Trip to San Antonio: Friday

It was a foggy morning when we started off!

Flowers for special ladies...

Stephen & Deborah's new game is great for car trips, too!

Andrew!

A thrilling statue...

..stands at the entrance to the Texas Ranger Museum!

Matching is such fun!

Rangers from the past greet visitors as they enter.

The plaque explains that old pistols like this were very inaccurate but could be used as clubs. ;)

Fancy boots...

...and a fancy gun!

In recounting the Texas-Oklahoma bridge dispute from many years ago, this humorous anecdote came to light:

Discussing something 

A masterful painting

The perfect name for Beth & Erich's coming little one! 

Just joking! ;) ;)

I thought the portraits of the Rangers were extra-neat with the inset of a highlight of their career!

This is why no-one should ever grow this sort of mustache. ;)

An informative video on the Rangers

My wonderful parents!

Stephen tries on Mom's reading glasses :) ;)

Here we are, at the Castroville park!

If you go up this trail...

...you will find this darling little stairway...

...and all these people, getting ready for a surprise party! :)

Stephen has just thought of something neat! :)

Kandace multi-tasks

Having fun!

We grilled burgers...

...tried to fix a ripped banner...

...and had lots of fun talking as we waited for Beth & Erich to arrive!

Love these polos!

Beth sees the grand surprise -- not only a birthday party she didn't expect, but us, too! :) :) She hadn't suspected a thing!!!! :) :)

Hugs

After eating, the sky was looking more and more threatening, so we packed up and drove over to a pavilion in the center of the park, to wait out any coming rain.

We'd just made it under the pavilion when the heavens broke loose! Rain, harder and faster and more torrential each minute, accompanied by a driving deluge of at-least-quarter-size hail!!!!! It was crazy!!!! We tried to stay under the pavilion, but soon realized that was silly, since the hail was hitting us anyway! So we all ran for the vehicles! Ben helped me to our van ( we couldn't even see it, the rain was so thick), and even though it was close by we got several knots on our heads from the nasty hail! We were all soaking wet!!!

The rain has died down, the hail has passed, and some of the guys are looking for Dad's glasses, which blew off his face... they had to give up after a fruitless search.

The caravan makes its way out of the park...

Leaves and hail, piled along the sides of the streets...

The hail was like snow -- only each piece was 1/2 big!

We relax and laugh and recount the crazy tales later in the Ehlinger's house...

We've made some great memories with the Ehlingers, and this will certainly be added to the list of memorable experiences to laugh and reminisce over! :) ;)