The Beginning

Here we go! I have never kept a personal blog before but I have heard it is a great way to keep everyone up to date on our family.
As of today we offically have seven days of summer left before I return to work. Maggie will begin 1st grade on the 27th. Darrel has been busy all summer working on a new product for his team. They are in the home stretch now and they are all happy.
We have had a great summer. We began by visiting Corpus Christi. Darrel has attended the annual Southwest Texas Conference for our church for three years now. It is a nice chance for Maggie and I to hang out at hotel pool, visit the State Aquarium and this year we added the USS Lexington to our tour. As usual, Maggie met a new friend and she and I found ourselves spending the day with them. It was great for Maggie to have a little girl to play around with and I enjoyed the adult conversation.
Mid June we visited my sister Keesha and her family for a few days. We enjoyed a great swim meet, swimming at their pool, the Children's museum and fun at Johnny Rockets. While at the Children's museum we found that Maggie and cousin Chloe really enjoy being on camera!
July brought so much rain we started looking for an ark! Last summer the hill country was praying for rain. No one really wanted to say that this year we almost had, dare I say it....too much rain. It seemed that from the last week of June until the 20th of July it rained everyday with very few exceptions. In fact on the 14th we had 8 inches of rain in one day. Too escape the rain we headed to Redbird Ranch for the fourth of July. The entire Owens family headed northward for the holiday. We played threw rocks into the river (which use to be a creek), played games while it rained, fixed bar-b-que in the rain and finally when the rain took a break we went out to our own firework show. Aunt Sheri and Darrel did a great job.
VBS was spared morning rain but usually by the afternoon we had thunderstorms. This was okay with us because we were exhausted and ready for a nap by the time it started raining. My PaPa used to say that a good thunderstorm was a great time to take a nap.
Keesha and her family came through for a brief visited. TriTondera triathalon competed in Kyle (and they did really well, too). We visited our grandparents, Natural Bridge Caverns, and Seaworld. We missed having our little sister and her family. Oh it was also the weekend that the new Harry Potter book was delivered. Why mention this... well Darrel had a hard time pulling away from the book.
So here we are at the end of the summer. We are thinking about another trip to the ranch and Maggie and I will be having our special day of lunch at the River House Tearoom and back to school shopping. It is sad to see the end of summer, but we are looking forward to the new school year. There is something about the look of new school supplies that we all get excited about.