8October2017

Do you ever feel like you have more adventures than real life? Sometimes I do, like when I’m looking through our pictures for the week and I see all that we did in the last week, I start to think where was real life? But then I remember this IS real life. All the adventures are the real life amazing parts. Life is so grand if we just stop to appreciate it.

I’ve been pretty nostalgic the last few days. 11 years ago this month I met Rob, and we started dating shortly there after and now look at us. We have 4 kiddos have shared thousands of memories, and are on the adventure of a lifetime. We’ve had our rough days, but when I look back on our time in Louisiana, or on our time with young kids, I’m going to remember the good ones. I’m going to focus on all the good that we were (are) doing. And I’m going to laugh at all the crazy that we have going on right along side it. 

 

We were listening to a conference talk this morning and I was reminded that in life there is good and bad. You can’t have one without the other. And pretending that bad and evil doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go way. It is still there, along with all the good and amazing.

So our adventures the last few weeks have been great. We went to a football game at West Monroe with Taylor and Kelsey. The stadium was HUGE!! It was a blast, because even though our team lost, both teams were playing so hard and made it a ton of fun to watch. The highlight was definitely when Kylie caught a cricket and played with it for about 10 minutes. She even let Dane hold it, and he liked it until it started to climb too far up his arm. I haven't laughed that hard since we gave Londyn a lemon a few weeks ago!

Yesterday we had originally made plans to go to Baton Rouge and visit the temple, but it was closed (luckily we found out before we headed down there) so we decided to go to Jackson Mississippi. As luck would have it, we stopped in Vicksburg on our way there and came upon the city fall festival. It was awesome! 

It made me feel like we were back home in a small town. The people were all so friendly and smiled and were kind. 

We got to pet a camel, watch an animal circus, see tons of huge old churches and buildings, listen to a really good live band, and we even tried meat pies and frozen cheesecake. If you know me, you know that I love cheesecake!! So that was awesome. 

When we finally made it to Jackson the zoo was about to close so we opted for the science museum. I think Rob said this is the coolest museum probably 10 times. And it was the coolest museum we've been to.

We LOVED it! It had tons of animals, live and mounted. 

And we had a blast! 

 

They had a whole dinosaur section that we didn't see until it was about time to go. We ran thru it really fast, but it looked like a lot of computer-type stuff. So I'm glad we spent the majority of our time seeing the animals. The kids thought the dinosaur tails were pretty spectacular though. Even Londyn tried one on!

Then we ended up back in Vicksburg for dinner. We ate the yummiest southern food I’ve had yet. And that’s saying something because we have tried to eat authentic food whenever we eat out. It was so good my mouth is still drooling. 

I had red beans and rice and Rob had gumbo. It was delicious. They even gave us white chocolate bread pudding free, I think they probably thought we were crazy bringing our whole family out, but everyone was so friendly and talked to us and wanted to hear why we were there…and you know our whole life story. And they wanted to share their stories with us. I’m telling you, it was so awesome! The whole experience was amazing! 

We also went fishing a few times out at Diane’s place. She is so sweet and has told Rob we can go out whenever we would like to, so try to go once a week. This last time we couldn’t find worms and had to use live crickets…yeah that was interesting. Although we caught a fish on the first cast out before any other lines had made it out.

 Diana said the kids could play on the swing, so this time they only fished for a few minutes, then spent their time looking for lizards and playing up in the yard. Rob convinced me to go for one push with Londyn and all I could think about was the boat rides at amusement parks that are crazy. She loved it though, so maybe she'll like rides like her daddy.

It’s been a great week. And one thing that has made it great is having the missionaries over for dinner once a week. Rob's new calling is to work with the Elders serving in our ward, so we have them over for dinner before they go out together. We have come to love these guys. They bring such a wonderful spirit to our home and are like a breath of fresh air each time they come. My kids love them! and they love them back!

Lots of learning going on, homeschooling was pretty relaxed this week, I’ve had a cough for almost 4 weeks now and have not have a ton of energy, but this week is a new start. Hopefully we can jump back on the band wagon and get some memories before we leave in 1 month! Ahh...so crazy! So how was your week?