Texas Our arrival in Canyon Lake, TX, saw hot temperatures and the surprise of day time mosquitos. We parked the Big Wheel at a storage facility and packed up our belongings for three weeks of stays at timeshare properties. The first was a week long stay in Canyon Lake where we got to spend time with Christina and John and their friends and family as we prepared for their wedding day. The temperatures were very high – 80’s and 90’s – and yet we saw people wearing sweaters! Shopping for sandals and shorts proved difficult as the stores had stocked their fall and winter clothes here as well. Thankfully we found what we needed on some clearance racks! I suppose there is a temperature change for people who are native Texans. We arrived just after the peak of the butterfly migration, but there were still butterflies everywhere! Christina and John’s wedding colors were blue and yellow and as they were married, yellow butterflies flitted around….you just can’t plan that!! The reception began and shortly after a Texas thunderstorm began too! Everyone joined together in saving decorations and such and we all took cover. The beauty of my sister is that she was not about to let rain ruin her day. John and Christina grabbed an umbrella and began dancing on the deck – the umbrella soon cast aside. Rain soaked and smiling. Their first dance was appropriately an original song they wrote and recorded with a musician friend with a lyric “your kisses roll through me like thunder.” As the rain finally came to an end, a double rainbow appeared and the reception carried on. We had Texas bbq for dinner – brisket, pickles, onions, bread, sweet tea, etc. We left the next day and headed north to Lake Travis which is west of Austin. The temperatures cooled a bit then. We headed into the city of Austin and visited the Lady Bird Johnson wildflower center which was beautiful and fascinating and we got a good look at a variety of butterflies. We had kolaches from a food truck, visited the state capitol, and a state history museum as well. Texas history is very interesting and rich, including winning independence from Mexico and then joining the USA. We’ve found that Texans have much pride in their state and a strong state identity. We later learned from our new nieces that Texas history is taught in many grade levels in school and they have a Texas pledge they say each morning along with the Pledge of Allegiance. We also learned that so many of the names of places in Texas are names of heroes during the effort to gain independence from Mexico: Houston, Lake Travis, Seguin, among others. One of the evenings in Austin, we drove through a park to get a glimpse at a spring fed natural swimming pool and got a surprise seeing fireflies light up the lawns! It was the first time any of us had seen fireflies! We also tried Rudy’s BBQ for the first time there. We all enjoyed their food – bbq brisket and chicken, cream corn, potato salad, cole slaw. It was delish! We were a little surprised that the kids loved it! Our next leg took us all the way down to Galveston, TX, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Our timeshare was on the opposite end of the island of the tourist area. It was amazing to see all the houses built on stilts as tall as a full story – many turning the space below into car ports. This is to protect the homes from high water levels during storms. We visited the beach where the sand was like the consistency of brown sugar – you could pack it into balls! We buried Brian in the sand and made him look like a mermaid – er, merman. There were pelicans there and fish jumping in the waves. Christina and John joined us and we took a ferry boat ride and saw dolphins everywhere! We were introduced to a new Texas favorite treat – Bahama Bucks. Shaved ice in a gazillion flavors with ice cream in the base (that’s the Bahama Rama Mama). We toured the Bishop’s Palace – a Victorian home built in the late 1800’s out of stone for a politician with ornate and rich details throughout. Later the home was purchased to be the home to Bishop Byrne. This house was incredible. There was even a conservatory where the original lady of the house kept her fern collection on pedestals! One evening we rented a surrey and had a ride along the beach. We also took a day trip to the Nasa Space Center. That was an incredible experience. We got to go into a Space Shuttle and its 747 transport. We got to listen to an astronaut speak about his experience on the shuttle and the International Space Station. It was homeschool day, so the place was busy with extra hands-on activities for the kids to dig in to. Our next stop was a weekend up in Dallas to visit old friends. We spent to quality time and had a great time relaxing and catching up. We then returned to Canyon Lake to pick up the Big Wheel from the storage facility we had parked it at. It survived! We hooked up and took it a few minutes down the road right by the lake to where we parked it for the next month. (As they say, “Home is where we park it!”) We stayed at Lake Pointe RV Park on Canyon Lake, TX. It was a great park. There was a play set and pool. Lots of room to ride bikes and a trail that went way down by the lake shore. There were also deer everywhere! Brian took the kids to swim one day and they found a random frog in the pool! We rode our bikes down to the lake shore and found a dinosaur track in the limestone! And the deer ate our Jack O’ Lanterns the night we put them out! The park was pretty quiet except on the opening day of Deer Season. Every spot seemed to be taken and people coming and going. Deer hunting is big! We heard several shots in the nearby areas that morning. Brian got to go fishing for catfish with our brother-in-law. It’s a night time sport best done during a full moon. They were out there super late…and have some fishing stories! No noodling (apparently it’s a thing to put your fist in the water near a ledge and the catfish will attempt to bite on at which point you yank your arm out of the water – hopefully with your fish too!). We were able to get library cards through the local library and enjoyed getting to visit and check out books. We walked the 1.6 mile dam for the girls’ American Heritage Girls’ walk-a-thon. We visited a small museum that shows dinosaur tracks that were discovered when the owner of the property began blasting into the hill country hillside to create an RV park and discovered tracks in the limestone. There were tracks from an iguanodon, acrocanthosaurus, and a giant slug type animal that dragged along a giant twisty type shell. The small museum building held fossils of all sorts and arrowheads too. We learned how this part of Texas had long ago been covered by a sea and that the limestone that covers much of hill country was created from crushed sea shells. We got to go fossil hunting near my brother-in-law’s parent’s house and found clam shells and rudist fossils – the nearest thing to them now is coral though they were much bigger. The geological history of the area was so fascinating. We also got to visit the Alamo where we really enjoyed the magnificent diorama that is set up in the gift shop / museum. It helped the kids to picture the battle that ensued there. We got to walk along the beautiful River Walk and visited San Fernando Cathedral where Mexican General Santa Anna holed up before the Alamo battle and where Davy Crockett’s remains are held. Later we visited San Antonio again to go to the San Jose Mission which is part of the Missions National Historic Park and is a World Heritage Site. The girls participated in their Junior Ranger program and I must say I was so proud of their insight, curiosity, and most of all, their respect for the property, buildings, visitors, and Rangers. This place was amazing. What an incredible look at life in a mission! The walls, dark and small living quarters, ovens, wells, church, aquifers, mill, education buildings, and gardens, are all there. We drove on afterwards to visit Mission Concepcion (also part of the same park) and it was unique in that it still had some of the original frescoes on the walls. The girls also earned Junior Ranger badges at the Lyndon B Johnson National Historic Park. We got to see his boyhood home which was fascinating to us all – sleeping porches to beat the heat and breezeways were an integral part of homes before electricity and air conditioning! We got to head down to LBJ’s ranch then which is still operational (we got the unique experience of stopping on the road because a calf was nursing in the middle of the road!) and learned more about his presidency and life. We got to attend a rodeo with our family. Barrel racing, roping, bull riding, and even a bucking bronco! All this was followed up with live music afterwards and dancing. It was so entertaining! We had some of the best pecan pie in the tiny town of Gruene (pronounced Green) next to the Gruene Hall which is a live music dance hall where apparently Willie Nelson and many more country music stars got their start. The restaurant, called the Griste Mill, has such an amazing ambience and rustic feel. It used to be a mill on the Guadalupe River. Big timber beams, giant windows that hinge open outward, and even more giant fireplaces throughout. The more unique taxidermy decore included a Long Horn Cow, turkeys, catfish, and wild hogs. It was there that we learned about the wild hog problem in Texas. Apparently, it’s always hog hunting season because they reproduce at an alarming rate! We have to say that throughout this stay in Texas Hill Country we were treated with such kindness, politeness, and hospitality by family, friends of family, and strangers alike. Our air conditioning ran 24x7 but our electric bill was not too bad. We were ready though toward the end of our stay to find some cooler weather that would feel a little more like Fall to us native Washingtonians. We missed the definite color change on the trees too. As we sadly said goodbye to the family and friends in Texas Hill Country we steered our Big Wheel toward Lost Maples State Natural Area where we hiked through some gorgeous landscapes and found some autumn colors. This Texas State Park was breathtaking. Their campground was so peaceful (and out of cell phone coverage range!) and is somewhere we would love to visit again. The girls were able to work on a Junior Ranger badge for the Texas State Parks there too. The Rangers even checked out a backpack with pamphlet guides, maps, compass, binoculars, magnifying glass, watercolor pencils, and more. We stayed at a Harvest Host in Canyon, TX, called zBar winery. They had very delicious wine! And it was crazy cold and crazy windy there! We put out all the stabilizers and the RV still rocked all over. The next day we stopped at the Cadillac Ranch off Route 66 in Amarillo, TX. We were able to pull the Big Wheel right off the side of the road and park on the shoulder to take a quick stop at this public art installment. We did bring paint, but it was so icy cold and windy out that we did not get much chance to add to the art. Brian let the girls make their mark with a Sharpie instead. And from there we left Texas and entered the next part of our adventure…New Mexico! We have learned a lot already. It’s hard to break from ingrained routine that is created based on the climate you live in. In Washington, we homeschooled in the morning when our energy was fresh, and then headed outside in the afternoons. In Texas, we slooowly came around to the idea that we had to get outside in the morning because by afternoon it was too hot to be able to even sit outside! We have all gone through some emotional adjustments to leaving behind the familiarity of home in Washington and our friends and family. We have learned to redistribute household responsibilities between my husband and myself. Since he is home now instead of being gone 9 hours each day, we had to sit down and decide again which roles we would each be filling in our family. We installed an adjustable pressure regulator and three jumbo canister water filtration system in the fifth wheel. We learned that we are not making use of the small outdoor refrigerator in our outdoor kitchen and that converting it into a freezer would be much more useful. We are all learning better discipline when it comes to getting something out, focusing on finishing using it, and then putting it away where it belongs. This is necessary as there isn’t room to leave unfinished things out and it is crucial that things are put away when they are done. Our kids’ room is cleaner than their bedrooms in our house ever were! We also already have taken a few trips to donate things from the RV. Some was stuff we decided we really truly didn’t need in here. Some was stuff the kids have grown out of. But what we are seeing is that it is important to be ever evaluating the things in our home. If they are not used, they need to be promptly donated. This is valuable to us – we don’t live with the extra clutter – and to others – we donate the items so others can make use of them now. We have learned that when we get somewhere new to explore we need to research our interests and opportunities (looking online at Trip Advisor, checking for National Parks, gathering interesting brochures, checking for local events online, and getting recommendations from family, friends, and other Fulltime Families) and then we each pick our top thing to do and make sure we do those things first to be able to satisfy each of our interests. Then we can continue fitting in other excursions on the list as time allows. We are finding that with our three kids ranging from toddler to near ten year old, we best handle a day off between excursions. But we can’t stick around the itty bitty RV living space too many days in a row or we all start to go a bit stir crazy. We are basically learning, adjusting, and figuring out the happy medium that our family will operate at in this new lifestyle. We are unschooling with the opportunities around us, but also using various resources (Life of Fred, American Heritage Girls badgework, Sunday School book, Jesus Calling for Kids, read aloud classics and historical fiction books, experiment kits, pocket microscope, pen pals, service projects, and art supplies, etc!) for some subjects and keeping the kiddos engaged on our off-days. It’s an eclectic blend that feels natural for us. So far so good! J Amanda During this time, I (Brian) completed my level 1 certification from Precision Nutrition. The health coaching business is now moving ahead at full steam. If you know anyone looking to improve their health and need some help, please keep me in mind. The website is www.youbetterhealth.com or contact me at [email protected]. I talk to my clients once per week for about 20 minutes and we agree upon a habit for them to work on. On average they are losing 1 pound per week, so it is going well. I am really enjoying it. I really look forward to the calls. It is an odd thing for me to enjoy my work so much. At my office job, people would often ask me how work was going, and me response was along the lines of “fine”, “can’t complain”, “shouldn’t complain”, “the benefits are good”. I look back on that and realize that the answer really was “I am tolerating it. It is low stress enough and pays me well enough such that I am not getting depressed, and I don’t have a hard time coming to work in the morning.” But it did become more and more difficult to tolerate as time went on. I felt that I could be doing more with my life. Building airplanes is important so that people can go on business trips and families can be connected periodically and so that people can take vacations to far off places, but when you are one of X thousand people working on designing, building, and getting an airplane delivered my work felt insignificant; that if I left they would just find someone else to do my job just as well as me. I felt myself starting to pick on people to keep me entertained. I eventually treated the whole job like a big joke. The health coaching is way different for me. Now I think about my health coaching job when I am not actually working because I genuinely want to do the best that I can. I keep a notebook for ideas for clients. I want to find the right answers every time. Changing the lives of my clients is my responsibility as their coach and I take it seriously. And in seeing their success I feel that I am doing something important in the world. Its also really cool that the work is an integral part of my life, because I too, of course, continue to try to get better at eating better and incorporating the right types of exercise into my daily routine. The kids and Amanda are involved too, so I really couldn’t ask for anything more… Speaking of my new responsibilities- I am now the primary homeschool teacher for the kids. Amanda is still responsible for Sunday school though. I also took over the role of discipline chairman. All I had to do was threaten the kids with laps around the big wheel for daytime misbehavior and burpees when it is dark, and they have been perfect angels ever since. Brian
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AuthorBrian - Health Coach, You Better Health Archives
December 2016
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