Sunday, March 30 – Saturday, April 5, 2008
Sunday, March 30
It was great to be back in our home church at Artesia First Baptist this morning. Brother Rick is a wonderful Bible teacher/preacher and was at the top of his form this morning.
After church we came back to Big V, fixed lunch, and settled in for an afternoon of NCAA basketball, only to be sadly disappointed by the total collapse of Texas as they fell to Memphis, and disturbed by the less that stellar play of Kansas in their game with Davidson (although Davidson was a great team and put up a great fight before finally losing by only 2 points. We were just wishing that Davidson had played either North Carolina or UCLA and knocked one of them out of the tournament.
After a quick visit over at Mother’s house, we decided that we’d cook up one of the meals that we had learned from Margarita and Maria when we were in Puerto Rico earlier in the month, so we fired up the stove top and started cooking. While Barbara was cutting, frying, and smashing the plantains, I went to work on the cubed steaks that had been marinating in olive oil and Adobo seasoning since yesterday. It didn’t take long until Big V was really “stinking purty.”
Later, Barbara started cooking some rice and I added tomato sauce to the simmering steaks and onions. By the time we were finished, Big V smelled exactly like Maria and Margarita’s house did when they taught us the recipe.
We decided we’d call Jean and offer to bring everything over to her house if she hadn’t eaten yet. She said to come on over, so we took the food and a pancake griddle over to her kitchen. Margarita taught us how to take fresh rolled bread (which we didn’t have, so we substituted some buns) butter it, and close the griddle on it to make flat bread.
With everything finally in place, we sat down with Jean and enjoyed a wonderful Puerto Rican meal.
After eating and watching a little more TV, we gathered our dirty pots and pans, took them back to Big V to wash, and called it a day.
Monday, March 31
Don’t know why, other than that deep down inside we knew it needed doing, but we decided to tackle a deep cleaning of Big V today. It’s been a while since we did that last, and it took about three hours to do all that we thought needed doing. We’ve had lots of dust storms since the last cleaning, and Big V, like every structure in southeastern New Mexico, is definitely not immune to invasion by the dust and sand that blows through here.
Mother had a physical therapy appointment this afternoon at 2:30, so I left Barbara at Big V and went to town to get her. In addition to a solid workout, she had to stay late to complete a bunch of paperwork, so it was after 5:00 when I finally got home.
Jean invited us over to supper tonight. She had some Portuguese barbecued chicken and beans she had bought at the St. Anthony’s Catholic fundraiser, so we enjoyed another delicious meal at her place before returning to Big V to watch television and eventually get to bed.
Tuesday, April 1
With a trip to East Texas coming up, we decided that we’d better get the laundry taken care of today, so we took everything over to Mother’s house to wash while we did some chores for her and us. We talked it over with Mother and decided that rather than driving all day Wednesday to go to Mineola, Texas, we’d leave after lunch on Wednesday, drive as far as Sweetwater and then go on to Mineola on Thursday. Our hope was that we would miss rush hour traffic around the Dallas/Forth Worth area and not feel so beat up when we did arrive in Mineola.
After getting back to Big V and having some lunch, I decided I’d work as much of the fence lines as I could on the east side of Jean’s property. The problem with cleaning out one side of the lot is that everything else looks worse until it’s cleaned, and I wanted to remedy that problem before we left on the next trip. The weather and wind cooperated, and by 5:00 p.m. I had accomplished even more than I had expected.
Tonight we did as much packing as possible in order to be ready for travel tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 2
Happy 14th Anniversary to us!
We had every intention of sleeping in this morning, but were up and around by 5:30. We took our time moving around…I fixed pancakes, bacon, and eggs and we had a leisurely breakfast.
We decided that, as much as we’d like to join the bunch for our Wednesday Chaos luncheon, it made more sense to get away around noon, so we checked with Mother to see if she could be ready to leave by 12:30. She said it wouldn’t be a problem, so we got busy doing all the chores necessary for closing up Big V for a few days. We let Jean and Susie know that we wouldn’t be eating with them today and headed on over to Mother’s house around 12:15.
Ernie and Billee were there to help us load the car and get underway, and by 12:30 we were on U.S. 82, headed toward Hobbs and various other points on our way to Big Spring, Texas, where we got on I-20 and pointed the car east toward Sweetwater.
We arrived at the Sweetwater Super 8 Motel around 5:30 and were pleasantly surprised to find a newly remodeled structure with all the amenities one could ask for in a budget lodging (not to mention the lowest price we’ve seen in a long time. We got checked in to our rooms and then Barbara and I walked down to the street to pick up a sandwich and some cheesecake slices at Schlotzky’s, and a Burrito Supreme at Taco Bell to take back to the rooms for our dinner.
We spent the rest of the evening watching TV, working at our computers, and generally kicking back and relaxing.
Thursday, April 3
We got up early and got everything ready to go. After a good hot breakfast in the motel dining room, we were ready to roll by 8:30, far better than what we had anticipated.
With cloudy skies at the first of the trip, we just motored down I-20 through Abilene, Weatherford, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Terrell on our way to Mineola…not much to say about the trip…just drive, derive, and drive some more. But, with the early start, we were at T.J.’s house in Mineola at two o’clock, ready to eat the delicious meal she had prepared for us, ham, macaroni and cheese casserole, green beans, and homemade bread. Wow…what a great welcome!
At 4:15 we went to a neighbor’s house to visit, look at the layout of the house, and check out the property. We had mentioned a couple of years ago that if Mother ever considered moving to Mineola it would be great to find something in T.J.’s neighborhood, and this house is one that we singled out as a great piece of property. The folks who live here are considering selling and moving to a new place, so we thought we’d take advantage of a possible opportunity and check it out.
After we got back to T.J.’s place and unloaded the car, Barbara and I drove downtown to Legal Grounds, a local internet café/coffee shop, where we checked our email and sent out a couple of messages. From there, it was back to the house (with a brief stop at Dairy Queen for a Blizzard for Barbara and a Mocha Moolatte for Mother), where we settled in for an evening of visiting.
Friday, April 4
Wow…What was that noise!? We woke up to the sound of thunder rumbling (been a while since we’ve heard that), and rain pounding down on the roof…took us a few minutes to dig around in the memory banks and realize what was happening.
After everyone was finally up and more or less ready to face the day, T.J. fixed a great breakfast for us and we chowed down on bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, juice, and coffee…more than enough to give us a good kick start for a busy day.
At 10:00 a.m. we drove over to Century 21 to meet a realtor and begin a home tour. Over the course of the morning we saw several houses, most of which we ruled out immediately for a variety of reasons, but we did see two places that were definite possibilities. The frontrunner was a beautiful two-bedroom (but that’s not a very apt description) garden home that will take little or nothing to be ready to occupy. The second was a lovely three-bedroom sitting on a large shady lot near one of the local lakes. Now it’s down to decision time for Mother.
After seeing the last house of the day, Barbara and I went back to Legal Grounds to check email, then to Wal-Mart for a couple of purchases before returning to T.J.’s house.
We received a phone call from Heather while we were at the realtor’s office. We had planned to come back to Richardson next weekend to watch the Alexander and Abby while Heather and Andy go on a job interview; but, she received a call from the school this morning saying that next weekend won’t work for the school, and could they come this weekend instead and interview on Monday.
We quickly changed our plans so that Mother would stay with T.J. until Wednesday morning and we would go on to Richardson this evening. Heather and Andy will fly out tomorrow morning and return Tuesday evening. Luckily, we were “in the neighborhood” and were able to help them out and they were able to make reasonable travel arrangements.
We left Mineola about 4:00 p.m. and drove west on U.S. 80 to Terrell, where we stopped for a while at an outlet center to look for shoes and “other stuff.” Then, we continued on to Richardson to the kids’ house to get settled in for the night and prepare to start keeping Alexander and Abby tomorrow morning.
Saturday, April 5
“Happy Birthday today to Aunt T.J. in Mineola, Texas!
Alexander decided to start his day early…we had told him to come to our room and get us when he woke up, but we didn’t expect it to be at 5:30a.m.! We were already downstairs with him before we realized what time it was, so we got him started on a video while we checked our email, all of us trying to be quiet so we wouldn’t wake up everyone else.
Everyone eventually got up and moving around…Heather and Andy had to pack and get ready to go to the airport; and, there was all the last minute instructions and other “stuff” involved in leaving the kids with Grams and Gramps for a few days. We were pleased to find that the little ones accepted us and let Mommy and Daddy leave without any tears…they really are growing up!
After fixing some breakfast (we found that both children absolutely love bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast), Grams and I got the kitchen cleaned up and put back together. We played with some of the toys, watched a little TV, and then got everyone cleaned up and dressed to make our traditional drive to Wal-Mart. We had bought a doll and accessories for Abby while we were in Mineola, but it turned out to be a duplicate of what she already had, so we went to exchange it. While we were there, a couple of other items just happened to “jump” into the cart…we never have figured out how that happens.
When we were finished at Wal-Mart we went for a ride before ending up at Chick Fil-A for lunch (OK, we went for a ride because we got hopelessly lost trying to find a McDonalds that we thought was close by…what we found along the way is that there don’t seem to be any straight and/or parallel streets anywhere around here…we were “certain” we knew how to get to a McDonalds that we visited with the kids before, but we haven’t found it yet).
After arriving back at the house, we played with the new toys for a bit and then decided it was naptime. Alexander went right to sleep (no wonder, since he had waked up so early), but Abby had her second wind and did not take kindly to nap time. I went in and talked to her to try to quiet her, and Grams got her up for a few minutes and then put her back down, but nothing seemed to work, so we got her up long before Alexander woke up.
We spent a large part of the afternoon outside since it finally turned off nice and warm. Alexander wore his Spiderman outfit and Abby was satisfied to play on the swing set. We did take a timeout for a photo-op with Spidey-Alex, Spidey-Gramps, and Abby together in the backyard.
Sunday, March 30
It was great to be back in our home church at Artesia First Baptist this morning. Brother Rick is a wonderful Bible teacher/preacher and was at the top of his form this morning.
After church we came back to Big V, fixed lunch, and settled in for an afternoon of NCAA basketball, only to be sadly disappointed by the total collapse of Texas as they fell to Memphis, and disturbed by the less that stellar play of Kansas in their game with Davidson (although Davidson was a great team and put up a great fight before finally losing by only 2 points. We were just wishing that Davidson had played either North Carolina or UCLA and knocked one of them out of the tournament.
After a quick visit over at Mother’s house, we decided that we’d cook up one of the meals that we had learned from Margarita and Maria when we were in Puerto Rico earlier in the month, so we fired up the stove top and started cooking. While Barbara was cutting, frying, and smashing the plantains, I went to work on the cubed steaks that had been marinating in olive oil and Adobo seasoning since yesterday. It didn’t take long until Big V was really “stinking purty.”
Later, Barbara started cooking some rice and I added tomato sauce to the simmering steaks and onions. By the time we were finished, Big V smelled exactly like Maria and Margarita’s house did when they taught us the recipe.
We decided we’d call Jean and offer to bring everything over to her house if she hadn’t eaten yet. She said to come on over, so we took the food and a pancake griddle over to her kitchen. Margarita taught us how to take fresh rolled bread (which we didn’t have, so we substituted some buns) butter it, and close the griddle on it to make flat bread.
With everything finally in place, we sat down with Jean and enjoyed a wonderful Puerto Rican meal.
After eating and watching a little more TV, we gathered our dirty pots and pans, took them back to Big V to wash, and called it a day.
Monday, March 31
Don’t know why, other than that deep down inside we knew it needed doing, but we decided to tackle a deep cleaning of Big V today. It’s been a while since we did that last, and it took about three hours to do all that we thought needed doing. We’ve had lots of dust storms since the last cleaning, and Big V, like every structure in southeastern New Mexico, is definitely not immune to invasion by the dust and sand that blows through here.
Mother had a physical therapy appointment this afternoon at 2:30, so I left Barbara at Big V and went to town to get her. In addition to a solid workout, she had to stay late to complete a bunch of paperwork, so it was after 5:00 when I finally got home.
Jean invited us over to supper tonight. She had some Portuguese barbecued chicken and beans she had bought at the St. Anthony’s Catholic fundraiser, so we enjoyed another delicious meal at her place before returning to Big V to watch television and eventually get to bed.
Tuesday, April 1
With a trip to East Texas coming up, we decided that we’d better get the laundry taken care of today, so we took everything over to Mother’s house to wash while we did some chores for her and us. We talked it over with Mother and decided that rather than driving all day Wednesday to go to Mineola, Texas, we’d leave after lunch on Wednesday, drive as far as Sweetwater and then go on to Mineola on Thursday. Our hope was that we would miss rush hour traffic around the Dallas/Forth Worth area and not feel so beat up when we did arrive in Mineola.
After getting back to Big V and having some lunch, I decided I’d work as much of the fence lines as I could on the east side of Jean’s property. The problem with cleaning out one side of the lot is that everything else looks worse until it’s cleaned, and I wanted to remedy that problem before we left on the next trip. The weather and wind cooperated, and by 5:00 p.m. I had accomplished even more than I had expected.
Tonight we did as much packing as possible in order to be ready for travel tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 2
Happy 14th Anniversary to us!
We had every intention of sleeping in this morning, but were up and around by 5:30. We took our time moving around…I fixed pancakes, bacon, and eggs and we had a leisurely breakfast.
We decided that, as much as we’d like to join the bunch for our Wednesday Chaos luncheon, it made more sense to get away around noon, so we checked with Mother to see if she could be ready to leave by 12:30. She said it wouldn’t be a problem, so we got busy doing all the chores necessary for closing up Big V for a few days. We let Jean and Susie know that we wouldn’t be eating with them today and headed on over to Mother’s house around 12:15.
Ernie and Billee were there to help us load the car and get underway, and by 12:30 we were on U.S. 82, headed toward Hobbs and various other points on our way to Big Spring, Texas, where we got on I-20 and pointed the car east toward Sweetwater.
We arrived at the Sweetwater Super 8 Motel around 5:30 and were pleasantly surprised to find a newly remodeled structure with all the amenities one could ask for in a budget lodging (not to mention the lowest price we’ve seen in a long time. We got checked in to our rooms and then Barbara and I walked down to the street to pick up a sandwich and some cheesecake slices at Schlotzky’s, and a Burrito Supreme at Taco Bell to take back to the rooms for our dinner.
We spent the rest of the evening watching TV, working at our computers, and generally kicking back and relaxing.
Thursday, April 3
We got up early and got everything ready to go. After a good hot breakfast in the motel dining room, we were ready to roll by 8:30, far better than what we had anticipated.
With cloudy skies at the first of the trip, we just motored down I-20 through Abilene, Weatherford, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Terrell on our way to Mineola…not much to say about the trip…just drive, derive, and drive some more. But, with the early start, we were at T.J.’s house in Mineola at two o’clock, ready to eat the delicious meal she had prepared for us, ham, macaroni and cheese casserole, green beans, and homemade bread. Wow…what a great welcome!
At 4:15 we went to a neighbor’s house to visit, look at the layout of the house, and check out the property. We had mentioned a couple of years ago that if Mother ever considered moving to Mineola it would be great to find something in T.J.’s neighborhood, and this house is one that we singled out as a great piece of property. The folks who live here are considering selling and moving to a new place, so we thought we’d take advantage of a possible opportunity and check it out.
After we got back to T.J.’s place and unloaded the car, Barbara and I drove downtown to Legal Grounds, a local internet café/coffee shop, where we checked our email and sent out a couple of messages. From there, it was back to the house (with a brief stop at Dairy Queen for a Blizzard for Barbara and a Mocha Moolatte for Mother), where we settled in for an evening of visiting.
Friday, April 4
Wow…What was that noise!? We woke up to the sound of thunder rumbling (been a while since we’ve heard that), and rain pounding down on the roof…took us a few minutes to dig around in the memory banks and realize what was happening.
After everyone was finally up and more or less ready to face the day, T.J. fixed a great breakfast for us and we chowed down on bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, juice, and coffee…more than enough to give us a good kick start for a busy day.
At 10:00 a.m. we drove over to Century 21 to meet a realtor and begin a home tour. Over the course of the morning we saw several houses, most of which we ruled out immediately for a variety of reasons, but we did see two places that were definite possibilities. The frontrunner was a beautiful two-bedroom (but that’s not a very apt description) garden home that will take little or nothing to be ready to occupy. The second was a lovely three-bedroom sitting on a large shady lot near one of the local lakes. Now it’s down to decision time for Mother.
After seeing the last house of the day, Barbara and I went back to Legal Grounds to check email, then to Wal-Mart for a couple of purchases before returning to T.J.’s house.
We received a phone call from Heather while we were at the realtor’s office. We had planned to come back to Richardson next weekend to watch the Alexander and Abby while Heather and Andy go on a job interview; but, she received a call from the school this morning saying that next weekend won’t work for the school, and could they come this weekend instead and interview on Monday.
We quickly changed our plans so that Mother would stay with T.J. until Wednesday morning and we would go on to Richardson this evening. Heather and Andy will fly out tomorrow morning and return Tuesday evening. Luckily, we were “in the neighborhood” and were able to help them out and they were able to make reasonable travel arrangements.
We left Mineola about 4:00 p.m. and drove west on U.S. 80 to Terrell, where we stopped for a while at an outlet center to look for shoes and “other stuff.” Then, we continued on to Richardson to the kids’ house to get settled in for the night and prepare to start keeping Alexander and Abby tomorrow morning.
Saturday, April 5
“Happy Birthday today to Aunt T.J. in Mineola, Texas!
Alexander decided to start his day early…we had told him to come to our room and get us when he woke up, but we didn’t expect it to be at 5:30a.m.! We were already downstairs with him before we realized what time it was, so we got him started on a video while we checked our email, all of us trying to be quiet so we wouldn’t wake up everyone else.
Everyone eventually got up and moving around…Heather and Andy had to pack and get ready to go to the airport; and, there was all the last minute instructions and other “stuff” involved in leaving the kids with Grams and Gramps for a few days. We were pleased to find that the little ones accepted us and let Mommy and Daddy leave without any tears…they really are growing up!
After fixing some breakfast (we found that both children absolutely love bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast), Grams and I got the kitchen cleaned up and put back together. We played with some of the toys, watched a little TV, and then got everyone cleaned up and dressed to make our traditional drive to Wal-Mart. We had bought a doll and accessories for Abby while we were in Mineola, but it turned out to be a duplicate of what she already had, so we went to exchange it. While we were there, a couple of other items just happened to “jump” into the cart…we never have figured out how that happens.
When we were finished at Wal-Mart we went for a ride before ending up at Chick Fil-A for lunch (OK, we went for a ride because we got hopelessly lost trying to find a McDonalds that we thought was close by…what we found along the way is that there don’t seem to be any straight and/or parallel streets anywhere around here…we were “certain” we knew how to get to a McDonalds that we visited with the kids before, but we haven’t found it yet).
After arriving back at the house, we played with the new toys for a bit and then decided it was naptime. Alexander went right to sleep (no wonder, since he had waked up so early), but Abby had her second wind and did not take kindly to nap time. I went in and talked to her to try to quiet her, and Grams got her up for a few minutes and then put her back down, but nothing seemed to work, so we got her up long before Alexander woke up.
We spent a large part of the afternoon outside since it finally turned off nice and warm. Alexander wore his Spiderman outfit and Abby was satisfied to play on the swing set. We did take a timeout for a photo-op with Spidey-Alex, Spidey-Gramps, and Abby together in the backyard.
Heather provided us with a nice selection of leftovers, so dinner tonight wasn’t too complicated…pork pie and beans as a main dish, and the kids enjoyed some left over chicken nuggets and fries as well.We spent the evening multi-tasking…alternately watching NCAA semi-final games (we didn’t care much about the UCLA/Memphis game, which was good, since there was a lot going on then…baths, clean up the living room, answering telephone calls, etc. Besides, if I had my way, that game would end in a tie and an investigation by someone in power would result in suspension from the tournament…in case you haven’t guessed, those two teams were squarely in my “who cares?” bracket.
We had Abby in bed and everything pretty well in shape by the time the Kansas/North Carolina game came on. Since Alexander had taken a nap in the afternoon, we let him stay up later. We got to watch the entire first half (a thing of beauty if you were a Kansas fan) and I gave him his bath during halftime.
The second half was a little scary for the KU folks. It looked as if UNC was going to have the ultimate upset, but Kansas regained control and advanced to the final game on the strength of an 18-point win…Go Jayhawks!!!
With the game safely tucked away, we went upstairs to read for a while and then called it a night.
“Basketball doesn’t build character, it reveals it.” - Anonymous
Babysitting grandchildren in Richardson, Texas,
Jim & Barbara
