have loved Mrs. Boyd so very much and will be sad to see this year end. We still have field day, achievement tests, a field trip, three special chapels, and two special events left during the month of May, however, so we will probably be ready for a break soon.

From the Archives - The Fosters

Oh how we love our Foster family. A typical trip north on I-35 usually involves the spectating of some sort of amateur sport. This particular weekend it was volleyball and soccer.





Every trip includes a smattering of eating, sitting, visiting, laughing, playing, climbing, and hanging out at one of the Sachse or Rockwall family compounds.





These festivities are usually followed by church-going and then lunch-eating wherein the eating, sitting, visiting, laughing, playing, climbing, and hanging out continue.








Even the youngest member of the tribe participates in the make-em-laugh-at-all-cost-even-if-you-are-embarrassing-yourself-in-public family weekend ritual.



Finally the obligatory staring-into-the-sun-group-photo of the ever-growing children either ends with wailing and gnashing of teeth or in this case a nice photo of the children.






And we conclude with lotso hugs and begging of parents to plan future trips or possibly that we can all move into houses next door to each other.



Oh how we love our Foster family.

Camping

Back in November we set the tent up in the front yard just to make sure we still remembered how to do it. We have an enormous tent that has three interior rooms, plus a screened in porch. It's over the top. Here are the kids playing in the tent in the front yard.



The reason we needed to practice with the tent is that we were conspiring with some of Mat's family members to camp out on his Uncle Randy's property for one night during the Thanksgiving weekend. It turned out to be VERY cold that weekend (low temps in the 20's), but no one had enough sense to cancel the campout (even though secretly I think everyone wanted to).




I stayed as long as I could but eventually all the smart people (ie: the women) decided to sleep indoors.



Here are the remaining campers minus Steve and Bo who didn't make it into this picture. Maybe they were snuggled up in a tent trying to keep warm? Anyway, they look a little unsure, don't they? They all survived, though, and made everyone a fantastic breakfast the next morning over the campfire.



A couple of weekends ago, Mat took Jackson on a cub scout campout to Inks Lake.



They shared a campsite with the Sewell boys.



And finally, we've made a couple of trips to Pedernales Falls this spring. We love this state park because it's close to Austin, and it's one of the prettiest hill country spots to hike, swim, and camp.





A little trivia for you...in case you were wondering why everyone pronounces it PERDENALES instead of PEDERNALES. We read online that LBJ got tongue-tied saying it the proper way so eventually he said forget it, I'm saying PERDENALES. So that stuck and most people around here say it that way.




I love the camping bed heads.



I'm so glad the boys love hiking and camping. After our last trip to Pedernales Falls Luke actually told me he wished we lived there. I don't blame him a bit. We plan to camp in Texas at least one more time before our epic Grand Teton camping trip this summer.