Natural Bridge Caverns

To finish off our fun trip down to San Antonio we finished up by going to see the Natural Bridge Caverns.  It is located just north of San Antonio so it was a great stop on our way out of town!  It was a pretty cold day outside, but the caves stay in the 70's.  

The caverns were discovered because of this huge sink hole.  This bridge is all that remains of the sink hole.  

Here we go down into the caverns!!!

There are so many cool formations!  They were all made from water in one way or another.  This one was water flowing.  It is either a curtain or a drape... depending how it is attached to the cave.

This was the touching stone.  To preserve the caves we can't touch any of the formations.  That is difficult for people so they have one stone that they let you touch as much as you want before you go any farther on the tour :). Lorna liked the touching stone.

So amazing!  I love when there are different colors!

Beautiful

These are huge ripples on the ground.  

Talmage and Jeff

The pool at the bottom isn't really that cool blue color... it's happening because of the minerals in the rock.

Curtains!

Stalactites and stalagmites!  I think this is the biggest column... when the two connect!

The fried egg!

It was a great tour!  It is amazing what is hiding under the ground that we never even know about!  

The gift shop was very popular with our kids.  Grant spend some of his left over birthday money on a pocket knife and a stuffed animal bat.  If I were to spend money I would have bought this beautiful crystal leaf tree!  So amazing!  

Yay for family trips and enjoying nature!  Thanks for all of the fun San Antonio!

Remember the Alamo!

and the River Walk!

Once we finally found parking we checked out the Alamo and River Walk in San Antonio!  Everything was really busy due to the parade that was going to float down the river later that night... we didn't realize that tho.  It also ended up raining and they had to close the parade down early.  We were all warm in our hotel when that all happened tho :).  

It was fun to walk the river walk and see the shops and the boats.  The kids really enjoyed seeing the boats!

Lorna found a boat! 

The Alamo and our cute kids!

We spent a lot of time reading the signs around the Alamo!

There were really cool wall boards with the whole history listed out!

Chica and Clark got some free antlers!

I loved watching the kids read everything!

Inside the gift shop was this cool little model of what the battle looked like!

Lorna wants to learn too!

As we were leaving the Alamo they were getting ready to light their Christmas tree!  That also explained why there were so many people there!

Walking the river walk .... cool fountain.

Cute Bug :)

Awesome tile mosaic of San Antonio

River Walk Selfie!

We got a family photo while at the River Walk. 

We had a great time together!  What a great way to spend the holiday ... making memories and seeing cool stuff!

Pizza Time!

Our other favorite food stop is in San Antonio!  It's Big Lou's Pizza!  They make HUGE pizzas! We got a 37 incher! It is huge and even tastes good!!  

Here are some fun pics of us waiting for our food!

Lorna

Grant, Talmage, Sandra

Me, Clark, and Grant

Jeff and Me

Mhari!

By the time the pizza got there we were all so happy we dig right in.  I always forget to get a picture of the whole pizza!  Everyone ate so well!  This time we only had 2 slices left over!  We were seriously stuffed!

The Canadian Bacon was OK, but the pepperoni was great!  

 Yay for yummy pizza!

Food Trip!

We have been planning on getting out of town for Thanksgiving.  The boys really need camping nights and I wanted to see some beautiful fall colors.  To make this all happen we were all set to go camping in Arkansas for 3 nights!  I was very excited and ready for a break from our every day routine.  Well, lucky us, there was a huge winter storm moving through that week and we decided to cancel the camping trip.  Camping in rain really isn't that fun :(.  

Instead of our awesome fall colors camping trip we decided to head down to San Antonio to see the Alamo.  Part of going down to San Antonio is getting to eat at some of our favorite Texas food stops!  

On the way down we hit Round Rock Donuts!  We got 2 dozen donuts and lots of yummy sausage dogs (kolashes).  It made for a great lunch!  

So beautiful!  The kids all liked the chocolate the best, but Jeff and I prefer the glazed. 

Mmmm, good!

I think we won't wait so long between visits ;).  

The Finished Project!

The flagpole was all set and it was time to finish up Talmage's Eagle Project!  There was a group of volunteers that helped to scrub the headstones from the moss that grows on them.  There was another group that helped build the flowerbed and plant the cactus.  We had over 30 volunteers come help so that was great!  We were able to scrub all of the headstones and get the flowerbed done pretty quickly.  Here is what the headstones looked like before:

Then the helpers working on them:
Sandra and Lorna

Clark and Mhari

Grant

Talmage working with the group at the flagpole.  The first step was to level the ground to prepare it for the stones.  

It was pretty tedious

 More scrubbing!

More helpers!

First layer done!

Checking the fit of the cactus

Putting the cloth down to prevent weeds

 Next layer

The finished headstones

They looked so much better!

To make the stones work the men had to chisel some in half to help the pattern work together.

Finishing up the last level of brick

Time to plant the cactus! ... Fitting it

 Planting it!  

Adding in the soil

 There was a really strong cold front that had come through.  We were all freezing!

 The finished flowerbed and flagpole!

The helpers that lasted to the end!

It was a great project and Talmage worked really hard to work with everyone to be sure everything went according to the plan.  Now we are waiting on the Eagle Board of Review... and Talmage will be an Eagle Scout!  Way to go!!