Tate and Grant's friends from church- This is such a great group of kids. Most of this bunch we have know since birth. We will miss them so much!
Some of my beautiful girlfriends from church. We were so lucky to have such great friends at from Westover.
Some of David's friends- Jim, Danny, and Jon.
Brent, Mat, Jim, and Danny
Christy and Angie, loving on sweet Bailey.
Julie, Ashley, David R, Derek, Ryan, and Chris
Tate and his good buddy, Jackson Nettleton. These two have know each other for three years and play so well together.
Tate, with Chance and Lexi. We love these kids! They were great playmates for Tate and Grant! (Chance doesn't usually look this silly, he was making faces for me:) We could always count on them to be around when Tate got bored. They enjoyed riding their bikes and playing in the creek behind our street. Grant loved playing with their little brother, Carson, too.
My awesome neighbors and girlfriends! We loved hanging out together and watching the kids play on most days when the weather was under 100 degrees. During the months of May and June we had a few different send off parties for out big move to Tulsa. We were so blessed in Austin to have the greatest friends! Our wonderful friends, The Reaves, hosted a care group going away party for us. We have know the Reaves for 12 years! They were some of our first friends we made at church. So many of our memories of Austin will involve them and their precious family. Our care group family continued to grow over those 12 years and we were blessed to meet so many different people from all over the country who chose to move to Austin and start their families. We loved that our kids had a great group of other kids to play with within our caregroup and alot of "second moms and dad" to love on them in the seven years they were there. We know we will probably never find another group like this and we miss and love them all so much!
Another sweet group of friends, our neighbors, also threw us a send off party. I felt so blessed to live on such a great street! Via Grande Dr was a great street to live on! There were alot of kids whom we loved playing with each day. Around 4:00 each day we would sit outside for about an hour and watch the kids play- sometimes with wine! Tate was never bored with Chance around. As soon as he was done with his homework he would ride his bike to his house and they would play and expore until dinner time. I loved that I could let him go out by himself to play if I had other things in the house to do and he would always be safe and have a great time.
A couple of weeks before we left I got to go out with some of my friends from the boys preschool. ( Wish I had a picture of this great group of ladies, too!) I have know most of them for the last six years when Tate started preschool with their kids. We used to go to lunch once a month or so and even when our kids weren't in the same school anymore we could always find a night to go to dinner or a CABI party! I will really miss them and know I will probably never find a group so close at Grant's preschool this year.
We loved Austin. However, we had felt a tug on our hearts for some time that God was calling us to do something different. We will miss that great city and all the fun things it contained but more than that we will miss the friendships we have made there over the last twelve and a half years. Tulsa is a good town and I am sure we will find ways to fit in and make friends but they can't compare with what we had in Austin. We can't wait to visit!
