nice view from the trail 

token group shot 

Trail Building

Despite the fact that the end of their year is fast approaching, the AmeriCorps decided to go on a "team building" excursion to build trails at Castroville Regional Park last Thursday. It was a fun yet intense experience although they could have done without the chiggars, ants, humidity, and thunderstorms. If anyone has a burning desire to get some trail building out of their system, there is one trail out at Castroville Regional Park that could use your help, they really need the help because AmeriCorps doesn't need any more team building!

 

Construction Day 2

Due to some serious physical labor by the AmeriCorps last week, all of the other Habitat houses have caught up to Laura's house. Despite the best effort of the eight volunteers this past weekend, her house has moved to seventh out of ninth place. There are still five strong weeks ahead, so hopefully they will pull through to at least the top three houses!

They clean up well for construction workers 

Look dad, I'm a big girl now! 

Kevin putting back into it. 

So strong for a little girl! 

Taking a break already?!?! 

Construction Day 1

Today was quite a constructive day for us. It was a usual weekend at Habitat for Laura with the exception that Kevin came out to volunteer. Laura had an army from Zachary construction volunteer at her house, so Kevin moved to the house next door which had juvenile delinquints for their crew. Both houses actually began today, so we had a nice, hot, hard day of framing. Although Laura is proud to report that her house was the only one of nine that was able to load and raise some of their trusses today... so technically she is winning! Those of you who know her know that she is extremely happy about that. It may be a short lived glory, but we will take it. All in all it was a nice hard day and we are ready to relax now...sunburns and all.

lighting the track as inspiration to all of those walking for a cause 

a luminary in honor of Laura's " second dad" Ken Procious who passed away in July. 

A Thought of Someone Else

Laura's mom is an organizer for the Hood County American Cancer Society's fundraiser Relay for Life which happened to be taking place the weekend that we visited. It is an event where teams of people gather to pull an "all-nighter", and continuously walk or run around a track to raise money...despite that fact that is was 40 degrees that weekend! The track is lined with luminaries that participants create in honor of someone who has passed away due to cancer, or those who have have suffered from it and survived . It is a very humbling site to be amidst all of the luminaries that line the track, and among all of the people who have been effected by cancer. If you ever get the opportunity to participate, we highly recommend it. ..it's for a great cause.

A perfect example as to why things can't be free. 

A little observation

We recently found ourselves in the neighborhood and decided to take jaunt down to the San Antonio Japanese Tea Garden. If you have never been there, the garden property is actually bounded by a large cliff on three sides, and the entrance overlooks the zoo with a wonderful view of downtown in the distance. It feels much like any other japanese or botanical garden with the exception that all of the water has been drained, and the entire garden is a bit dilapitaded. We came across a large sign explaining that the city is in the process of raising money to renovate the gardens, but they are having a difficult time keeping up with the damage that people are doing to the plants and the facilities. I guess that is the difficulty of offering beautiful things to the public for free...they are eventually taken advantage of for everyone.

Wouldn't you just love to enjoy a fiesta event every day for an entire week? 

You can't have fiesta without rows and rows of portable toilets! 

We're back!

We promise that we have not intentionally been neglecting our faithful little blog, we just never seem to get around to updating it. But here we are, ready to give it another go. In the last few weeks we have been quite busy. Soon after Strawberry Festival, the week long http://www.fiesta-sa.org/ San Antonio Fiesta began. Again with great plans to take in as much fiesta as possible around work and sleep, we started off with the "Taste of New Orleans"--only because we enjoy Creole, not because it has anything to do with the fiesta theme. So with at least 20 events to choose from each day, we were off to a great start. And that is where we stopped. We seemed to come up with at least 21 excuses as to why not to "fiesta" each day, and therefore did not attend another event. Anyone interested in experiencing fiesta next year should come down and we can all enjoy it together for the first time...river parades, carnivals, oyster bakes, night parades and everything fried and on a stick that you could possibly want.

After recovering from Fiesta, we managed to take a quick trip up to Fort Worth to visit with Laura's family, and to try to make some wedding decisions. (emphasis on"try").Since our trip up north we haven't done anything too noteworthy, we have both just been busy with work and of course spending quality time with Lilly.

Laura's last complete build with habitat is going to begin this coming weekend, and if all goes as planned Kevin will be volunteering on Saturday's (seeing as this is his last chance). Of course we will be armed with cameras just in case we need to capture a construction moment to share on the blog. So please don't give up on us yet, we will be doing a much better job with our updates, no matter how mundane they may become. We hope everyone has a pleasant week, and we will be writing soon.