No Camp Austin This Year

We have been known, in past years, to do this thing called "Camp Austin".  We no longer live in Austin and it isn't really camp, because it involves our nieces and nephews.  Here is the story behind Camp Austin:

Before we had kids, once upon a time, we went on a mini vacation with Jeff's sister and her family to Gulf Shores.  We had a great time playing with our three nephews in the sand and the surf.  We thought it was great because we were there with them for meals, downtime, play time, all of it.  On the plane ride back to Texas, I don't know which one of us came up with it, but basically we were worried that by living all the way in Texas we wouldn't have a relationship with our nieces and nephews.  Six of our nephews lived in Missouri and we had two nieces and a nephew in Pennsylvania.  How would we get to know these kids when they were so far away?

On the ride home, we schemed that somehow we needed to convince their parents to allow us to take their lovely children for a week in Austin, at our house.  It was actually very easy to convince them.  My sister came and helped out, we had them for five nights and we even employed a few of our Texas friends to help out a bit.  Jeff flew to PA to pick up the girls, their baby brother had just been born.  My sister and I drove to Missouri and picked up five boys under the age of nine, good times.  It was great, all of the kiddos got along and we ended up doing it again twice once we had moved to Missouri.  Last year, we opted out and instead spent some quality time with both sides of our family, parents included.  This year, we again opted out because I am prego and Camp Austin would have seriously exhausted me.

However, we did invite six of our nieces and nephews to our house for the weekend.  This proved plenty for the pregnant lady.  We hope to do a true Camp Austin again, at least one more before our oldest niece is out of high school and hopefully more for the younger kiddos.  But this year, we relaxed.  Here are some pics of our funny, bright, high energy and completely loveable group.