too much and not enough...

As you may have noticed, we have been absent from the world of blogging for about three weeks. Those of you who know how much we procrastinate, are not surprised by this. However, life has truly been busy and for a potion of these three weeks, Jack has been on business travel. He is currently in Oklahoma working on an exercise which, for months before, he spent many long hours getting ready for. The exercise ends tomorrow, thankfully, and he will be home late tomorrow night. Hopefully, when he gets home and his schedule gets back to normal, he will have time to start posting again (hopefully with minimum nagging from me). Maybe he'll even take a much needed, well deserved vacation (even if we don't go anywhere) for a week or two.

While Jack has been on his forever long business trip to Oklahoma (OK, only 9 days now...but it seems longer) I have been fighting a losing battle in math class. I've also been busy being Madison's appointment keeper and chauffeur. She's been a popular girl this summer. Actually, both she and Jack have been popular..me, not so much! Just this morning Madison left for an eight day trip to Georgia with her Nana and Papa. She will be visiting her Aunt Melanie, Uncle Jimmy and cousins Lil' Jimmy and Mimi in Waycross,GA and then visiting her great grandparents in Savannah, GA. That is if she ever gets to leave Houston. They have been stuck in Houston, for about 6 hours now waiting on a flight out. Anyway, selfishly, I'll be glad when the traveling is done for both Jack and Madi. I'm tired of sharing them! There's been too much travel and not enough family time. So, by now you've figured out that Jack is not writing this post. Unfortunately the not-so-funny one in the family will be writing. Sorry to disappoint you, I know how much everyone looks forward to the funnies from Jack. I can't blame you, I look forward to them as well.

Here's a short run down of a few highlights over the last few weeks.

The weekend before Jack left for Oklahoma we managed to take a day for our family to do something besides business and school work. We took a trip with my sister, Virginia and nephew, Jason, to Inner Space Caverns in Georgetown, Texas. It's a pretty neat place with tons of history. Although we had to wait over an hour in the 104 degree heat for our tour to begin, we enjoyed our little outing. The tour was a guided under ground walking adventure which lasted about an hour and a half. The best part was that it was a constant 76 degrees under ground which allowed us to do our site seeing in natural air conditioning.

going down

At first glance, Madi thought there was a real

man under there.

Madi looks mad in this picture but, she had a good time, I think she was just a little tired at this point...or just ready to get to Dave and Busters, which is where we took the kids afterwards.

This is our kinda thing so, we really had a good time.

Then, the following weekend, Madi and I were fortunate enough to get to spend part of it with Jack in Oklahoma. We made the drive up on Friday and left Sunday by noon. What a nightmare drive it was there and back but, it was so worth it to spend time with him and see a new place.

This is what Madison did most of the drive...take pictures of herself or.... talk on the phone...mostly about bunnies. While in Oklahoma, we tortured ourselves yet again by picking an outdoor activity. We went to the Oklahoma City Zoo in the 106 degree heat. It was hot! A cold front came through the next day (the day we left) and the temperature only got to 88 degrees. Go figure.

The best part, a carousel ride on these guys...

and when Madi and I left Oklahoma, this is what Jack was doing...

working! Poor guy.

I haven't had many opportunities to take "pretty" pictures lately but, I do have one I wanted to share that I took a few weeks ago. I am proud of this one because it took many hours to get...

This dragonfly was with a group of dragonflies that were in our back yard feasting on little bugs for a few days. It seemed they would never land but, one day after standing in the back yard for a while, one finally landed and I was able to snap one picture of it before it flew away. I'm glad it turned out. I have a few picture of other things that I will share in the next post since this one is getting a little lengthy.

I want to thank all of you who have encouraged us to keep up with this blog. Hopefully, it will not be three weeks before our next post and hopefully you'll still be visiting it! To make up for the lack of humor in this post since Jack is not writing, I will leave you with this picture...hopefully it will make you laugh.....

A tomato from our garden...we called it (yes, called - it has long been eaten by now) Tomato Got Back. :)