Our really fabulous family weekend

Saturday night was our town's annual "Praise on the Hill." This is a free event, and had heard nothing but good things about it, but every year there was some sort of scheduling conflict for us. Last year, Matthew West was the featured performer, but I was in San Antonio for the Women of Faith conference. Anyway, this year the Newsboys were the headliners. The last time I saw them in concert was 20 years ago - they'd just released the album Not Ashamed, and I was super close to the stage, dancing around in a very mild version of a mosh pit. And now I'm taking my kids - hilarious! Anyway, the temps were still pretty warm on Saturday, so we didn't go until about 7 PM. We caught part of a performance from Hearts of Saints (quite good) and Rapture Ruckus (not my thing). I definitely had a total "old lady" moment during that performance, as all I could think was, "Wow, they're really loud and I can't understand a single word!" Hubby - the sound geek - did point out that the sound was *really* bad during that performance, which didn't exactly help... Anyhoo, Newsboys finally took the stage and the kids were excited to be able to sing along with some songs (having a good, local Christian radio station rocks!) Michael Tait made a comment about love being a verb (inside joke for old school DC Talk fans, which meant I subjected our children to some vintage videos later, courtesy of YouTube). Our daughter had a ball dancing around, too, in case you can't tell from the picture ;)

Sunday morning: church. I had the preschool class for first service - our lesson: passover. THAT's a fun lesson to teach 2 and 3 year olds! I don't know how much they actually "got" but I will say that it made communion during 2nd service even sweeter for me as I was reflecting on how Jesus became our lamb... After church on Sunday, we headed down to South Padre Island for sandcastle days. Again, something we'd been wanting to check out for the past several years. As we were cruising down Padre Boulevard, I had to laugh at the irony of the Irish Pub offering a Mexican Plate. Seriously, life in south TX is downright hilarious at times. We'd had a cold front blow in the night before, and it was only 71 at the beach. Bliss!! Tons of cool sand sculptures, a few photo ops at Pirate's Landing, and then dinner at a little hole in the wall Mexican restaurant. Our daughter wanted nachos - holy pile of food, batman! Let's just say we brought quite a bit home... Perfect ending to a busy but relaxing weekend!