Whirlwinds and Dust Devils

WOw! Where has June gone? SOOOO much has been going on in the French household that it seems as if the winds have been blowing non-stop since school let out! We left for Texas on June 6th, at an hour waaaayyyyy too early for a family of any size! Our dear neighbors taxied us to the airport at 5:50 a.m. The flight was pretty uneventful (other than the feeling like we were going to fall out of the sky in Denver!). A black stretch limo picked us up from the San Antonio, TX airport and chauffeured (are there 2 fs and 2 rs in that one?) us to our hotel. The couple of days we spent in San Antonio were one of our whirlwinds! We spent the evening Saturday just settling in to our fancy digs and getting something to eat. We even had cheesecake waiting for us, compliments of the hotel concierge. We swam in the rooftop pool and walked along the famous Riverwalk of San Antonio. On the Sabbath we tried to keep things low key. We did take in the Alamo--the History Shop established by Phil Collins (yes, the European!) just across the street from the Alamo is a must stop, and at a dollar per entrant, it was totally worth it! Did you know the Alamo originally didn't have a roof? Apparently most missions were built 'open-air', but for tourism (?) it is enclosed now. We walked around a little trying to find a bus stop to take us to the Witte Museum. Unfortunately, we walked around the stop and missed it! Oh well, maybe another opportunity will come to visit TX and we can plan on a trip there. The last 'touristy' thing we did was ride the riverboat in the Riverwalk. It was a great tour of the interior of the city. Fascinating stuff!

Monday morning we were again picked up by a stretch limo--this one was white--to take us out into the sticks. Have you ever tried to buckle a car seat into a limo? Well, let's just say Elloryn was buckled into her seat for most of the trip, but since there were few seatbelts in the limo she would have ended up in someone's lap if there had been a sudden stop!

Once on the Ranch (Rancho Cortez) it was all horses. Shayla loved every minute of it and everyone else got to enjoy it too. Jarin, however, was less than thrilled to be away from the comforts of home: cell phone reception, T.V., computer access, Friends! HOWEVER, I cry as I share this, he never, ever complained about it! He knew it was Shayla's wish and he went along with it. He was a real trooper and a great brother and son about it. He will probably tell you that the best part of it for him was getting to cut down the cedar trees on the ranch.

The pictures tell the story best, so I will post those, as a slide show if I can---we took over 500 pictures total (498 are on my camera alone!), so there will be a lot of them left out. Enjoy!