River Place Nature Trail

This trail is in a really nice neighborhood in the West Austin Hill Country with beautiful big mansions. It's a 3 mile trail, but we ended up only going in about a half a mile and then back again--one mile total.

There was a big pond with fountains and turtles. I counted 2 dozen turtles; Lizzie said she saw 3.

The Boardwalk

We had two friends spend the day with us while their dad worked and their mom went to Houston to help with cleanup.

Here's the turtle pond with fountain in the background.

These "beautyberries" were all over the trail.

Creek in the background

More Misc

Lunch at Olive Garden with Daddy

Puppet show at the library with friends

Brain Flakes... fun toys!

At the park with friends

Police Department Open House

We had some friends join us in the day because their mom and dad were in Houston. 

In front of the 9-1-1 call center.

Police motorcycle

EMS helicopter!

Fire truck!

Face painting

Owen's Preschool

Pictures taken at preschool yesterday. Just missing Ashley because she was sick:

Hurricane Harvey Cleanup

This is a picture that Scott took while he was in Houston on Sunday. (That's one of his priests in the corner there.) He spent the whole day working with a crew to muck out one house in a nice west Houston neighborhood. The house had flooded about three feet, so they had to remove about four feet of drywall plus all flooring and personal belongings. (Everything on the street corner there was un-salvagable and will end up in a landfill.) Scott was one of more than 10,000 Mormon Helping Hands volunteers from 53 stakes. Our stake alone sent 503 volunteers last weekend, who donated 5,564 hours to work on 55 homes. And our leadership has sent out the call to do it again this weekend.

Here is a link to an article about it: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865688556/While-Irma-raged-11000-Mormon-volunteers-worked-to-save-Texas-homes.html.

And here's a video from Mormon Newsroom: https://www.facebook.com/MormonNewsroom/videos/1974658886151843/.

I have never observed a major relief effort up close like this before, and it's pretty mind blowing to see how the Church has responded. My good friend Jamie lives in Houston, and she recounted to me how her church building became a temporary rescue command center and refugee camp pretty much overnight. They coordinated rescues of people who were stranded in their flooded homes, fed and clothed refugees, collected and distributed donations, and housed displaced families until they could find more permanent shelter.

The Church's ability to organize and assemble volunteers at such short notice and on such a large scale is testimony building and absolutely incredible to me.

One more pic: the inside of one of the homes.

Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve

We went for a hike out in West Austin today (Texas Hill Country). This preserve has about 2.5 miles of trails. We hiked between 1 and 1.5 miles and had a picnic.

There was a waterfall in the background, but somehow I managed not to capture it in the picture!

Misc

Emily organized a co-op preschool for Owen since he starts kindergarten next year. There are 6 moms from our ward and a neighboring ward that are participating. This was our week to host. We had a grandparents theme (since today is Grandparents' Day), and for snack we had cookies and lemonade. (Owen's friend, Lila, was out of town this week so she's missing from the picture.)

We took these two pictures about a week ago at a Home Depot workshop. They're held the first Saturday of every month. We've gone twice now, and they're a lot of fun. This month the kids made pencil boxes. (They put stickers on them after the paint dried.)

These are our good friends the Farleys. Their kids are the same age as our kids. We get together regularly. This was at their house earlier this week.

We're trying to get into the habit of eating lunch at the girls' school once a week this year. These are two pictures that I took this week and last.

Emily also organized a weekly playgroup with the other moms/kids from the ward. So far 4-5 moms come out with their kids each week. This picture was at the park this week. William sat in the swing and let me push him for a long time. None of our other kids were ever content to sit in the swing for very long when they were little, but William seems to really enjoy it.

One of the major draw backs to living in Texas is all the pests: cockroaches, mosquitoes, and in this case fire ants. It's kind of hard to see, but this kid ended up with 2-3 dozen fire ant bites all over his feet and legs. When fire ants swarm, they move quickly and in big groups. You can see the hives here, which later turn into pus-filled blisters. Poor guy. (He was wearing flip flops.)

First Day of School

School was delayed two hours today (and seminary cancelled) due to all the storms over the weekend. We got about 10 inches of rain over the last few days.

1st Grade and 2nd Grade

Windermere Primary School (and Owen is doing co-op preschool one morning a week with 5 other kids from our ward and the neighboring ward)

Great Squirrel Rescue

Yesterday on our way to church we found these little guys on the sidewalk, struggling for life. My first impression was that they were rats that were drowning in the storm drain and had crawled out to die, but they are actually young squirrels. (Maybe the 40 mph winds knocked them out of our tree?)

Fast forward about seven hours, I came home from visiting teaching to find that Scott and the kids had made a make-shift incubator for them. (And there were actually four instead of just two.)

This picture was taken this morning. Two of the squirrels seemed to be thriving, while the other two kept crawling out of the box and getting all wet and cold again. (It was a pretty pitiful sight.) Momma Squirrel came and got them about the time Scott left for work this morning, so hopefully with the drier weather today they'll have a chance to rebound from their ordeal.