Serene Sunday
Our church offers three (actually four) services these days. A Saturday night service, two Sunday morning services and most recently a Sunday afternoon Spanish service. Terry teaches in the 11:00am service and now also teaches in the Spanish service. He loves teaching the kids and has great fun - but it makes for a long day for him.
I decided to attend the 9:00am service today and then take our four younger kids, and a neighburhood kid, Amanda, to the
San Antonio Zoo. My in-laws kindly bought us the family membership as a Christmas gift last year, and we generally make good use of it. Today was the perfect day to go - the crowds were down, the weather was fine, 93 was the high, but there was no or little humidity. The animals were out in full force, and the kids were filled with energy. San Antonio Zoo is very pretty, with many points of interesting architecture, and is surrounded by a park, with the
Witte Museum and the
Japanese Tea Gardens nearby.
The kids did have a good time - we go so often these days that they know exactly when a new animal is on exhibit, and if something is out of place!
Garrick and Teagan
Carson
Amanda and Hayley
Labels: Amanda, Carson, Garrick, Hayley Teagan, Japanese Tea Garde, Witte, Zoo
Smelker News
It's been a while since I posted; mostly because since the beginning of the year (I know, I know, only 3 weeks!) I have been slammed with work. It's a good thing, really! It is either that or get an office job. As much as I enjoyed working for DNP Photo last December, I much prefer the flexible schedule working from home allows me to have. I can volunteer at the school as needed, in fact tomorrow I have to stand in the copy room for a couple of hours copying the newsletter I created for the nine week period ending on Friday.
Warrick has moved back home. Last June he moved to a friend's house, a kind of half way point between leaving home, striking out on his own in an apartment. Even though he makes good money (for an 18 year old) he realised he just couldn't make it financially, not without incurring debt and he KNOWS how we feel about debt! We invited him to move back and I am happy he is here. We seldom see him, he leaves for work in the morning, comes home for dinner some nights and then works on his college material.
Terry has been kept very busy by a client named Chris Voss. He was recently featured on local television about his work on a particular home,
Sitterle Homes. The neat thing is Terry actually designed several of the pieces mentioned in the article, and then Chris created them. Right now Chris is working with a VP of Dell in Austin, and Terry designed several of the pieces that Chris will now create from iron.
As the weather warms I am sure we will spend more time outside! We took advantage of the warm weather at the end of December and spent the day at the zoo, but it has been too cold for even these Michigan transplants to return!
Labels: Chris Voss, Warrick, Zoo
Zoo Crew
Texas loves to celebrate holidays and so the schools on our side of town (and I am sure all over San Antonio) were closed yesterday in observance of Columbus Day. I don't remember the schools in Michigan been closed for Columbus Day, but then again, Texas has its own Pledge of Allegiance, and I don't rightly recall that Michigan does. The South really IS different from the North!
Seeing that the weather was perfect - a high of 90 yesterday, and that we hadn't been to the
San Antonio Zoo in a couple of months it was decided that it was high time we made our way back there again.
(I have to admit to being spoilt though. I grew up in South Africa and spent a lot of time at the
Pretoria Zoo which has over 4,300 animals and takes up 200 acres! It even has a cable car so you can get to the animals at the furthest end of the zoo.)
We even did the train ride. It is a 10 or 15 minute ride that ambles its way through the public
Brackenridge Park, stopping off at the
Witte Museum (with the coolest hands-on display for kids) and the
Japanese Sunken Garden which is currently under renovation.
Labels: Zoo
