This 29 second video is just to adorable.  I had to post it.  Samuel asked to hold Adalynn today and we caught it on camera. 

Adalynn Ray Dollahite

On January 22nd at 9:35pm, Adalynn Ray Dollahite was born!  She weighed 7.7lbs and was 20in.  Here are some pics of her and the family!

Dallas

Last weekend Melinda flew to Oklahoma to see Her boyfriend Dustin. They drove down to Dallas and we met them there for the weekend. We had a fun time. We went to a children's aquarium that was awesome! Very hands on and set up for kids. Samuel had a ball. We were surprised at how much he enjoyed it. The best part was feeding the sting rays! They had this huge tank filled with sting rays that you could touch and feed. To feed them you would take a piece of shrimp, make a fist with your hand, place the shrimp at the top of your fist so it would not fall off, an then dunk your hand as far into the water as you could. The sting rays would come over top of your fist and suck the shrimp off. It was the oddest feeling thing, but was so cool!! I wish I would have recorded Mara attempting to feed them. When they came up to suck the shrimp off she jumped about 10 ft into the air and squealed like a crazy person! It was hilarious. Feeding sting rays was deffenitly a first for all of us.

The Zoo

Yesterday we went to the San Antonio zoo. It was a fun day. The boys loved seeing all the animals. It was a perfect day to go because it was not to hot. It was somewhat overcast and about 70 degrees. The boys even got to feed some of the birds there as you'll see in the pictures. The funniest part of the day was when we went to the kamodo dragon exhibit (however you spell that) I was surprised to learn how dangerous they are and poisonous. Michael responded, "we'll yea dad, everyone knows that!"

Fun

It has been awhile since I last posted so I thought I would catch you up on se of the fun things we have been up to.

3 weeks ago we went camping with another family that also has 3 boys. I included a picture below of the awesome view from one of the hikes we went on.

A few weeks after we got here we went to corpus Christi which is on the gulf coast an went swimming in the ocean and visited an air craft carrier. The boys LOVED it. Thy could run around an climb on and touch everything! The water in the ocean was supper warm. That was the first time the boys had been in the ocean.

During the thanksgiving break we went to sea world. Sea world is only 15 minutes from our house! It was a blast. The were set up for Christmas and all the shows had Christmas themes. There was also a cool candy cane forest.

Two weekends ago we went to this old German town here in Texas called New Braunfules. They had this neat train that would take you around the 50+ acre park. It actually felt like fall there! We all agreed that we could move there. We loved the small town feel.

Last weekend we went to a huge Texas style traders world. There was this guy there doing comedy bird show and he picked Michael to come up to help. You can see Michel below holding all the birds.

To be continued on our adventures in Texas...

Setting up for Christmas

This last Monday we went and bought a Christmas tree and set it up. We were able to find a place that sold live ones! However we missed the experience of buying our tree from the same lady in CDA. We bought from her for 4 years.

Samuel sure had a great time with all the shiny ornaments! Now the challenge is to keep him form climbing on the tree an pulling it over! Elijah did that 3 times last year!

Settling in

We made it alive and well to TX! The 2258 mile drive went well. It was slow going at times, with our max speed up the mountains only 20-25 mph. The longest hardest stretch of our journey was Utah to Colorado. The 8.5 hr trip took us 14.5 hrs! The many mountains, torrential rains, and even snow really slowed us down--though the drive was beautiful as fall was in full swing up in the mountains. When we got to our house in San Antonio on friday we realized that we forgot to have the lights and gas put in out name so the power company had come out to turn it off. We went all weekend with no electricity or hot water! Brought back memories of my mission. :-)

The closing on the business was delayed a week so we don't close until this Monday the 8th. That turned out to be a blessing as we had so much to do to get settled in here. We also took the opportunity to explore the area some. On Wednesday we went to a lake that is 30 mins from our house. I was excited to find a good lake to enjoy as we just moved from the lake capital of the US! What we found when we got there was sorely disappointing! :-). It was mostly dried up! Welcome to the desert! Below are a few pics.

On Friday we made the 2 hr drive to Corpus Christi on the gulf coast. We had a blast. We visited a huge battle ship, ate at a local sea food place, and swam at the beach. I have never experienced ocean water so warm. It was great! The boys loved jumping the waves.

We are excited to continue our exploration of TX. I am excited to start in the business on Monday. It's all going to be a great adventure!