Texas Trip

We started our summer vacation at Grandma Linda's house in Dallas.  We loved her pool, the awesome food, and Grampa Mike!

After 3 relaxing days, it's off to the San Gabriel farm.  On the way, we stop for kolaches and pepper puppies, our favorite tradition.




We also passed by a local farmer selling yellow watermelon.  So, anyone who knows my daughter knows we had to stop.  We were only at the farm for 4 days, so that meant 4 watermelons to purchase.









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We caught lots of fish over the 4 days, everyone caught at least one.  Although we only reeled in bass up to a pound, we lost several much larger that flipped off the hook.  It was great to see fish active again in the lake.







Our big project was to "trim" the cactus.  Well, it was so overgrown and brown that we decided to chop it back to the bare stump.  Our philosophy was that if it grows back, it will be nice & green again.  If it dies, we'll pull it up and plant something a little less prickly to prune.  The kids & I are still having to tweeze out splinters 2 weeks later.

before

after

Then, off to the Shiner farm to see our cousins and Grandma TC.  Our oldest saw a huge zucchini in the garden, so we made zucchini bread.  The little one had fun chasing the chickens and playing in the pool.  I didn't get a picture of the J&J twin cousins, but they were always together on the zip line, swimming, or having airsoft wars.

























When it was time to leave, we did everything we could think of to delay our departure so we could see "Mr. Turtle", but we had to be in Austin by 2pm and time was running out.  So, we said our good-byes, locked up the animals, and headed off to Austin for one last family visit.

Now, there's a saying in the capitol to "Keep Austin Weird", and we understood why after a wonderful tour from my sister.  We started with the famous food trailers, drove by container box housing units, and finished at the Cathedral of Junk.  This place is made of junk stored over the years into a large pile in someone's backyard.  It's been carefully piled with themes, colors, and steps so people can climb to the top.




With our final cousin stop over, we ended with lots of hugs, kisses, & giggles.  Until next visit, bye Texas!