Vacation, Weddings, Florida // JULY LIFE UPDATE

July 31, 2018

Vacation, Weddings, Florida // JULY LIFE UPDATE

     I feel like I say this after every month, but this month was jam packed! So much happened during this month, including visiting small towns in Oklahoma, Six Flags, grandparents in Missouri, camping in Central Texas heat for a weekend family reunion, and much more. Keep reading to check it all out, and of course, the plenty of photos at the bottom. :)

     The first day of July was the start of family vacation. I love that, especially now that us kiddos have gotten older, every year my family goes somewhere fun for a family vacation. We've gone to multiple different places and we always make the best memories and do some pretty fun stuff. This year was no different. However, most of the time, our vacations only last about a week. This year, it lasted fifteen days. We packed in everything we could in those two weeks and it was alot of fun. We drove through Fort Worth and met up with my Summit friend Kent, and had lunch with him at his family's Mexican restaurant. It was so good and we left so full, and with lots of to-go boxes. If you want to check them out, it's called Joe T. Garcia's in downtown Ft. Worth, TX.
     We spent three days in Oklahoma. We stayed in a hotel in Tulsa, but drove an hour in and out every day to a little town called Pawhuska. It's little and mostly unknown, unless you watch the show Pioneer Woman on Food Network. My mother does and when she found out that she could visit the town that Ree Drummond lives in and visit her store, we made it a mandatory stop. My mom loves the show almost as much as my 4 yr old little brother Michael does, so we indulged them both during the trip. We visited the Pioneer Woman Mercantile for lunch (my dad was very excited about $.25 lemonade), and we visited Pioneer Woman's ranch, which is where her show is filmed. We rummaged through every drawer and pantry shelf in that kitchen. We spent July 4th in Pawhuska, at the Pioneer Woman Independence Day celebration. They had lots of tents with vendors and food, a rock climbing wall, cotton candy, a mechanical bull, and live music. The entire Drummond family was there also, so we met Lad, Todd, Alex + Paige, and even Ree herself. We ended the day with a 30 minute fireworks show put on by the Pioneer Woman crew - the longest fireworks show I've ever seen!
     The first weekend of July was spent in Missouri with my paternal grandparents. They were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary, so we threw a party and had a good time. We helped in their garden while we were there, which included picking blackberries that were turned into a fresh blackberry cobbler. We also looked at lots of old photo albums of my grandparents when they were first married, and us grandkids when we were little. While we were in Missouri, we also picked up a new van! We've been praying and searching for a new van for my mom for a few years now. A few months back, My mom found one online at a dealership in Missouri and had our uncle go test drive it for us and we ended up buying it through the phone, without every looking at it in person. My grandparents store it in their garage for us until we came to visit and we spent the rest of vacation in two cars. It was pretty handy when it came to packing up suitcases and things because we had plenty of space! But now we have two minivans and we've had to distinguish the two based on color. The new one is red, so Mom has decided to call it "Ruby". The blue one we had already has had multiple names that we can't agree on. The brothers want to call it "Vincent Van Gogh" (you get the joke there), while Daddy and myself keep calling it "Ole Blue". Who knows which one it'll end up with.
     We spent a few days in Arlington at Six Flags, after leaving Missouri. Our first day at Six Flags was also Cow Appreciation Day at Chick Fil A, and if you know my family and our love for freebies and coupons, you know that we participated in that. We got in on the fun before going to Six Flags, and since our roller coaster fun was cut short due to rainy weather, we went back for dinner and a late night snack even afterwards. The second day of Six Flags wasn't cut short due to rain, so that was good! However, I participated in less coasters and rides as the day progressed cuz of heat exhaustion and ya girl can only ride so many spinny rides before feeling nauseous.
Our last weekend of vacation was spent in central Texas heat for four days cuz of a family reunion camping trip. Why does my mom's side of the family think it's a great idea to host a reunion camping trip every year in the middle of July? I may never know, but it is always a bunch of fun. There's always lots of fried food and sweating and we have a talent show on Saturday night and we eat french fries for breakfast and it's fun. My cousin and best friend Addy turned 18 the day before the camping happened so a handful of us cousins took off Friday afternoon to a trampoline park in Waco (thirty minutes away) and jumped our lil hearts out. We had fun! It's always a weekend that's partially dreaded because it's so hot and you have to shower in an outhouse that sometimes has bugs and frogs in it, but it's also so much fun because you eat "junk" food for breakfast and you get to see family that you never get to see and you make great memories. So if you ever wanna come, we'd probably adopt you for the weekend. ;)
The week following vacation was spent trying to get back into the swing of regular life. Lots of sleeping and doing laundry and dates with Elijah cuz we hadn't seen each other in a while.
I got to help celebrate the marriages of two sweet couples! The first was actually my Sunday school teachers, Andrew & Amanda. I got to help serve nachos at their reception. So much fun! The second couple were also friends from church, Sydney & PJ, who got married 6 days later! Sydney was actually in Jonathan's homeschool graduating class so it was cool to see her get married after knowing her awhile.
Mommy celebrated her birthday on the 25th! And the 26th because we had a hard time with schedules since everyone is so busy nowadays!
On the 30th of the month, I boarded a plane (technically two) for Pensacola, Florida to see one of my favorite Summit Semester classmates, Anna Lynn. I will be spending the last days of July and the first days of August with her, so stay tuned for next month's blog post to see how that trip went! (spoiler: it was probably really great)

Check in at the end of August for another monthly life update! More fun to continue. :)

Always,
Becca