A is for alligator for a snack. There are other fairly odd regional specialties too, like tasty frozen crawdad balls and cat fish fingers.
B is the reason we came to Texas ... We arrived on April 30th, and he was born on May 9th! Emily had figured the 10th, by the old fashioned method, then the doctor said it was the 6th, later moving it up to the 4th, based on a late term ultrasound head measurement. We had lots of time to visit, do antique shopping and watch movies.
C is for lots of castles made from Magnatiles that Dad and I got for Abigail (Via her Mom) for her birthday. They already had four sets, our addition brought it to five.
D is for doctors, lots of doctor visits ... Abbie got to go for her well child check-up, shown here. Emily, of course, saw quite a lot of her doctor over the last two week.
E is for Elves, not fairies, because all the boys at this birthday party wore wings as well ... you can see Emily, Abbie, Bekie and William in this picture. Can you find them all?
F is for the fun we had painting nails on two different occasions.
Buc-cees is a big gas station chain here, famous for its amazingly luxurious rest rooms. Yep, there was a new one that opened in near-by Melissa, and Sam took the kids over, just for fun!
H is for all the dark hair that Benny was born with.
I is for the Ice cream that everyone in the family got to celebrate that Bekie, after a year's worth of math tutoring, came up from the 0 percentile for kids her age, to 85% ... of course there was lots of help from Mom and Dad too, but I thought that was a stunning intervention outcome. Good job Bekie.
We went to church in both the Bonham ward house and the Pottsboro ward house too ... in this church we found that we could make Dad, sort of, disappear against the tweedy wall, Emily said he looks like Professoral Indiana Jones in this jacket.
K is for the Keyed carts at the German owned Aldi's store. Its a discount store similar to Lidl's, where we shopped in Finland. Dad had his red plastic coin (you can also used a quarter size coin) on his key chain and was thrilled to get to use it. The store was amazing too, and I got three sets of Edison party yard lights ... and black bean spaghetti too. Yum.
L is for Laughter ... Abbie had lots of fun when we went junking in neighboring Denison one day ... I visited 6 different antique stores while Dad walked up and down the street playing on street installations with her.
M is for the mouth on this adorable child.
Abbie, as it happens, became a big sister while we were here ... so big!
This is a 'Belted Galloway Cow' known commonly as an Oreo. A parent Emily knows from PTA raises them, and about a month ago, one of them repeatedly got out of the fenced pastures, breaking fences and wandering neighboring streets. Linda had a talk with the cow and told her that if she got out one more time, she was going in the freezer. Yep, she did so Linda did. Emily got in on the deal, and got some extra lean ground beef for her family and some for her mother-in-law as well.
This shop picture represents a lot of junking that I did while we were here. This shop is one whose owner I follow on Instagram. I spent our last Saturday shopping at the Bonham Trade days, a smaller version of the Canton's first Monday trade days and then shopping the antique stores, a pop-up shop, and a thrift shop in McKenny, a larger town a half an hour from Bonham, where Emily and Sam's new house is to be found.
For our second installment of P, we have the porch that Dad and Sam built on the back of the new home. It was done first because the front porch would need to be built where there was a large puddle. It had rained like crazy the first week we were in Texas, flooding Emily and Sam's new septic system and making it so that the system could not be hooked up, which meant, not only, no working potties, but also, no water ... thus delaying their move-in date until May 13th and meaning that they would live with Sam's folks next door until the ground is dry enough to allow for the septic tanks final connection. The 13th was also our departure date.
Q is for queen, as we watched all of the episodes of both seasons of the Crown. We loved it and are thinking of getting Netflix so that we can watch the next season in Finland. Yep.
and here is the culprit of our trip ... Emily said she'd never seen this much rain in Pottsboro.
William and Bekie are great crafters ... I loved the crowns they made.
This is what Emily called, The Giving Tree Box ... it did keep on giving ... The box housed the stove hood for Brit and Spencer stove hood, then was reused to house Emily's baby shower in a box, then the kids here in Texas played in it for days on end, even sleeping in it, before it was re-wrapped and used as a science project for Bekie, and that's a lot of recycling for one box. Thanks for sharing it Spencer and Brittney.
Dad and I went to the hospital to visit Emily all three days she was there. Benny was very slightly jaundiced, so they kept them for an extra day ...
We got to walk the kids to school a few days, and noticed that Emily had found a way to make the walk fun, by using various activities to make an impromptu obstacle course along the way, including these bars at the entry to the high school stadium.
We observed how much this girl loves veggies, like Penny and Eleanor, she loves cucumbers. One day she lay in front of the fridge begging her mommy to let her have a cucumber, we laughed and laughed.
and just because waiting for a baby to come, while waiting for the rain to stop, hoping that the ground around their new house would dry up, was not enough frustration, Emily's washer died the second weekend we were here. But then, while looking for a silver lining, we realized that this meant a new giant box for children who had had most of their toys and books at the new house for the better part of a month.
Remember that day in Dennison? Here is Abbie playing on one of the art installations.
Here is Sam at his third job (He teaches high school Spanish, and on line English to Chinese kids too). He drives a morning and an afternoon route ...
and we finish off the alphabet by reposting the tie died goat we saw when we were walking to cemetery in Bonham, the first weekend we were here.
So that wraps up our weeks in Texas. Its been great fun, with a beautiful new baby as the crowning feature of our trip. We will now head home, by way of the new Oklahoma Temple, how perfect is that?
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