Because of an extremely hectic week, we decided to forgo the usual niceties on Thursday (Asher’s actual birthday) and instead celebrate in on Friday. Our purpose in this was two-fold. First, Asher had his 2 year checkup on Thursday which meant shots, which put him in a bit of a sour mood. Second, Friday was easier for all of us and it also meant that Brigham and Stephanie were able to bring over all of Asher’s cousins to play.

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As usual, Asher made out with a boat load of cars including a few of the radio controlled variety. The only downside to this all was that I wasn’t able to find him the gas-powered go-kart I had been hoping to find for him. There’s always next year...

In celebration of Pioneer Day we joined others from the stake at Texas Old Town to enjoy music, food, dancing and handcarts. While I wouldn’t call it an exact recreation (I don’t think the pioneers had moon bounces back in their day) there were plenty of people who took the event serious enough to show up in full pioneer garb. As you can see, our commitment wasn’t that extreme.

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Unfortunately, we had to leave before the fireworks began, but between the music and watermelon, we really enjoyed ourselves.

After six long weeks of Jill’s first summer session of school we decided we needed to take a break and go and do something fun. With Marcia down to her last few days with us, and based on her recent confession that she had never really been on a rollercoaster before, we decided that Six Flags in San Antonio might be the best solution for all our summer woes.

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While incredibly hot outside, we still had a blast and I think that Asher genuinely enjoyed all of the rides we took him on, although Jill later informed me that I might have taken him on a ride or two that he wasn’t tall enough to ride. Interestingly enough, these were the rides he seemed to enjoy the most, especially the kiddie rollercoaster, which after completing our ride, Asher would shout ’Again! Again!’ and go get back in line.

Coming off of an extremely hot 3rd of July (our air conditioning went out Friday morning, but thankfully we were able to get it fixed by that afternoon), we were excited to head up to Brig’s house for some burgers and fireworks.

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While there was a county-wide burn ban in effect, we were still able to set off those little ’pull and pop’ things, which was probably better considering all the little kids around. Afterward, we headed back to Kyle to check out the local fireworks display. Asher was surprisingly pretty cool about it all. He enjoyed all the brightly colored fireworks and didn’t mind the loud explosions at all.

What better way to celebrate Independence Day than to go and shoot shotguns? Apparently, we weren’t the only ones to come up with this idea. As Matthew, Jill and I rolled into the gun range we were met with a parking lot full of trucks with people piling out to enjoy a day of shooting and BBQ.

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Jill had never shot a shotgun before and did reasonably well after nicking several clays. One new feature on the range is that they installed an automatic clay thrower, so gone are the days of hand-throwing clays and accidentally hitting people in the head with stray pigeons.

After getting in a few rounds on a real golf course, we decided to head over to have some fun with some mini-golf. It’s been years since Jill and I have gone and played, and it turns out that Marcia has never played before, so we went over to Peter Pan Mini Golf in Austin to play out 18 holes.

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While the course itself was fun, we had to stay active in keeping Asher in check. He seemed to take quite a bit of pleasure in wandering onto other holes and stealing people’s balls before they got a chance to hit them. We were a bit embarrassed, but lucky for Asher, everyone was pretty cool about it and thought that it was more cute than annoying.

Brig and his family recently moved to Round Rock, which is great because we get to see them a lot more often than we used to. The only catch is that they live in Round Rock (north of Austin) and we live in Kyle (south of Austin) with about 45 minutes of driving in between.

To split the difference, we’ve found some common ground on the greens of the Jimmy Clay Golf Course in Austin. It’s about halfway between our houses and we both enjoy playing so it’s worked out quite well.

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Now if only I could get a leg-up on Brig; he’s pretty consistent on the putting greens, which means my usual five strokes on a par three just isn’t cutting it anymore.