White House Events

Visiting Texas really was a fun vacation and we all enjoyed it. But Jaxon especially loved it as we were on Jaxon's dream vacation. Jaxon and Jeremy flew down to San Antonio just in time to see Manu Ginobili, one of Jaxon's all time favorite Spurs players, retire his jersey. Jaxon has had a love of the Spurs since he was in the 6th grade when his basketball coach told him to watch and take note of how the Spurs are team players. Well, he did and his hasn't stopped watching them since. When they announced the date of the jersey retirement, we decided to gift that to Jaxon for Christmas. The trip could not come fast enough for Jaxon!

The jersey retirement was on March 29. Just Jeremy and Jaxon flew down for the game. It was cool for them to see the AT&T Center as well as watch a Spurs game live.

They had all sorts of things for the fans at the game that day. They had tissues in all of the seats just in case you needed to shed a tear or two during the ceremony. They also had hats for everyone. Then Jaxon was able to have his picture taken with one of Spurs Championship trophies!

Jaxon soaked it all in and enjoyed it all. (Minus the headache he had...must have been all those tears from the ceremony.)

The actual retirement ceremony.

The next day the rest of us flew in so that we could see the sites of San Antonio together. Our cousin Tyler lives in San Antonio where he is a police officer and it was especially fun to hang out with him to see the sites and get a taste of San Antonio.

Once we met up with Tyler, our first stop was to the Alamo. It was cool to see such an old building smack in the middle of a bustling downtown. We had a good time exploring and seeing the history of the place.

There was a fountain outside of the building that held all the Alamo relics. Kayden asked Tyler, "What will you give me if I dunk my head all the way in this fountain?" Tyler told him he would give him $10. But Kayden didn't want money. Honestly I think he wanted to do it just for fun and laughs. But they settled on two Pops Chocolate Bars.

Tyler was pretty surprised that Kayden actually went through with it. We all had a pretty good laugh and Tyler followed through on his promise of the chocolate bars....which were significantly less than $10.

Outside the Alamo.

One of the things on Jaxon's San Antonio bucket list was to go get pizza at Big Lou's. We all squished into Tyler's car and he drove us out to Big Lou's. We got a 37" pizza and it was delicious! Everything really is bigger in Texas!

After we got big pizza, we had to try out the big cinnamon rolls we heard about earlier in the day while in a shop. We got a three pound cinnamon roll and split it among the six of us! As we were retrieving our leftover pizza from Tyler's trunk, Jaxon noticed some of Tyler's police gear. Tyler let him try on his bullet proof vest. It was a fun filled big day!

Tyler had to work the next day so we decided to go to Sea World. Josh and Kayden had never been and the last time Jaxon went was when he was two.

We had fun hitting as many shows in as possible as well as seeing the animal life. The weather was a little cool, but we still had a good time.

It is always fun to see the killer whales!

Jeremy, Josh and Kayden wanted to go on all the rides. Many of the rides were water rides and they got soaked! Since it was so cold, Jeremy had them all stand in a big dryer to warm up and dry off as much as possible. A lot of the other rides were closed due to windy conditions....did I mention it was cold??

Besides eating out, we enjoyed a few meals in our hotel room. Another bucket item list for Jaxon was visiting HEB Grocery store, who sponsors the Spurs. It really is a nice place. We picked up food for dinner after visiting Sea World. We had a good time relaxing and eating in our room. Kayden even made it all fancy by garnishing his glass of water with a grape!

After church on Sunday, we went and explored the River Walk and took a boat tour. The River Walk really is a beautiful place and truly a highlight of San Antonio. Jaxon found himself falling in love more and more with the place.

On Sunday night we went to go and see a really old cathedral that puts a light show on every night. We didn't know much about the light show, but we decided to check it out. It was pretty cool! The lights made a picture on the cathedral and we saw the whole history of San Antonio and Texas through the light show in less than 30 minutes! We were really glad we went to see it. Here are a few (ok, a lot of) highlights:

On Monday, we met back up with Tyler at his apartment to meet his cute dog Reptar and then do some hiking at Pedernales Falls State Park near Austin.

The boys loved on him and played with him. He is a pretty sweet dog and you can tell he is loved and coddled by Tyler. Tyler wouldn't even make him climb down the stairs to go outside and the poor dog didn't even know how when I tried to get him to do it! We gave Tyler a bad time about that one.

Pedernales Falls State Park did not disappoint. We loved it there. We climbed all over the rocks and enjoyed the beauty of the falls.

Kayden decided to dunk his head in the falls. Crazy kid. He didn't get any chocolate this time around, just a few laughs.

Tyler decided to try out his Parkour skills while jumping off rocks.

After a full afternoon of hiking, we said good bye to Tyler and made our way to Austin. We stayed in a great hotel there where we enjoyed the pool and a quaint hamburger joint a couple of blocks down the street.

Kayden always loves a good cannon ball!

We spent the next morning exploring Austin. We went to the University of Texas Austin campus to look around and to see the Lindon B Johnson library, which we didn't have time to explore. We did get a great tour of down town via Segways. We all had a great time riding the Segways and saw a lot of Austin in a short amount of time. We saw the governor's mansion as well as the haunted Driskill Hotel that was built in 1886. It was pretty inside, but we didn't see any ghosts!

After we finished touring Austin, we grabbed some lunch and headed towards Houston to see cousins and Aunt Juli and Uncle Craig! We had a great time staying with them and we were able to see some sites around Houston while we were there.

We went to the coast town of Galveston where we toured a retired ocean oil rig. It was pretty fascinating to see how those function. After the tour we went and got some sea food at a local restaurant. It was tasty!

We went and visited the Houston Space Center the next day while Cameron and Meaghan were in school. We thought it was pretty cool how they would transport the space shuttle back to Florida on top of an airplane.

Inside the space center there were lots of interactive exhibits and things to see. Above we are experiencing a take off and landing in a space shuttle.

Kayden is walking on Mars and then practiced his shuttle skills in a simulator with Jaxon. Then all three boys climbed into a cockpit to await launch.

There was a lot to see and we got tired as you can see from the upper left picture. The kids were tiring of me taking their picture. But they had fun with all the interactive exhibits, as did Jeremy!

Seeing just how they were able to mount the space shuttle on the airplane and then exploring the inside of the shuttle.

We took a shuttle all around the NASA campus and were able to see how NASA is ran and how it functions. It was pretty cool to see people at work knowing that we were witnessing some of McKay's dream jobs. We certainly missed McKay while at the space center so we bought him a cool shirt to send to him. Lower left Jaxon said, "You can't take my picture anymore," so I did just to prove that I could.

We were able to go to the Houston temple to perform baptisms. The temple had been flooded during Hurricane Harvey. But it has been restored and is beautiful. It was fun to be all together in the temple. We had brought our on family names and then also did some names for a local stake there.

Our last night at Aunt Juli's house we stayed in to watch the home opener Astros game so the kids could swim. They had a great time swimming together and making memories.

It was a great trip and we are so grateful that we got to spend so much of it with family.

Kayden loves to read. This year he has been way into the Harry Potter collection, but made time to read his assigned book for the Battle of the Books. His team did very well this year and made it all the way to the finals! They ended up with second place trophies after a hard fought battle with an all girl sixth grade team that was quite intimidating!

Discussing the questions to make sure they come up with the best answer.

Team #albinobunnies with their trophies.

Their teacher was pretty proud of them!

Kayden with his teacher Mrs. Clyde. She also came in second place in the teachers vs. students battle.

The team got together for a team party. They had a good time in the hot tub, watching movies and eating treats!