Saturday, September 1
Today was a Grams/Gramps/Kaiden day while Leah and Ryan spent some Mommy/Daddy time away from us.
We started our day with a full breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pancakes...
Followed by some "guy time" trimming trees in the north 40 while Barbara cleaned the kitchen...
When Kaiden and I were finished trimming trees, we came back inside to get cleaned up. Kaiden entertained himself while Barbara and I got ready for a trip to Sulphur Springs...
And then it was time to head out to the theater in Sulphur Springs to the 3-D version of Mission Impossible...
It would be un-American to go to a movie and not have popcorn...
When we got back home, Kaiden and I fired up the grill to pre-cook hamburger patties and hot dogs for the family Labor Day celebration on Monday.
When we finished with the grill, we moved back inside to prepare our favorite Saturday night meal...stacked enchiladas topped with fried eggs...Yum-Yum!!!
It was a full and very busy day, and it didn't take long after eating to decide we needed some serious sleep to prepare for a busy day tomorrow.
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Sunday, September 2
This morning found all of us at Yantis FBC. Kaiden was there for Sunday School, and Leah and Ryan joined us for the morning service.
We had a guest speaker and a special drama presentation this morning, so Barbara and I didn't do a children's sermon.
This afternoon and evening were all about family time. Barbara, Kaiden, and I played a round of Phase 10 while we waited for Leah and Ryan to get to the house.
This evening we flipped the two-seat sofa to try to find our what the problem with the recliner was...we found a potential problem with the cable housing, tried a temporary fix, and then retired to the dining room for a full-scale game of Phase 10 with all of us playing.
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Monday, September 3 - Labor Day
While Barbara and Leah were at the house having some Mother/Daughter time, Ryan, Kaiden, and I went out to Our Little Lot and spent the morning (Ryan and I can turn a 1-hour project into 3-4 hours) removing the original 800 pound (okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but it felt like it) TV from the cabinet over the front dash and replacing it with a much lighter weight flat screen TV.
When that was done, we met the girls for lunch at the Red Dome in Quitman...
And then it was time to return to the house, get all the kids' stuff together and loaded in the car, and send them home to Fort Worth.
And then...nap time...no photos of that.
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Tuesday, September 4 - Thursday, September 6
We voted and decided that it was time to get serious about getting caught up with the journal/blog, so these days were focused on that project, even though we had other regular chores and activities to keep up with (getting car serviced, Wednesday evening activities at church, and symphonic band rehearsal Thursday night). Other than that, our days were consumed with preparing photos and writing text for the journal.
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Friday, September 7
A really busy day today! We would be keeping Aubrey and Rivers (children of some of our church friends) overnight, so in addition to making sure everything was ready for the girls, we had regular chores to do. While I started the morning by frying up two pounds of hamburger meat to package and freeze for later use. Then, I made up a large batch of spaghetti sauce to serve the girls tonight and also to save for the future.
Meanwhile, Barbara was busy dusting and straightening around the house...(though she did do the above mentioned items; the picture of Barbara's apron goes with our children's sermon for Sunday.
In between doing all those things, we also had to prepare our children's sermon for Sunday.
We don't know how we did it, but everything was ready by the time the girls arrived this afternoon after school.
The evening was all about fun and games...
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Saturday, September 8
The weather this morning was pretty yucky, so Taz rides were out of the question. Instead, after a big breakfast of eggs and waffles, we loaded up in the car and drove to Yantis to spend some time at the first anniversary of Accents and Accessories, a shop owned by one of the ladies in our church. It was an interesting experience, and Barbara even found a really nice denim vest to wear on our up-coming Taz trip...and the girls got hot dogs and something to drink.
When we got back to town, we took the girls to one of our favorite shops downtown, showed them the train station and caboose...
Took a look at the new Historic Mineola mural...
Went back to the house for a trumpet lesson for Aubrey...
And then headed back downtown to see a showing of "The Greatest Showman" (Rivers' all-time favorite movie)...
Our "babysitting" adventure was short, but sweet and fun!
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Sunday, September 9
Sunday morning means a stop at Whataburger for breakfast before driving to Yantis for Sunday school and church. Today it meant a special surprise for Barbara when she found out that she had won a prize in the drawing at Accents and Accessories yesterday. The prize was personally delivered to her at church this morning by Stephanie Roop, one of our church members and the owner of Accents and Accessories
The day continued to get better as we had a good children's sermon, great music, and a wonderful sermon from Pastor Craig.
As soon as the sermon was over, we received a call from our Kansas/Texas friends Gene and Michelle letting us know they were in East Texas for a short time and wondering if we wanted to meet them somewhere for lunch. We decided on the Red Dome in Quitman and had a great time getting caught up on each other's lives.
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Monday, September 10
We decided a trip to Sulphur Springs was in order today, so we drove up to see our church friend Marilyn at the Rock Hill Rehab Center.
Marilyn has a number of photos and plaques hanging on her walls, and we found this one that really struck us as funny (and appropriate) today...
After saying goodbye to Marilyn, we drove downtown to the music store. My trumpet suffered a near tragedy a couple of weeks ago and required some surgery. This was the first time since Mother and Daddy gave me this trumpet in May before I entered high school in 1959 (59 years ago, if you're counting) that it needed repair work.
No trip to Sulphur Springs is complete without a stop at Panda Express for some take-out, so we figured we ought to make the trip complete...along with some extra egg rolls to chew on as we returned to Mineola.
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Tuesday, September 11
We've been planning a Taz trip for the last couple of weeks...didn't know for sure where we were going, but after checking the weather patterns, we voted to take a long-delayed ride to Montana, hoping to ride through some South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana, states that Barbara hasn't been to.
I spent quite a bit of today washing Taz and the trailer (which was filthy from sitting out at the lake lot for over a year). It took a lot of scrubbing, but it was worth it to see our everything clean and shiny again.
We also took some time to do some practice packing to figure out what we could...and couldn't take on the trip.
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Wednesday, September 12
We spent the morning preparing photos for the August Journal/Blog and finishing up a children't sermon for Sunday morning that we would later take to Yantis to give to Chad and Melaina to use in our absence Sunday morning.
This afternoon we took a long practice ride (since we needed to get our seats ready for a lot of time on Taz's seats).
It was a beautiful afternoon, so we just rode around the county for a couple of hours and then stopped at Dairy Queen in Quitman for malts.
Barbara got to drink her malt on the road, but most of mine pretty much stayed in the cup holder until we got back to the house.
When we got home, I backed Taz up to the garage and we went inside to finish our malts and do some more packing...lots to do before Saturday!!!
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Thursday, September 13
There was no time for photos today...it was all about taking care of the last minute "stuff" before a big trip. There was some housecleaning, Barbara worked to finish the photos for the August blog, and I spent some kitchen time making salsa using some of my home-grown jalapenos and tomatoes that Gene and Michelle gave us, and we both took our turns doing laundry..
This afternoon we continued our packing, unpacking, repacking dance as we tried to whittle down to what was absolutely necessary for the Taz trip, what we'd like to take if there is room, and what just has to stay behind.
Tonight was my last rehearsal with the Lake Country Symphonic band for a few weeks. But, the music and my pocket trumpet will definitely be making the trip with us.
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Friday, September 14
The last minute preparations continued throughout the day and then we finally decided we'd been inside too long. The solution for that was to pack as much as we could into the trailer and take Taz on another practice ride to see how she would handle.
We voted that we were ready to roll right now, but there were things left undone at the house, so we returned to make our final preparations for shutting up the house for about three weeks.
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Our Last night in Mineola for awhile,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams/Gramsie
