July Summer Fun

The rest of July was full of fun, rest, and randomness. It really seemed to fly by!

Katelyn babysat the Gallion girls once a week (mostly) this summer and in July she helped them run a lemonade stand! So cute!! Kyler and I went by and got some goodies, including a photo with their pup for 50 cents :)

Levi went to the Poth Pirate Football camp!

I went out to celebrate Pam and Jen's Birthdays!

Katelyn celebrating Charlotte and Abby's birthday's.

Cookie turned FIVE! 

Levi has a new hat obsession, if you ever need to get him a gift, give him a cool hat!

Both boys spent hours upon hours playing Legos this summer. Here is their concert setup, they made characters of all the Christian artist and would put on concerts for me (with strobe lights and all!!)

Kyler got creative with me making decorations for Katelyn's birthday!

We made another trip up to see Mimi and Pops in Georgetown and got to hang with Cindy & Drew too! 

Remember those ducks we got, well they found the pool after many months of being in the backyard! They aren't very smart, haha! So we decided to take them to the ranch tank so they could live free and not in our pool :)

 

Family Time in DFW

 

After going to the MercyMe concert in May, the whole family decided we had to go to the Summer Worship Nights concert this summer and we are so glad we did! Josiah Queen opened for Brandon Lake and Phil Wickham! Kyler and I saw Josiah Queen last October at Tree of Life Church in New Braunfels. He was Kyler's new favorite and became one of mine too! He was still fairly new to the radio, but after the concert in October we knew he was going to make it big soon and look at him now! From a church concert to the American Airlines Center in less than a year! Of course Brandon Lake and Phil Wickham were amazing too, but it was pretty special to see this young kid we just saw perform at a church on the big stage! Definitely a night we'll all remember!

Everyone got light up bracelets that were coordinated across the arena, so fun!

While we were in Dallas, we did a little shopping too....checking out the fancy cars, couches and electronics!

We also tried out this restaurant I had heard about from a lady I follow on Instagram. It's a seed oil free restaurant, which means they don't cook or bake with vegetable/canola/bad for you oils! And they were super great about making sure Kyler got a dish that he could eat and enjoy too!

Poke...and he loved it!

We drove my Mimi and Pop's old house in Carrollton too. It was so strange being up there and not staying in this house with them. WEIRD!! 

We also decided to go to a Rangers Game while we were up there. The kids had never been to a Major League baseball game and Levi was begging to go. The new stadium is super nice and we had a great time!

Our hotel, paid for with points from all of Lex's travel!! Love a good deal and a free breakfast!

Hawai'i - Day 8

 Our last day, we woke up and checked out of our hotel and headed out to explore around the north side of the island. We started in Hilo at Rainbow Falls and Akaka Falls. Both beautiful waterfalls with easy to access lookouts or just a short hike. 

I had read about a good fruit stand right outside of Akaka Falls online and lucky for us, they were opening up right as we were leaving the falls. We shared two "Pina Coladas", which was fresh coconut juice straight from the coconut, then cut up and placed in a bag with fresh pineapple and sugarcane and squeezed lime. It was so good! The coconut juice was my favorite! We've tried drinking coconut from a Walmart coconut before and it was not so good, but this was so tasty and refreshing! 

We kept driving the scenic drive around the island and found the nice houses, finally! Hilo was pretty run down overall but the further north you drove, the nicer the houses got! We stopped at the Waipio Lookout for this view....

It was stunning!! A very small parking area at the end of a residential road lead here, we had to park on the side of the road quite a ways up because this place was so popular, but definitely worth it! 

From there we stopped for lunch at the Village Burger in Waimea which was super popular. The burgers were delish and we shopped in the cute shopping center a bit while we waited for our food too. 

We made it back to Kona with plenty of time to spare before our flight, so we decided to shop around in the Waikoloa Village which was located on the Hilton Resort on the north side of Kona. Wow, this place was so nice! The resort was huge and the mall area was amazing! It had a mix of name brand stores along with local tourist shops too. Katelyn spent some of her own money on a cute lululemon outfit for running and I got us a custom picture frame in the cutest little shop, CocoNene. Kyler picked out a pineapple box to keep some valuables in and Lex and Levi tagged along :)

We made one more quick stop at the Kona Makai Condo complex and walked out on the rocks again, one of our favs! 

We were sad to say goodbye, but we were also ready to get home and see Cookie. We took the red eye back to LA, then on to Austin. We tried to sleep as much as we could, although I think Kyler is the only one who got any quality sleep. We landed around 11 am and couldn't wait to go pick up Cookie. She had a fun week with Lindsay and Baxter, her new best cousin friend :)