Last of the catch-up

A couple of weeks ago clan Daniel traveled to Houston for a wedding. On the way back the whipper-snappers wanted to stop by A&M and take a look around. I know, I know but their Papa is an Aggie and he has brainwashed every one of them. It's OK by me though as A&M seems to be a conservative island in a sea of liberal collages. Besides, think of all the cool SEC football games!
They really enjoyed seeing the college and if that is what it takes to motivate them then Dad is all for it!

Another recent occurrence was Bub turning 13! It is hard to imagine that we now have a teenager in the house. Seems like a few months ago he was a toddler, now he is working towards honorable manhood.

It was his first boy/girl party and there were over 20 kids there but all seemed to have a good time.

And most recently we sold our last steer. We were gonna keep him and show him in the state fair this year but decided to go ahead and sale him. He has been a really sweet steer that we all bottle fed but he had a purpose. Bub and Sister didn't seem to have a problem with it but Sissy sure did. She was pretty tore up about it. I think she has a bigger love of animals than the other two but when she sees what we are buying with the $$$$ I think she will be pleased. That will be revealed in a later post.

Labor Day weekend...or the big blow!

Every Labor Day weekend clan Daniel loads up the travel trailer and heads east to the Mrs. families farm and camps, gets ready for deer season and leaves our travel trailer until after the new year. This year we decided to forgo our long weekend trip and stay home to re-floor the whipper-snappers rooms. We intended to pull up the carpet and stain the floors, after removing the carpet we determined that that was not an option so we decided to tile both floors.
The Mrs. does the bulk of the artistic type work like laying tiles to be square and uniform.

Dad man's the saw and does the bulk of the tile cutting.

Bub got in on the act helping to lay tile in his room.

We went to bed Monday night feeling quite proud of our accomplishments with the tile until Tuesday morning when we awoke to this...

Seems a huge windstorm came thru and played havoc on the homestead. We knew that there was a storm but had no idea that this had happened.

The next morning Nannie called asking what was in our garden. When we went out to see we found our barn.

Apparently it had slammed into our travel trailer (that should have been 2 hours away!) totaling it and then lifted up, crashed onto one of the storage sheds (totaling it) and then breaking it in two landing in the garden.

Thankfully no one was injured and we have insurance to cover the losses.

Unfortunately for the Mrs. this barn was her 10Th wedding anniversary present so she was really tore up about it. The re-building process should make for good blogging!

School starts - life gets hectic!

With the start of school we assumed that life would settle down into a nice routine...NOT! The whipper-snappers on their 1st day of school.
Bub was asked to play in the marching band. Usually you don't do this until the 8Th grade. He is a 7Th grader this year.


Homecoming rolled around and that is always a big deal in a small Texas town.

Sissy is cheering for the 5Th and 6Th grade pee-wee football team.

Bub is playing for our 7Th grade Jr. High team. He's the big kid in the middle.

Bub after a game. He is an offensive lineman.

He and his teammates rode in the homecoming parade.

So did Sissy and her cheer squad.

At pee-wee homecoming I got to escort sissy onto the field.

I'm gonna be in so much trouble in a few years!

A great adventure

This summer Bub and I got to go on a grand adventure and experience something I had always wanted to do but never had the chance. A backpacking trip in the mountains. Now my family and I are avid campers and hikers but have never combined the two. Partially because of the age of our kids and partially lack of opportunity. Well opportunity knocked this year in the form of one of my good friends from church. Seems he has a lifelong friend who is a county extension agent and part time back-country guide in Colorado who has been dying to get my friend to the mountains to go on a trip. Well he and I decided what a great father-son trip it would be and recruited a couple of other buddies from church and their sons and we were off. We took two trucks up the mountain filled with men and gear. There were ten of us all together and we had a beautiful day to start off.
Here we are waiting on the rest of our party to make last minute preparations as my good friend (let's say...Rufus) talks over a few more details with our guide.



Well our beautiful day took a sour turn. One of the trucks started over-heating on the way up and two of our party had to take them back down the mountain and hike back up. While we waited the weather turned off rather wet.

Luckily we were still in a good humor as our guide showed us this small creek that eventually becomes the Rio Grande river.

This is our starting point. We were headed to the big tall mountain in the background.

As we hiked along the weather teased us as it would appear to start breaking up only to rain more in a few minutes. The first day we stopped a lot as we got accustomed to our packs. Rufus and I joked that we could imagine our fearless guide turning to us at any point and saying," I ain't gonna lie to you guys, I'm lost and kinda scared" but he never did.

It was a great experience with breathtaking views.

Bub was holding his own on the first day.

We were very excited as we had been waiting for this for a long time. We never imagined it with rain though. We always assumed camp fires and John Denver but it don't always work like that.

Bub and a good friend. These two were the two youngest our guide had ever taken on a trip like this.

Another close friend and his son.

By late afternoon on day on the rain was pouring and the wind was getting colder. We finally had to hunker down in our tents and make the best of it. All our gear was pretty well soaked but we managed to muddle through. I should have taken more pics but at this point it was the last thing on my mind. I was feeling pretty confident that we might get snowed in at this point.

But as it usually goes the dawn turned into a beautiful day. We had not made anywhere near the miles on the first day we should have what with the vehicle problems and the weather so we re-routed our trip and started of on a gorgeous morning. We had camped at 12,500 feet elevation and we were all feeling like tried and true mountain men.

The second day was great. The weather held out most of the day, we did 15 miles which we considered a pretty fair distance and we saw a bear in the woods. Look close in the trees and you can see his head. Our guide had never seen one in the woods so you can imagine how rare a treat this was.

We saw some beautiful sites,

and had a great time

enjoying all that God has created.

Billions and billions of years? I don't think so.

summer 2011 - in a nutshell

OK, remember I'm recapping six months of not blogging. Finally back in the saddle. At the end of the year (last school year) the whipper-snappers had awards ceremonies. Here Bub is hanging with some of his hoodlum friends.
Our youngest beauty graduated from kindergarten.

She's gonna do great things!

This summer was jam-packed! Each of the kids went to church camp, spent time with their grandparents, went on multiple camping and or fishing trips and stayed extremely busy. Sometimes all and sometimes a few went in a hundred different directions. Here the Mrs. is showing off the catch with Papa at a lake in the area where we stayed with them for a week. Well, the Mrs. and the whipper-snappers did. Somebodies gotta work!

The whipper-snappers did lots of tubing behind Papa's boat.

Bub spent a good portion of the summer (thru the middle of July) playing baseball.

Our youngest beauty turned 7 this summer. My how quickly they grow up.

And of course the usual summer activities were enjoyed as well.

Summer, watermelon and whipper-snappers. It don't get no better!

The end of the summer was spent winding down and getting ready to go back to school. Cheer camp was part of that as well. Then finally school started and we could rest...or so we thought.