The Hafens do Texas

Mandy and I have been planning their ultimate Texas road trip for almost a year now. The Hafens came into town for 12 full days and the kids were in Heaven. 12 days with 12 kids 8 and younger under one roof sounds pretty chaotic for most people but it went off without a hitch!

 We celebrated with Texas sheet cake after our first Sunday dinner.

 The Hafen kids were disappointed it was just a big cake and not in the shape of Texas.

The Hafens bought 7 day passes to Sea World. The first day we went while David was at work. Here's Mandy with the boys on Rio Loco.

 And Jason with the girls.

I stayed behind with the 5 younger ones who weren't tall enough for this ride. We watched the others go by and this is how Grayson screamed every time he saw his parents. Cracked me up. We decided not to watch after that.

Here is the line up of the kiddos watching the penguins.

 Here we are at the Pet's ahoy show.

We went again on Thursday and closed down the park. We didn't get home til 10:30 and on Friday morning we were up bright and early heading to Son's Island.

This picture is kind of special. Mallie and Tod both kept getting jealous that Jack and Ashton paired up and Hannah and Kimball had each other. Finally, by the end of the first week they had figured out that they were each other's age match. They kept calling each other bestie, it was pretty darling.

 Here is Mandy and Addie.

We went to Sea World one last time before their tickets expired.

We took them to Big Lou's pizza place to eat a giant pizza.

It really is delicious pizza.

And Rachel got in on the action this time. She ate almost half of slice.

 And then the last night in between eating Blue Bell Ice Cream we took pictures on a timer.

This was the morning they left with all of the kids minus Rachel.

And just like that, they were off with a cooler full of dry ice and blue bell ice cream and the house felt empty for the next couple of days. Thanks for coming Hafens!!