Building Land Sails

We went to Lowes with Joel & Caleb's friends Justus & Isaiah and built some land sails

Of course after you build the land sail you have to race it. : )

Asbury's Multi-Cultural Event

We attended a multi-cultural event tonight at Asbury. It was a great night filled with singing, dancing, drums, and poems. The list of performers included: Native Americans, Koreans, Africans, Germans, Canadians, Indians (from India) and others.

Here were a couple of our favorites...

At the end of the performances there was a slide show that pictured most of the multi-cultural symbols located around campus. We were happily surprised when my art appeared in the slide show. Fun stuff.

Happy Birthday Paul!

Mom & Dad Visit

Mom and Dad came to visit for Paul's Birthday. They told us they were coming some time ago but we thought that after Mom had to have her appendix out that they would cancel the trip. But of course not. Everyone who knows Mom knows she's amazing, and always up for anything. We were glad to have them and had a great weekend of fun.

Woodford Distillery

We've been wanting to check out one of the local distilleries for some time and Mom & Dad have been wanting to see the same so we headed to Woodford Reserve. We took the tour and got to see how they make KY Bourbon.

After the tour we headed back for free samples and Bourbon balls....

(Caleb is drinking Peach Tea)

Before we left the Distillery the boys were able to ride Rusty, the barrel chested horse....

Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce

After our distillery tour Mom and Dad took us out to eat at the Rail Yard in Versailles. At Woodford Reserve our tour guide told us that everyone who comes to KY must have bread pudding with bourbon sauce. So we ordered one and split it. Great stuff!

Here's some video of the boys passing the time until our food arrived

More Fun with Mom & Dad

After Lunch at the Rail Yard we headed to Nicholasville to check out Joel's Art

Then we stopped for ice-cream

Then we went to the Seminary to check out Tess' art and to play in the gym

Then we headed home and played outside for a while before bed. Check out this video of the boys on their bikes and remember that Caleb just learned to ride his bike without training wheels a little over a month ago (at age 4!)

After the boys went to bed we played a few hands of Spades - and the girls won : )

On Sunday we went to a friends church to attend their children's baptism, then headed off to a little town near Frankfort to pick up pottery that Mom had ordered on a previous trip to KY. Then we drove to a restaurant that I had been told we must go to before we leave KY to celebrate Paul's birthday. The restaurant was Claudia Saunder's (the Colonel's wife....you know KFC). Here's Mom & Dad with the Colonel....

On Monday Mom and Dad headed back to Maryland around noon but they were able to take Joel to School and to have breakfast with his class in the School Cafeteria before they headed out.

Tess' First Art Show

Debuting her art at the seminary's annual art show, Tess featured the wonderful paper piece called "joy of our salvation" which you can see here in the background. It was a wonderful evening at the show, and Tess was honored to have her art displayed among several other really nice works. She has received many compliments for the piece that now hangs above our fire place mantle.

Joel's First Art Show

Joel has said for the past couple of years that he wants to be an artist when he grows up so we were able to have his work displayed at the Jessamine County Public Library for his very first Art Show which was displayed in the lobby for the month of April. Here's his work.....

All of these pieces are watercolor. The blue 1/2 face was his first piece that he asked to have on display but while creating all the pieces for this show he discovered that he could draw & paint eagles which are now his favorite thing to draw. The one displayed here is a "golden eagle".

We had a reception for Joel's art and here's a picture of a group viewing his piece. (You can't see him in this picture but he's there explaining his work) During the reception we enjoyed eating cheese & crackers and drinking sparkling cider while hearing Joel talk about his work.

The Library displays one artist's work per month in their Lobby space and they actually have a little over a year's waiting list. We had to bring in a sample of Joel's work before it was allowed to be displayed, and we also had to submit a bio to display next to the work. It was really an honor to have had his work displayed here and he was so proud to see his work on display.

Lexington Kite Festival

We went to a kite festival and nearly froze to death. It was definitely windy. We took Joel's Blue Angels Kite and Caleb's Dragon kite and they soared.

There were so many kites - it was amazing to see them all in the sky. Several were awesome. There was a man there with a kite that was so huge it kept lifting him off the ground. He'd start at one end of the field and was basically dragged to the other end of the field if he tried to resist.

Wilmore has Sprung

Here's some pictures of flowers we took on our walk around Wilmore.

Chicharronies

On our trip down to Texas we told Joel the story about Jason Woolever and the chicharronies. (You'll have to ask him sometime) Joel begged for the rest of the trip if he could try chicharronies. We finally lamented. So....Jason....this picture's for you. : )

Casey Jones Village TN

The last stop on our trip home was to the Casey Jones Village in Tennessee. We stopped by the Museum, the shops, and the restaurant. We met a very nice man in the museum who wouldn't agree to sing the Casey Jones song for us but did play it for us on his CD player. : )

We actually mailed a postcard from this mail drop.

Caleb's favorite part of the stop.

Bluebonnets

We couldn't leave Texas without a Bluebonnet picture!

Crater of Diamonds State Park

We stopped at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas on the way back home. We had such a great time digging and found some great stones - but no diamonds. Nine people did though, and 4 of them were found while we were at the park. (Every time someone finds a diamond they blow a siren.)

All of us dug in the mud. It had rained a little that morning.

I had been concerned that the boys might get bored digging for hours but should have known better. They had a blast and we were able to stay until the park closed.

Paul and Joel at one of the water troughs.

Arkansas Capitol

Our Family at the Arkansas Capitol in Little Rock.

We've been pretty amused by the pictures that people take of us. We always try to set up the shot and tell them to get us and as much of the Capitol building as possible. The woman who took this one actually did a great job. We arrived there right at sunset and it was beautiful, but by the time we took this picture we'd missed it.

Hotel Fun

These were taken at a Hotel in Austin - but bed jumping was the first thing the boys did at every hotel on our trip. Paul and I laughed and reminisced about our own bed jumping days as kids....remember Shawn?

This was from our hotel in Little Rock. After a day of driving, digging, then driving some more we had a great time swimming in the hotel pool.

No Room in the Inn for the Allans

Joseph & Mary Kathryn....fabulous friends we met at Asbury but who have since graduated and moved back to Texas.....had their first baby - Lydia (she's beautiful by the way). We knew they were due any minute so we didn't want to bother them on the way down to Texas but we spoke with them on the phone the day Lydia was born and Joseph told us to swing by on the way back to Kentucky.

All that to say, we checked out of our hotel in Austin a day early and drove to Granbury thinking that we'd surprise them early in the morning then head on our way home. We arrived in Glen Rose a little after mid-night and all of the hotels were full. So we drove to Granbury and stopped at two more hotels and both were full. When the first hotel said that there were no rooms available in Granbury we didn't believe it so we stopped at the 2nd who then told us the same thing and to try the next town. So we drove to the next town only to find that every hotel there was full and finally someone explained that Nascar was in town....we continued to drive until about 3 in the morning before we finally found a dive on the far side of Dallas, but at least we could finally get some sleep.

We were so sorry to have missed seeing Lydia (& Joseph & Mary Kathryn too of course : ).

The Tour

We spent the day in Austin hanging out at a bunch of our old favorites, about 1/2 way through the day we realized we were on "the tour". Many of you will remember our tour - we'd all pile into a car or two or even the back of Paul's truck and head out to the lakes, Amy's ice-cream, the Capitol, the bats, etc.

This time we included our old house, our old apartment on Town Lake, Amy's ice-cream, we had lunch at the Green Mesquite on Barton Springs (if you go there look for our family picture under the glass on one of the tables by the front door) we hiked around Zilker Gardens, went to HEB (one of the places I miss the most : ) and of course toured the Capitol. Here's our family in front of the Texas Capitol...

4 stories up inside the Capitol...

After Joel's Squirrel adventure at the Riverwalk we spent the rest of our trip making friends with every squirrel we came across....

We sure miss Texas and look forward to being home!