Texas

 We had a really fun week in Texas last week. Flying with three kids ages four and under from Chicago on a holiday weekend though... not our best planning. I thought we were home free until we landed in Austin and had to wait 30 minutes on the runway for a gate to open up. I was feeding Vivian and the man behind me tapped me on his shoulder and said "Maa'am, your daughter just spit on me." Nice. Proceed a 20 minute tantrum from Cosette refusing to apologize, ending in a very sincere apology from me and a half hearted mumble from her, thankfully he was gracious. Road trips and steadily increasing in appeal.

 My mom ordered a giant inflatable water slide for the kids to play on all week and it was a HIT. I can't believer how many hours they spent on this thing and how much energy they burned.

One of my favorite childhood memories was going out on Lake Travis on Grandad's boat so it was so much fun to get to go again with my cousins and bring our own kids, proud of them for being brave enough to tube too!

The Fourth of July is in fact my favorite holiday, and watching the fireworks with Cosette this year solidified that feeling. Every time the colors burst into the air she would shout "Purple! Fo me!!!"  or "Gween, fo you!!" She was just trembling with joy and I wish we could relive that night!

Another thing I really wanted to do was visit my Grand Grandmother's grave. Her name was Patricia McArthur, we called her Grammy, and she was an amazing artist. When I was about 10 years old she let me come over one day and set out all her acrylics and some canvas and gave me all these photos of wildflowers to choose from. I sat by the window in her lakehouse and painted just like she did. She died when I was in college and I wasn't able to go to the funeral so I was happy to get to honor her while we were there and tell my kids a *tiny* bit about her. We also went to her favorite restaurant Rosie's Tamale House and they have a picture of her hanging up on the wall, she's the gray-haired beauty in the middle.

Watching these cousins play together is so fun, oh what would the world be like if we all got to live close to our favorite cousins! We also got to spend a day in San Antonio and see Zander and Beca's beautiful new house, teach Evan all about the Alamo, and eat authentic Tex-Mex, which, I'm pretty sure, is all they serve in heaven.