Mission Trip

Three of our number (Tim, Lane and Maren) leave in the morning at 6 am for Berryville, Arkansas on our youth mission trip. We will spend the next week with 50 other youth and adults working on homes in and around Berryville. Our youth will be blogging about the experience each day at our church blog. Check us out here.

Camping!

We went camping last week as a family for the first time ever. Tim and I went once when Lane was six months old and Tim and the kids went once before Reed was born, but we've never gone all together. Now, we're not new to camping out -- we both went many times as children with our families. In fact, that was usually the summer vacation with my parents. We'd go to various state parks and camp, sometimes in a tent, sometimes in a screened shelter. I have many good memories of those times, which is why we decided to go where we did.

We went to Huntsville State Park, one of the parks I went to when I was 12 years old. It's part of the Sam Houston National Forest in East Texas and is just a beautiful place. There are trees everywhere. Some people thought we were crazy to go camping in Texas in June. We were some of those people. The only bad thing I could see about it ahead of time was that I was sure it was going to be so hot, but hey, we were only staying two nights. This is the view from our campsite.

It was not hot in the least. The last day we were there, it got up to 88 degrees, but there are so many trees, that our campsite was quite shady. It was just beautiful and we were right on the lake. We saw bluejays and woodpeckers and there were squirrels everywhere that were not in the least bit shy. They would come within a foot or two of you -- I guess they're used to being fed!

We stayed in a screened shelter -- you have four walls and a roof and the windows are screened in, but that's all the comforts of home you have. We slept on air mattresses inside and had a concrete table inside to eat at, but mostly we ate at the picnic table outside.

Correction: four of us slept on air mattresses inside. The artist formerly known as Taco Boy, shall henceforth be known as Nature Boy. He would have nothing to do with sleeping inside and hauled his air mattress and sleeping bag out on the grass where he could see the stars. He's proud to report he was not eaten alive by mosquitos nor bothered by raccoons.

Maren tired quickly of walking down the road to change clothes to go swimming or of having to take her bathing suit with her in order to change at the bathhouse. She developed a new method of changing in our shelter. Yes, that's her zipped-up sleeping bag.

We swam in the mornings and evenings, cooked out on the grill, played games at night and read a lot. We made mud pies on the shore of the lake (or mud "monsters"). We tried our hand at fishing and found out we're not very talented at making a campfire without some assistance from a firestarter log.

On the way home, we stopped at the Sam Houston Visitor's Center to see the ENORMOUS statue of Sam Houston. You can't miss it passing through town. Lane and Maren were very interested in it as Lane is a history buff and Maren just took Texas History in 7th grade this year.

It was very relaxing and we'll be going back there again. We're thinking of making it an end-of-school tradition!

Counting by Threes Again

1. Our dishwasher died....again. About a week ago, it just up and quit. It's only 3 1/2 years old and it started making a horrible noise a few months ago when running that sounded like a train passing through our kitchen. We found out it still had a parts warranty on it so had a guy come out and fix it. He replaced, honest to God, EVERY part in the dishwasher. The motor, the motherboard, everything. We paid considerable labor charges, but still, much less than a new dishwasher. And now, three months later, dead again. There's water in the bottom of it as it just quit working mid-cycle. It's not the breaker; we unplugged the dishwasher to see if it would reset itself, and nothing. Last time, we had to hand wash dishes for a week and thought we were going to die. It's amazing how dependent you get on those modern gadgets. :) So this time, we were done. I mean, what else could be replaced in the dishwasher? And if we paid labor charges again, we'd be halfway to a new one anyway. So we bought a new one, but it was a special order and won't get here until next week.

2. My car died last night, but it was just the battery, thank goodness. Tim took my car to a conference he was attending in town, but it was by the airport, which is as far as you can get from our house and still be in Austin. He had was leaving to come back home and the car wouldn't turn over. So he had a coworker bring him to Round Rock and then I picked him up and drove to get a battery, then to where the car was to replace the battery and then back home last night. We didn't get back home until 9:15 pm. It was a Sonic night for dinner. :)

3. There's no #3 yet. Stay tuned!

Babies!

Last year, we had a barnswallow couple build a love nest on our front porch directly on top of our porch light. Apparently, this is close to an ideal location. It's sheltered from the elements and any predators and except for the dadgum humans that keep going in and out the front door, I'm sure it would be perfect. We named them Fred and Ethel and awaited lots of little Rickys.

They moved in and soon, four little eggs appeared. But alas, tragedy struck and the eggs never hatched. Mom and Dad Barnswallow packed up and moved away.

However! This year, they (or another barnswallow couple)took a tour of the somewhat dilapidated nest and decided that while it was a fixer-upper, the price was right and they, too moved in. They did indeed fix it up, building a much better, sturdier nest. I left them completely alone and never looked to see if there were eggs in the nest.

Then last week, I went out the front door and saw this:


At first I was concerned about Mama Bird's competency in caring for her young as she never seemed to be around at all, but I guess she was gathering lots of food, as she has fat little baby birds now!

Happy Birthday, Tim!

So last Thursday, May 29, was Tim's 42nd birthday. Y'all know I'm not a prompt blogger. It's just something you're going to have to accept. Life gets in the way of blogging.

Thursday was NOT a day that a major birthday celebration was going to happen. Maren's middle school athletics department made sure of that when they scheduled the end-of-year awards ceremony. Reed does not do well at long events he has no interest in, so there was nothing to do but divide and conquer. I went to the awards ceremony and didn't get back home until 8:30 pm. Dinner was rushed, but then we had Mrs. Smith's chocolate refrigerator pie and presents and all was well. It was still a school night, though, so everyone went off to bed and it was just another day in the Lowke household. Poor Tim.

But then Friday came along! Tim's parents were passing through town, so we met for dinner. Or *tried* to meet for dinner, I should say. We were meeting at 5:30 pm, so even in the Austin area on a Friday night, this shouldn't have been too bad. But, no. We went to Chuy's. I don't know how long the wait was because after circling the parking lot three times, there was not a parking spot to be found. So we went down the road to a local Mexican restaurant. Same thing. At this point, Tim realized that perhaps graduation for one of the many local schools was going on that night and people were eating beforehand. Perhaps we'd better go further north to Georgetown. We ended up at Chili's with only a 20 minute wait. Success! Dinner was great. We had dinner with Tim's parents, my niece and my nephew who is Reed's age. For dessert, they decided to have slushies. This is what they looked like afterward.


On Saturday night, our daughter was off spending the night at a friend's house. Shocked, aren't you. So off we went for the official birthday dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant. Tim and I indulged in margaritas and at some point realized that, hey, we have our very own designated driver now! Woo-hoo! We didn't require his services that night, though.

As you see, I have no pictures of the birthday boy during any celebration. Whoops. All in all, it was a very low-key birthday for him, but good, nonetheless. Y'all wish the old guy a happy birthday!!

Kindergarten Graduation

This is a late post. As you can imagine, with my end of school and the kid's end of school, life has been a bit crazy.

Kindergarten graduation was on Friday, May 30th. As luck would have it, I got to actually go because the program was scheduled during an off-exam period for me. Reed's is the only Kindergarten graduation I have been able to attend due to timing. Such is the life of a teaching parent - sorry Lane and Maren! Lorna has always been our parent to go - she took the whole day off this time to take Reed out to lunch and swimming later in the day as a special, you only graduate from kinder once in your life and we love you lots treat.

To say there were just a few people is an understatement. Our elementary school hosted 9 Kindergarten classes of the usual 22 kids per class. You do the math.

Our principal began the graduation with an apology for lack of seating. She said they ordered 600 chairs put up, but all those were full and there were probably another 100 or so adults still standing around the edges.

Just like this group will do in 2020, they filed in during a processional. They sang a very cute song to the tune of New York, New York that replaced words with lyrics about going to 1st grade. Very cute. Then in their little caps, that sat and watch kids get awards for reading and art. Finally, all kinder graduates went class by class and walked the stage to receive their "diploma." This was actually a pretty piece of paper with the real diplomas in the room so they could come home in one piece.

After everyone had walked the stage, they "recessed" and we all went to their classrooms for actual diplomas and Kodak moments. Here is Reed with Miss Flowers (his teacher). She has the BEST kindergarten teacher name ever!

Congratulations Reedster! We love you!

Mom and Dad