Sunday, March 20, 2011

Goodbye Lake, Hello Ranch

This past weekend was very bittersweet for me. My parents bought a Ranch in Denison a few days ago and it is so amazing. There is so much for everyone to do there and the kids are going to adore getting to spend so much time outdoors. Along with this purchase, though, they have decided to sell the lakehouse. And as much fun as we are going to have at the ranch, I love the lakehouse. So, Gigi and I decided that our family needed to spend at least one last time at the lake this past weekend and just soak it all up. We arrived on Friday afternoon and the kiddos were so excited.

After unpacking all of our gear Jackson and Maddie ran out back. I found them in the hammock...well, trying to balance themselves in the hammock, really. I was pretty shocked that they didn't flip over after about .3 seconds!

Lila decided to take it a bit easier and simply enjoyed the view of the lake from the back patio. She does take after her mama.

After checking out the temp on the hot tub water, I got a surprisingly sweet picture of these two.


Not 10 minutes later, though, I walked out into the garage to find that my two angels had literally tied up Gigi--aka Captain Hook! They were all role-playing and Gigi was Captain Hook, Madison was Wendy and Jackson was Peter Pan. This charade went on for quite a while and they loved every second of it!

The next morning Jackson found this lawnmowers and immediately went right to work. After that, we all got ready and headed on over to the ranch.


We immediately found a great spot to contain wild indians!


After we let them out for good behavior, Jackson and Jared took off on the four wheeler.


They lead the way, with Jackson hopping off at every gate to open it for us. My little worker bee never misses an opportunity to work, that's for sure!


There are horses, cows, llamas, a bull...all kinds of animals on the ranch. It really is so cool. We stopped at the lower pasture and got out to pet the horses. J cracked me up by insisting on wearing his helmet the whole time.

The horses were very friendly and came right on up to us.


My dad grew up riding horses and was definitely in his element!

What a pretty view.

After petting the horses for a bit, we rode on down to the river. The ranch backs up to the Red River. Jared gave J his first lesson on how to skip rocks. Jackson did really good on the "gotta find a flat rock" part, but is still working on actually making the rock skip.


After that, the boys did some adventure walking out onto this huge fallen tree. Jackson is such a nervous ninny about things like this. He was holding on for dear life to his daddy the whole time, but he made it all the way to the end and then back again without falling into the water:)


The whole time that we were down at the river, Madison was asleep on the Mule. Not very long after she fell asleep, so did Lila Lou. Oh well, the girls will just have to check out the river the next time we go visit.


Jackson and Gigi are really looking forward to fun times on the river this summer.


We are going to have so much fun four wheeling around...

and fishing too!


The Longhorns seemed to approve of us and came over to oversee the boys in their first ranch fishing expedition.


Although Jackson first chose to set up shop on the dock, he was still standing over the land. This is a vast improvement over the last time his daddy tried to take him fishing and he ran for the hills when a small boat went by and made the dock rock back and forth!


There are lots of ponds on the property, but this one is the closest to the house. Too bad we don't think there are very many fish in it...all the boys saw were some turtles.

But they gave it a good go and looked so cute trying to catch those fish.

We are looking forward to many more wonderful memories at the ranch, but this picture is how I will forever remember the lake. What. A. View.



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