Nacogdoches

Dain and I needed to get away so we spent a weekend in Nacogdoches. We took the steam train and it was SO much fun! We drove up on Friday, then on Saturday morning, we jumped on the train which chugged along the forest for 1.5 hrs. At one point, the trained slowed down because we were held up!

They started firing at the train then managed to get on board. It was really cute. They ended up going up and down the train cars asking for donations for a charity. But they did it by offering to "throw that good for nothing man in your life off the train". ha ha

At the other station, when we arrived, there was a big party waiting with signs. We had pre-ordered lunch, so we had a picnic while we waited for the trip back. We took the chance to walk around the area and take pictures. The area is so pretty. It's in the middle of a forest of pine trees.

It was such a nice getaway and so close to home!

Dain Bakes and Stuff Like That

Dain was the MC for the Oyter Creek Park 4th of July. Here he is with Michelle Fisher, who works for him. He's a great MC!!!!

I had been ranting about craving cinnamon rolls. Well, I think he got tired of me talking about them non stop so he made some. Here they are right before he baked them .... He put in raisins (which I don't like) but he compensated by adding chocolate chips. YUM

And round things off, he made this delicious bread. :-) Yeah, I love bread!

Idaho/Utah Trip

We went to Idaho and then Utah. We landed in SLC then rented a car and drove up to Idaho. We hadn't seen my parents in a while plus my younger brother opened his third restaurant and we wanted to see that too. I LOVED the cooler weather. Dain went out for a walk early in the morning and he couldn't get enough of the cooler mornings. We take stuff like that for granted when we're kids!

On the way back from Idaho, we stopped in Ogden, at the Solomon Center and went skydiving ... indoor. Dain and I have both done real skydiving but we thought it would be fun to do as a family. It was a blast! The kids did very well!

We also hiked in the canyons. We love Big Cottonwood Canyon and we were lucky to be able to do a couple of our favorite hikes. This picture was taken on the same rock where we had our very first family picture taken. Cool memories.

There was plenty of snow up on top!!! We had a great snowball fight. Well, they all did. I hid behind the camera. I love this shot of everyone running down the mail slope at Brighton.

After SLC, we went to Central Utah, the town of Joseph to be exact, where we met with Dain's mom, hubby and all his siblings for a quick get together. Dain's mom rented an old church turned vacation rental. It was very cool!!! Dain's family is really into sports so the kids spent the time playing baseball, basketball, riding bikes, etc. I love the colors and the beautiful red rock.

The worst part was saying goodbye to Alyssa and coming back to Texas. It's so far away ....