Texas Forever {Part 2}

The rest of the week in Texas was spent at THIS beautiful property!

Each morning, our team would wake up to a fully home-cooked breakfast, fresh donuts from the local donut shop and HUGE carafes of coffee {when our hostess found out I prefer iced coffee, she began to make extra and keep it in the fridge for me...talk about hospitality!}

After breakfast and a reflection on a Bible story or character, they'd take us out on the lake for all sorts of water sports! I learned to wake surf {!!} which I am pretty proud to say, since I'd never done anything like it {and there were quite a few others who couldn't do it!}

We had many, many hours of tubing: three tubes with at least seven people being whipped around, guys jumping from tube to tube...I would get thrown in to the lake and be laughing so hard that I swallowed, easily, a gallon of lake water each day. But someone did mention that they were never concerned that I was hurt because they could hear my laugh from the middle of the lake.

One afternoon, we took a duffy boat down river {past Nolan Ryan's property!} to a big tree with a rope swing and a platform at the top. This photo makes me look like I knew what I was doing...the actual event was considerably less graceful! On my second climb, I opted to jump from the platform up above, thinking it would hurt less than smacking in to the water on the rope. 

After lunch, naps {well, I took a nap while everyone else played volleyball} and more lake time, we'd have delicious BBQ for dinner, Blue Bell ice cream {often ice cream floats} and then settle in for a few card games before bed.

On our final morning, I was so sore from all of the tubing that I opted for some quiet reading and chatting instead of final runs behind the boat or on a jet ski. And really, with a spot like this, can you blame me?

We left early for the airport to give us time to stop for BBQ at City Market in Luling.

Oh. My. Goodness. This place was incredible.

They have a smoker {where they cook the meat} in the restaurant, so when we walked in, it smelled so much like Kenya that I almost burst in to tears!

The boys ordered for us and brought these giant pieces of butcher paper filled with ribs, brisket, sausages and pickles to the table. And then threw down three or four loaves of white bread and a half dozen bottles of BBQ sauce.

So. So. So. Delicious. We left Luling super full and happy...feeling like we'd had a pretty complete experience of Texas: Riggins, Blue Bell, boating and BBQ.