From zero stars to four stars...

A few weekends ago we took the girls to Bastrop State Park for a weekend of camping. During the spring it's really hard to find state park campsites at the last minute, but we lucked out and grabbed the only campsite available in a 2 hour radius from Austin. Joel had a meeting in another town for work, and couldn't meet us until late that evening--so I packed up ALL our stuff, dragged along the dog, and even set up the tent by myself (a first!) because I was afraid he wouldn't arrive until after dark and I really wanted to go camping.

Once we arrived, it became obvious that the reason the site was available was because we were surrounded by boy scouts! Hundreds of them!! So needless to say we only suffered through one night of loud scouts and scrapped our plans for the second night. We were able to do some grilling, hiking, and lots of pine needle collecting though, and had a great time!



Picking flowers along the Colorado River. We went out to breakfast one morning and explored a fun playground next to the river.

Hiking in the state park

Larkin kept telling Willa that she would help her on the hard parts of the hike. Here's Larkin holding Willa's hand and guiding her--it was super cute.
Smores over a charcoal fire are just not the same. We're under a strict burn ban here with all the wildfires and drought, so no wood fires! You can see by Larkin's expression that she is not impressed with the lack of flames on a charcoal fire.
The weekend after the camping trip I met my good friend Suzanne in San Antonio. She lives in Del Rio (about 4 hrs away) so we met halfway in San Antonio for a trip to the zoo and a stay at a four star resort. Both our husbands had hog hunting weekends planned so we planned our own mini-vacation. We had so much fun we are planning to do this now at LEAST once a year! We stayed at the Hyatt and had such a relaxing time...floating down the lazy river, ordering dinner poolside, and going on hikes in the woods surrounding the hotel. The girls cried when it was time to head home and said they didn't understand why we couldn't live here. :)

Posing next to the lazy river.

Each night the staff lets the kids make smores. The staff provides all the goods and they even put your marshmallow into your graham cracker for you! And they had a REAL fire (not sure how they managed that with the burn ban, but the girls were excited!). All in all it was definitely a big step up from camping!

Roomies

About a month ago I moved the girls into the same room. I'd always wanted them to share a room someday-- I think it all stems from growing up and listening to my two brothers in the room next to me. They shared a room (I was in a room by myself), and each night I would hear them giggling, having farting contests, fighting over whether it was a "fan-on" or "fan-off" night, or waging stuffed animal wars where every stuffed animal in sight was thrown at the other person. I would slip into their room and try to be a part of all the action, but it wasn't the same when I was there-probably because I was a girl, or maybe because I wasn't their roommate and so was left out of all their inside jokes. One thing is for sure though- they did have a lot of fun together in that room!

So impulsively one day I asked the girls if they wanted to share a room. They said yes and were so excited, so I immediately started moving furniture around before they changed their minds. I set up a trundle bed in Willa's room and moved the beds along a different wall so it would feel "new" for Willa too. I moved Larkin's double bed out of her room so that she would not be able to wimp out and come to her old room easily. We renamed Willa's room the "Girls' Room." Willa had a hard time with it for a few days ("When will Larkin go back to her own room? This is mine!!") but now she cries whenever I talk about possibly moving Larkin back to her old room.

They don't talk or giggle as much as I expected them to (this is probably because I'm trying to get them to stop napping, so on most days they are so exhausted they just pass right out!). At night they sleep in just a t-shirt and underwear, and at least once each week they've come into our room exasperated because the other won't go to sleep, or so-and-so keeps talking, or so-and-so is scratching her pillow and it's annoying, etc. It's the cutest thing-- they just stand in our doorway in their undies with their hands on their hips while they spout out a list of complaints. They're usually half annoyed at the other person and half just stalling to not go to bed themselves. Overall though I think they are loving it!

Here's a video clip of them jumping on the beds. This has since been outlawed in our house, but I let them do it for a week or so to get it out of their system!