Maverick's Blessing Day

Roy, Caitlyn and I headed down to Texas again this week to join the Jackson family for Maverick's baby blessing.  Roy was able to combine business with pleasure, so he left on Monday and flew to Houston, then drove to a city north of San Antonio.  When he made the reservations, he thought the city was halfway between Houston and San Antonio.  Unfortunately he was wrong, so he had kind of a long drive.  At least he was able to visit with Elise's family on the way up, and then on the way back on Wednesday.  Caitlyn and I arrived late Wednesday night and Roy picked us up at the airport.  We had an eventful Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  We went to the Texas Rodeo (just the exhibits, not the actual rodeo because we thought that would be difficult with a 2 year old and a baby), the Houston Zoo, and Braza State Park.  The pictures below are of all our activities.  Braza Park was very cool as we were close to live alligators in their wild and natural habitat. 

Caitlyn tasted alligator for the first time.  She

said it was delicious.  Max loved the petting zoo.

Max chose matching shirts for Maverick

and himself for our trip to the rodeo

Friday, Andy was able to join us at the zoo after his last test of the block (he has major tests every three weeks).  We first rode the train.

The train goes all the way around a large park and is next to, but not part of the zoo.

  After the zoo we went to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner.  We ate outside so Max could play on the playground--it was a little chilly, but nothing like Utah. 

 Saturday was the day we went to see the alligators:

The park was beautiful even before we saw the alligators

and other wildlife.  Max thought this tree was pretty awesome.

 The instructions said to keep 30 feet between you and the alligators, but there were times when they were right at the edge of the lake and if you were on the path, you weren't 30 feet away.  Maybe 5.  Other times on the lookouts they were swimming directly below the platform.  There is something special about seeing animals in the wild.

Note the alligator sleeping on the left side of the tree

 

This is not a log!

Of course, the whole reason we flew to Texas was for the baby blessing.  Today has been an awesome day. 

Besides us and the Jackson's (Andy's parents),

we were joined by Jenny Norton and all her family. 

It was great to see all of them.

 We finished off our Sabbath with a family walk and stopped to let Max run around the playground.

We didn't hear too much from the rest of the family, but we got a few pictures: