The ABCs of Our Texas Trip

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?

Fun and Games While Waiting for Baby, Texas Style

After looking forward to our trip to Texas and our soon to be born Grandson Benjamin Paul Talley, we got in the car and headed south ... but first, we walked the yard, and I noticed that my flowering almond bush is in full bloom.  I planted the thing four years ago, and I can't believe how small it still is.  I'm sorry to miss its bloom, as I planted it,because my mother had one, and I have always loved them.

We drove to Albuquerque the first night, stopping in Farmington for lunch.  I googled salad bars in various towns along the way, and even called one restaurant to see what they had on the salad bar.  Dad said I was over thinking things, but after we ate at Porter's  (Because someone had left a comment that they had an amazing salad bar) Dad said, "That was so smart, we'd have never found this place without checking ahead."  Yeah, that!

We loved this picture of Van that Spencer posted that day.  We love the connection we feel sharing on line.  They said he loves rice.  How cute.

On Tuesday we drove from Albuquerque  to Pottsboro, stopping for lunch in Amarillo.  We'd have never found this restaurant.  We drove up to the address, and saw this ... we got out of the car and looked around, baffled.  Then Dad noticed an easel bearing a sign for the restaurant, Pan Handlers,  inside the lobby.  We think it was originally the lunch room for the office building above the bank, and yes, another great salad buffet, with amazing Hungarian mushroom soup, and I've already googled vegan versions.  Yum.

We got to Emily's house around 7:00, and after tucking most of the munchkins in bed ...

We hauled in the 'Shower in a box' and had fun with that.  Dad did a Family Marco Polo of the big reveal, if you want to check it out. 

The pop up function was so fun, that that they got Miss Wiggles up, as she was clearly still awake.

Emily was so surprised and so tickled! Here's a small part of her gift from Hannah.

Emily and Sam were both in love with this Animal Alphabet book, made up of unusual animals, from Brittney and Spencer.

 Thanks for all the lovely gifts, she really felt your love.  Brittney came up with the idea, but everyone really supported her, and it was lovely.

Dad woke up the next morning to lots of loving.

We walked the kids to school, and I was able to add a half a mile to my steps.

Back at home Emily worked on doing some translations ...

Baby Ben was very active and she let her Dad get his hand kicked.

When Emily saw my outfit, she said, 'Hey, I have one just like that' ... so here we are.

When the kids were at school, Abbie got all the snuggles.

The shower box provided entertainment for the kids all week.

It had been raining like mad all week, so we went down to the damn on lake Texoma, hoping they would have opened the spill way.  Not great gushes of water, but the kids had fun collecting rocks.

We stopped at Aldi's, a German discount grocery store, that is very much like Lidl's were we shopped in Finland, also a German discount grocery store. 

We had more rain that night, the worst Emily and Sam have seen since moving into this house.   We were planning to go to First Monday Trade days the next day, and were concerned about the forecast.

We came in and the kids opened their gifts, that I had brought to assuage the gift envy they might be suffering seeing all the presents their baby brother was receiving.  William's gift was a set of assemble yourself robots.  Emily said it was the perfect gift for him.  The girls got books and videos.

On Thursday, we took off for Trade Days, and Emily and Abbie had Doctor appointments.  Abbie had a bead, that her Stake President, the doctor, removed from her ear. ...  the funny thing is that his wife had given Emily a maternity dress, and the bead turned out to be one that had come off the dress.  So the bead went very nearly full circle. 

It showered on us a bit for the first hour of our 6 hour walk around the market ...

I loved this booth and started following the owner on Instagram.

How fun is this little set of drawers.

I laughed when I saw this door, Dad and I think its identical to the one we put in the family room, that is green and white.

 We left a half hour before the sale closed for the day ... Dad was a trooper to carry this fun book case to the car ...

 Back at the house again, Bekie shows off her Carmen Miranda look.

Bekie also made us matching bracelets.

 All ready for school on Friday, and Dad took some cute pics of the cuteness.

While the kids were at school, another Mom from the school, brought by some ground beef Emily had ordered from a cow  about whom the lady'd said "If you break out of my pasture, I'll put you in my freezer"  Anyway, I'd never heard of these 'oreo' cows, and we later saw some in a pasture. How cool is that?

We also went to pick up the kids from school on Friday ....

William's upsidedown face.

Abbie was chasing butterflies.

 Then we headed back to the lake, where the kids played and gathered rocks for an hour or so, before ...

 going to meet one of Bekie's friends and her mom at a park.

 I loved the old bridge ...

 What a bunch of monkeys.

How cute is this face!!

and this one too...

That night there was lots of snuggle time with the 'snuggle bums', as their mom calls them.

Here is Sam working on the back porch of their new house where we hung out on Saturday.

Dad put in a few screws as well.

 While Dad and Sam worked on the back porch, Emily and I and the kids, along with Sam's mother walked down to the town cemetery.  I have always loved lamb markers, how sweet is this. I regret not taking a picture of the first civil war marker I have ever seen ... but alas

There was this cute tie dyed lamb of whom I got pictures.

 As usual I brought up the rear on the walk back.

Here's Abbie at the back door of the house.

When we got back Sheila put on some videos for the kids and fed us a lovely lunch.

We also celebrated Spencer and Brittney's 6th wedding anniversary that day.

 On Sunday morning Emily painted the girls toenails before church...

Here's Dad at church, leaning against a tweed wall in his tweed sports coat!!

The kids love these magnetic building sections.  Abbie built this herself.

After church Dad and I worked on our Come Follow Me, intermittently, as we also watched the kids do free style paper crafting, and watching The Ten Commandments.

That night Abbie begged to get to sleep in the baby shower box ... boy oh boy has that box been fun.