The Scoop: South Texas never knew we were coming.....

On Wednesday we headed south to New Braunfels, Texas for 5 day 4 night stay with the Kovashs, Varners and Pollocks. The tradition started a last year when we all headed to Tyler to see the Kovash's. We had so much fun that weekend we figured it should be a yearly thing. We all headed down Wednesday morning and got there around 3pm. Once we got settled in The Kovash's prepared awesome burgers and we all just hung out. Whitney's sister Tayler goes to UT and so she came down for the night to see her precious nephews since they were so close. Once we all got are kiddos settled in for the night we started the epic battle of the "Women vs. Boys". Many thanks to Tayler cause she helped us pull out our 1st victory. But I have to admit I had the winning answer.....I don't remember the question but the answer was Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia so many thanks to the Kriegs and my hubby for that one!!!

The next day was "Ladies" day and Ilena, Whitney, Ashley and I all headed to San Marcos to go outlet shopping. I actually only bought 4 things....but 2 of them were benches for the back yard. The guys all stayed back at the house with the kiddos and when we got home they were all tucked in for naps! They did an awesome job! We figured they may want to get out of the house though so we headed to Gruene to have dinner at the Gristmill a former cotton gin.....an now a yummy restuarant.

Dinner for 8 adults and 6 kids is not the most relaxing time....but it was a lot of fun and the food was yummy. We were even able to snap our one and only group picture.

left to right: Hudson, Whitney, Wade & Sterling Kovash; Ashley, Channing & Matt Pollock; us; Ilena, Meg, Brody & Bryson Varner

I had to snap this precious picture of my boys on their way to the car.

The house we rented was perfect. 4 HUGE bedrooms and a pool! We even squeezed in a swim after dinner. This started Coopers new favorite pool game....jumping off the side. Lets just say my arms are still sore from the hundreds of times I lifted him up to the side of the pool.

That night we played Mad Gab. Matt and Ashley bought it and it is now my favorite game!

The guys "claimed" this win....but I think they might have cheated.

We woke up early the next morning and we all (sans Pollocks) headed to the famous waterpark Schlitterbahn. Here we are before the sun.

Our one and only family picture from the whole trip

I was brave and brought my phone in...I am glad I did because this is probably the only picture we took.

The park really is cool. It is huge. Our plan was for the guys to hang out with us for a few hours and take the older boys (Brody and Sterling) on rides while we hung out at the kiddie pools. Afterwards Matt would come pick them up so they could go float the Comal River. The water was nice and cool and I think they were having fun so they helped us move over to one of the other parts of the park and then had Matt come. We stayed an hour or so longer and then figured the kids needed to get out of the sun. That night The Varners and us were in charge of cooking Mexican Food. So it was fajitas and stuffed jalepenos. We decided to keep the kids up sp they would go to bed early and then we could eat in peace.

Sterling didn't quite make it.

But this little one did

Channing was such a trooper the whole time!

We broke out Cranium and watched eachother make fools of ourselves acting out like charades and drawing items like pictionary.

The women were WAY ahead but the boys pulled out a win with Rob's attempt at acting out the Berlin Wall

We were having such a good time we decided to play Mad Gab again, ROb took it VERY seriously

but the Ladies won this one!

The next day was "Guys Day". THey were supposed to golf in the morning but decided to cancel their tee time to spend more time with their families. (isn't that sweet). They even got some fishing in

The house was right on the water. The water right by the shore was pretty dirty and full of trash from all the flooding this spring but we still were able to catch one (Bryson caught it). Then we headed back up to say good bye to the Dads who were off to float the Guadalupe.

(aren't these cool steps?)

Whitney and Ilena took their kiddos to the Children's Museum and Ashley and I headed to Gruene to look in all the cute shops. When we got home we were back in the pool of course.

Check out the view from the back of the house.

Hudson, Cooper and Meg had a lot of fun together.

We attempted to give the 5 older kids a bath at one time....that was a challenge to say the least.

We got most of the kids down early so we could have a "quiet dinner" again. That night dinner was in the hands of the Pollocks and Kovashs. They grilled fish and asparagus and it was DELICOUS.

No remember the guys had been floating a river for several hours and the ladies had been juggling the kids so we were all pretty beat. Wade was the 1st one to crash....and the other guys took it as an oppurunity to "Ice" him. (Some silly game college kids do now)

We woke up Sunday morning with the daunting task of packing up and heading home. All reluctant to leave eachothers company but anticipating our own homes.

Hudson and Cooper were easy to manage...Watermelon kept them at bay the whole time we were cleaning up and packing.