Mullins Family Memorial Day Weekend 2015

We finally got to have a Mullins Family vacation this Memorial Day weekend 2015. It's been a dream of mine for several years. We tried to do this last year and Allen and I ended up spending several days by ourselves in a big house in Kingsland because the kids were sick. This year we finally made it to our first choice of a rental vacation house with a pool on a high hill over Wimberley, TX. The house was beautiful, the pool was perfect for us, the drive for us from Arlington and for the kids from Abilene was good, and even though the weather looked liked rain, we were looking forward to lots of good family time together. Austin & Tali arrived first, unpacked their car and the kids (aged 4,2, & 4 mo.), and settled in. We arrived a few minutes later & took over the kids while Austin & Tali went grocery shopping. Allen & Austin went back down the hill to pick up dinner for us Friday night. We found out later that that was the last chance we had to go down into the little village of Wimberley.

On Saturday after I cooked pancakes, sausage, & bacon for all, we ventured out to the pool. It has been a cool spring and the water was pretty cold, but we all enjoyed it. Asher had been a little scared of water in past years, but with Papa and Daddy in the pool to help, he finally got out to the deeper water with his ring. There's also a hottub we really enjoyed. It was cloudy the whole day and started raining later in the afternoon. We had DVDs to watch, a few toys to play with and plenty of playing with Asher, Eljah, and Eden to pass the time. We went to bed and slept and woke up with torrential raining, high wind, power off & on, but felt very safe and secure in the house on the hill. Sunday morning the owners of the house who live in a house next door came to check on us. Since our Internet access wasn't working, we hadn't heard that there was flooding 5 miles away on the river and that many, many houses and very old cypress trees were destroyed. The owners told us there was a place to park on our side of the river (our bridge was closed, but not destroyed) to look at the river. Austin, Tali, and I ventured out to look.

It was unbelievable how much destruction and to think we slept through it when others were losing their homes, cars, trees, and who knows what else. I am so thankful to God for our safety, and that we were able to have such great family time with our loved ones. 

Monday morning after breakfast we packed up and left about 10 to meet Tali's step-brother & wife in Driftwood for lunch at the famous barbecue place there. The usual 20 min. drive took about 2 hours while we tried to find new ways to get there around flooded roads. We had a great meal, and it had just started raining hard again when we went our separate ways home. We had heavy rain trying to get out to I-35, then heard there was a tornado very near us to the south. We kept driving north with lots of water on the road, slowly, but no trouble except lots of cars on the freeway with lots of water on the road. We tried to stop at a rest area once, but there were so many cars parked there to get off the freeway, we just kept going north. We finally got to stop at Bucees in Temple where at least 200 other people were inside. Thankfully, they had plenty of staff to take care of everybody. We just kept driving north and thankfully had an uneventful last hour of driving. 

I'm so glad I took this morning off and will be going in at 2 today because I've been doing laundry all morning and needed the time off to ready to go back to work again. I am so thankful for a wonderful family time together, for a new favorite vacation home to visit on future family trips, and for safety in all of the weather we had to endure. My thoughts and prayers and with those less fortunate in Wimberley, and other areas of Texas and Oklahoma who have lost so much. Here's a sunset photo over Wimberley from our upstairs bedroom window to remind us of our special time together.