The Van Ess Family: July 2014

Thursday, July 24, 2014

A Week with Jamye and Alex

We have had so much fun with Jamye and Alex. It's hard to say who likes having them here more- me or B. B will tell you they're his best and only friends! But I'd pay to have them move in with us! They are so helpful and so funny:0)

We started the week driving back in the RV and ended with Incredible Pizza and hit everything inbetween!

The Witte and Grossology

WalMart

The zoo

Swimming

Toys r Us

HEB

Clay Casa

Tie dye shirts

Incredible Pizza

Friday, July 18, 2014

Road Rally Part IV

Today was all about Reminiscing. We drove by the old condo and explored the Smokey the Bear and Billy the Kid Museums.

It's judge Brannon!

We also ate at the Dolan House. Brannon got a mini manners lesson like where to put the utensils and not to saw at the doilies with his knife:0)

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Road Rally Part II

We stopped for the night in Roswell, NM

And woke up the next morning to go discover the truth about the alien sitings. My take: There was something that crash landed there, but not an alien ship. More likely the government was working on something classified that crashed. Something else interesting I learned is that Foo fighters aren't just a band! Aircrafts during the war on all sides saw these red dots flanking their planes and each thought the others were working on new technology to destroy each other. They weren't. The the dots were called Foo (the Japanese word for fire) and there you have it. At least that's how I understood it!

Then we stopped at our second and final Official stop: Tinkertown

It seems that every state has one of these guys. They have all been men. They are all eccentric and they all had wives that let them go a little over the top! In Houston it was he Orange Show. Kansas was the Garden of Eden. Louisiana was almost an exact replica of Tinkertown (don't remember the museum name). And Colorado had Bishop's Castle (still my all time favorite attraction of all the attractions (official and unofficial).

Brannon danced with Mace at the otter box machine

B's waving to you ( not making alien signs!)

Those bottles look so cool from this side, but they stick out the other side. I wish he had broken them and sanded them down so the looked as uniform on this side. But that's why Peter could never become one of these men while I'm alive:0)

We've ended the day in Santa Fe. We had plenty of daylight to play at the park and break in the stove on the camper!

Brannon climbed right up to the top of slide, plopped down, slid down an inch, and had a bit of meltdown when he realized how high he was. Luckily his a

Aunt Jewels was there to rescue him!

Tomorrow we'll spend the day touring Santa Fe!

Road Rally Road Trip 2014

From San Antonio to Santa Fe (with a couple stops in between!)

We took off a little later than usual this year (5:20pm), but that's because we're not trailing the Casita! This year we rented a camper. The consensus is that we all LOVE it:0) It has it's little quirks- like that we can't get out the front door and that the passenger seat feels like you're sitting in an inferno, but being able to move around is priceless!

We woke up in Monahan's TX to play in the sand and climb the dunes. Everyday since Brannon keeps asking if we're going to the dessert- he loved running up and down the dunes.

As we were leaving, I saw that we could have rented sand boards and sand sleds- we are so going to have to come back soon!

We have been so lucky with the weather! It has been relatively cool to nice cool everywhere we've been. There seems to always be rain in the area, yet the rain hasn't spoiled any of our fun yet!

On our way to one of the two official stops in our book we stopped at the meteor museum. I thought I had my expectations set pretty low, but they should have been set lower! If there weren't signs, I could have been looking at any section of west Texas!