River Trip, 4th of July, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!

Yes, I am aware that I am lagging in my posting. So I shall play catch-up in one post. We had such a great time while at the river. We stayed at a place called Hideout on the Horseshoe. This place was amazingly beautiful. Our view was so relaxing. We did alot of sitting on the porch.This was where we spent the majority of our time. We kinda took over this part of the porch. We ate all of our meals out here and even napped!!

View to the right (or downstream) of our cabin.

View to the left of the cabin or upstream.


View to the far right. This path lead down to the river.

We arrived on Sunday and Courtney could not wait to get in the river. She had been talking as excitedly about this trip for the last couple of weeks as we had. She put on her bathing suit and talked her Uncle Terry (not very hard) into getting in the water with her. They had a blast shooting each other with water guns.I love her stance in this picture. She is SOOOO GIRLY!!!

After watching them play for awhile we headed back up to the cabin and relaxed on the porch.

Monday morning we woke up with the intentions of floating the river. You see this might possibly be my favorite thing in the world to take part in. I LOVE to float the river!!! They have been getting quite a bit of rain up there so they would not allow us to take tubes, but let us rent a raft. They also scared us to death and told us that the dam had just been opened and the water would be rising and begining to run faster while we were on it. Well since we had to float right past the cabin we decided to drop off Courtney with my parents. When we started out it was pouring down rain. Niki and I both questioned Terry big time on his decision to go ahead with the trip. We dropped off Court and headed on down the river. The sun came out about that time and it ended up being a BEAUTIFUL day. We never felt the water rise or start picking up speed while we were out there. In fact we got out and sat in the water several times just to make the trip last longer. Somehow we turned a 2 hour trip into an almost 4 hour trip. It was great. Terry, Niki, and I took a ton of pictures from this trip BUT I can't figure out what happened to them. They were on the water camera and somehow didn't ever get developed. Go Figure!! But we still had a great day on the river... This is us pulling up to drop off Court with Dad.

That night we did our nightly routine of hanging out on the porch and eating as much as possible. Mom cooked every meal!!! We all came home with a couple of extra pounds. Niki and Terry were having an eating contest and I can honestly say, I'm not real sure who the winner was. The idea of the contest was to see who would have to go home wearing a shower curtain because their clothes no longer fit them. Neither actually went home in the shower curtain but they both claimed they needed too!!!

Tuesday we floated the Comal River partly in beautiful sunshine and partly in pouring down rain. This time Dad came along. The first time down it took us about an hour and a half. The second time the water was running much faster and was much dirtier (from a little pouring down rain) and it only took us 30 minutes. We let Courtney ride on Terry's lap down the tube shoot. She loved that!! The second time around Niki and I both had issues of staying in our tubes. She fell out on the shoot and I was turned around backwards watching her and all the sudden I hear Terry yelling my name. As I turn I realize I am in BIG trouble I was in the wrong spot to go over a dam like apparatus and out I went. It was about a 2 foot drop. I was fighting to get back on my tube as I see Niki on her way to the same spot I fell out and start yelling at her, "Don't do it, get to the side!" and over she went. Dad watched the whole thing so he went down the right spot and stayed in his tube. Oh well, it was funny. That afternoon and evening there was more relaxing on the porch.This is before Niki and I tumped over!!

Dad and Courtney

This is an example of how we relaxed on the porch. Niki slept for 2 hours in that chair with her blankie.Courtney relaxed right along with us!!!

Wednesday, July 4th, we spent the day at the outlet mall in San Marcus. I always love that place. Unfortunately the Lupron kicked in and I was in a yucky mood for part of the time. Allthough I did get 2 new Coach purses and that made me feel much better. That evening more of the same. We were going to go to a free concert that was going on down the road but we just never really got around to it. We could see fireworks over the trees every once in awhile, but we were definitely enjoying our FREEDOM.This rainbow was beautiful on the 4th of July. I you look closely you can see that it was actually a double rainbow. And you could see the beginning and end of them. It was really neat!!We took a few pictures on the fourth!!!

Thursday, the most important day, July 5th----My BIRTHDAY!!!!! We woke up Thursday morning and Terry was VERY ready for me to open my gift from him. You see, Terry doesn't EVER keep gifts from me. He always gets so excited about what he has bought for me that he gives it to me immediately. For example, at Christmas I usually sit and watch him open his gifts because I have received each of mine as he has bought them. I have worked really hard to break him of this and he was oh soooo successful for this big nasty 30th birthday of mine. He was so funny before we left because he had it all wrapped in this cute little pink box. Now he did TRY to give me this gift early but thank goodness I kept him at bay and he wasn't able to follow through.

My cute pink box. I wonder what is inside????

A beautiful ruby and diamond ring. I LOVE IT!!!!!!! He did SOOO good!!


Then I got a Coach purse from mom and dad. And one from myself also :)

I also got some scrapbooking stuff from Niki. YEAH!!! I need to catch up on scrapbooking 10 times worse than blogger.
Then it was off to the river. We couldn't rent tubes from the outfitters so we decided to take our lives into our own hands and buy our own tubes. We'll show you Mr. River Authority Man. I decided I WAS floating on my birthday. If I had to turn 30, I was doing it the way I chose. We floated the Horseshoe 3 times and then decided to keep going after we dropped Court off the last time. I did good staying a float this time however Niki had a couple of spills. Somehow Terry never once fell out of his tube on this trip. How does that happen?? It didn't even matter, we had so much fun.
Mom and Dad

We got up Friday morning and sadly it was time to go. We packed up and headed out.
This is at our back door. Our cabin was the "Comal" cabin.

We had to take all of our things out to the cars and set them on the ground. Dad was the only one allowed to put our things in the vehicles. I think Terry was allowed only to do what Dad instructed him to do. I wonder if Dad knows Terry was alone out there for a little bit moving stuff???? He does now!!!

So that was our week on the river!!! We had such a fun and relaxing time. Maybe we will get to do it again next year....

Ok...I started this post on July 9 and I am posting on July 18, I definitely need to get with the program!!!