100,000!!

My faithful minivan hit 100,000 miles today!

I was so excited.  I've never driven a car to 100,000 miles.  My husband has, but I usually have the newer car, so I've never personally done it.  It made me think of all the places my van has taken us over the last 7 years...

to lots of homeschool events and holiday parties...

to the zoo...

to lots of soccer practices and games!

down to Corpus Christi (many, many trips down there...that's where our families live!)

to LOTS and LOTS of baseball practices and games!!

to and from church every week for the last 7 years!

to Dealy Plaza in Dallas and the famous...

...grassy knoll!

 

We've made many trips to the Ballpark in Arlington

 

especially on Ice Cream Sunday!

All the way through Louisiana and over the Mighty Mississippi River...

then through Mississippi, Alabama and most of Florida to get to one of our favorite destinations...

Walt Disney World!

and all the way back home again where we have enjoyed countless trips to Chick-fil-a!

Then, cross country again through Oklahoma and Kansas for a stop in Kansas City...

then through Missouri to visit Hannibal...

...the boyhood home of Mark Twain and

the Mark Twain cave featured in Tom Sawyer!

further through Missouri to Illinois and the resting place of one of our greatest presidents...

then on to St. Louis and...

...home again through some terrible thunderstorms.

What a good van!  We arrived home without a scratch!

There have been MANY trips to the museum,

and I wonder how many of those 100,000 miles were spent driving to and from gymnastics!

(a lot!!)

and did I mention we like to go to the zoo?

and the museum??

We hit the 100,000 mark today on the way home from picking the kids up from a friend's house.

Here I am with only 4 miles left to go!

and there it is...100,000!

It just so happened that we hit 100,000 right next to a Sonic...so we had to stop and celebrate!

As another way to celebrate I think I'll get the oil changed.  I noticed today I'm 2000 miles over due!

14

Guess who's 14 today?

Happy Birthday to my wonderful son, Nathan!

Zoo fun!

The kids' grandparents gave them a zoo membership for Christmas.

Claire and I took Chris on his last day of vacation.  (Nathan was at a friend's house...we didn't just leave him behind!)  Chris hadn't been to the Dallas zoo in about 12 years.  It used to be a pretty pathetic zoo, but they have made some wonderful improvements over the years.  He was shocked...it didn't even look like the same zoo to him!  One of their improvements is the new Africa area...



Another one of our favorite areas is the aviary in the kids part....



The thing my kids like best about this zoo, and why I wanted a membership there instead of Fort Worth which is closer, is that they have a nature exchange.  You can take it nature items, trade them in and get points that you can spend getting an item someone else traded in.  They have some very cool stuff there and my kids LOVE it!  I'll have to take pictues inside the nature exchange next time we go. :)

And don't forget...today is Tiggerific Tuesday at the Magical Mouse Schoolhouse so bounce on by to join the blog hop!

Postcard Friendship Friday #83

This is another card I picked up in Hannibal, MO.  The back is actually upside down when you turn the card over.  I thought that was different.  For some reason the scanner didn't scan the bottom of the back of the card.  Its is signed As Ever, Cousin Louis.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Postcard Friendship Friday is hosted by Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Our year in pictures

I think its fun to look back through my pictures from the past year and remember what all we did. 

 January: we had a huge snow/ice storm.  We were iced in for days!

We live in Texas, so, yes, this was huge!

February:  I became the mother of a TEENAGER!

March begins Little League Baseball...

And there was Easter in April...

May was particulary fun since we took a vacation to Missouri.  We visited all of the Mark Twain stuff in Hannibal, but after we caught a Ranger game in Kansas City, of course!

by the Mighty Mississippi...

June brings one of Claire's favorite things:  VBS!

Being that we are in Texas, my post includes a huge snowstorm and a heatwave!

In July it was HOT!  We did all we cold to stay cool....like ice skating...

...and swimming!

It was still hot in August.  That's why we start school then. 

We prefer to have May off for summer vacation instead of August.  Works great for vacations!

Speaking of vacations...

We headed to Southern California in September.

To visit Disneyland, of course!

And we couldn't go to Anaheim without catching a Ranger game at Angels Stadium!

October is always very busy and 2011 was no different! 
Claire's birthday and Halloween added to the excitement.
.

November was busy too...the kids had way too much going on this last year!

That's why it was nice to stay home at Thanksgiving and enjoy some homemade desserts!

December, of course, was filled with lots of Christmas preparations,

Mass on Christmas Eve and

lots of Christmas morning fun!

We had a great year and we feel very blessed
I wish everyone a very happy new year and a wonderful 2012!