Happy Fourth of July

Happy 4th of July!

Driving for five hours in the car isn’t our typical July 4th way to celebrate this day, but it is this year.

I am so sorry I haven’t blogged much lately. Maybe you thought that I was off on some exotic island or too upset about the TomKat impending divorce; neither of which would be true. And I might just be delusional in thinking that you even missed me a little bit. After all, the whole world seems to be on vacation right now, but I sure did think about you.

We went on our annual summer tour of Texas. We go and visit my family in East Texas and the big Stud’s family in Dallas. We packed and unpacked the car six times and this was after just being in Dallas for my niece’s wedding. We got home from Dallas the first time and then went to a swim meet and basketball tournament. We packed again and left right after the big Stud’s economic speech on Thursday morning.

My sister was in Kilgore with her new baby so we were in a hurry to get down there to not miss one single burp or diaper change. She is the only baby in our family right now so I don’t think anybody ever put her down. It was wonderful to see everyone.  We spent four days there and went from house to house and ate home cooking and talked and laughed and caught up on each other’s lives. I grew up with eight brothers and sisters so my family loves to get together and tell old stories about growing up in all the fun and chaos.

Our family vacations always consisted of going to the big city of Richardson and Terrell to hang out with our cousins. They were so metropolitan. They got to drink Coke. We did not have junk food in the house so to actually see someone related to us get to drink something so forbidden was a pretty exotic vacation to me.

The other part of summer vacation always consisted of traveling out of state. We  went to Mississippi to our annual family reunion and stayed in a hotel and got to eat out. It took a VW bus and a Plymouth station wagon to get us all there. Our family of 11 never ate out, ever, except for this annual trip. This also included tours of the cemetery. We always had picnics and pot luck in or around our family cemetery. All us kids would try to find all the names of people we were named after and see how long they had lived. I was under the impression that everyone did this until I mentioned it to my husband. He thought it was the most dreadful thing he had ever heard! I guess my point is that I always think of summer as being with your extended family. It is so important to me that my kids get to know their cousins.

The big Stud and our boy did manage to escape for a little bit and go sailing on Lake Tyler.

They went kayaking too!

My kids picked tomatoes and cucumbers off the vine and ate the most divine forty pound watermelon that my sister-in-law bought from a farmer in Palestine, Texas.

We set off fireworks at my sister’s house in the country.

It was a treat for my big city kids.

Then we left for the city of Plano.

We hung out at Nana’s and spent a lot of time with friends and family.

We did manage to eat out a couple of times.

I LOVE the green salsa at Luna de Noche. It has a pesto like texture. The recipe is made with 5 chopped bunches of cilantro. Sometimes, we buy it to take back home with us. We didn’t this trip.

I swear I could slather it on cardboard and eat it and be happy.

It is dang good.

 

 

 

It has become a tradition to eat at Durkin’s Pizza in McKinney when we visit our friends who live around there.  Their restaurant has limited seating so we decided to do take out so we could talk longer and see our friend’s new house.

Their house was fabulous and so was the pizza. We ordered 3 different kinds to feed our crowd; cheese,hamburger and pepperoni.

We then all played together with a beach ball in their game room for hours. We hit it back and forth and laughed the entire time.

No computer games

No WIFI

No emails

No texting

No Facebook

No Instagram

No Pinterest

No Twitter

I unintentionally went off the grid for almost a whole week;

Just like it used to be when we were kids.

It was heaven.

I will be back at blogging tomorrow because I have a lot more to tell you about, but tonight I plan on unpacking.

Happy Birthday America.

Stay Sassy Y’all.