Grandma's 80 and Danielle Came South

We left on Wednesday morning for Texas. I slept pretty much the entire way which was awesome! I woke up and suddenly we were already there! We didn't tell grandma we were coming down because we knew she'd do a ton of cleaning and cooking and we wanted her to rest. So we got there and surprised her, we had planned on going Friday but I didn't to work the rest of the week. I went to church with my aunt that night, got to see some people I knew and visit with them and that was great. I didn't think I'd sleep that night since I slept all day in the car but I sure was in bed by 11:15 which is insanely early for me and woke up at 7:30!! Which is insanely early for me too!!! Those are not vacation hours! We made breakfast and then started cleaning. We cleaned EVERYTHING! Thank goodness it was a group effort so it didn't take that long. Dad and I went to El Gordo's for lunch, then to Hastings to check our email/facebook, etc. After that we went to see Granny, an old family friend who lives close by. It was good to see her, mom and I got to see her a month ago when we were down there. She keeps her grandson's horse in her backyard (she lives in the country) so I took the opportunity to photograph the horse (don't know it's name) and got some decent pictures that I was pleased with. He came right to the fence for me which was wonderful! I had a great time! After leaving there we went back to grandma's, just hung out and had dinner, played some cards and watched some tv.

Friday morning was baking time! Those early mornings were quite an adjustment for me! After getting quite a bit of baking done we headed over to the church building to finish some of the food and keep it there for the party on Saturday. Dad set up the tables and we put the table cloths on and Aunt Martha suggested that I go look in a back room for some decorations and mom had some that she bought. So I went into one of the back rooms that had a lot of decorations and some of the chairs were broken, I saw some flowers on teh top shelf that I wanted so I took one of the chairs that didn't look broken to stand on to get to the flowers on the top shelf. Well.........I sure did step up on that chair and apparently it was broken. Because the padding on that chair sure did fall right out and I hit my leg on the frame of the chair. After I recovered from that little incident I went limping into the kitchen to announce that someone else could try and retrieve the flowers. I looked at my leg and I already had a baseball size bruise forming with a nice little lump underneath.

After we got done setting up at the building we went home and Grandma's brother and his wife had come early to visit. So we had lunch with them, and then mom and I got ready because it was time to go pick up Danielle from the airport in Oklahoma City almost! Well, in the process of getting ready I managed to burn my finger with my straightner. Note to self: do not try to multitask with a 450 degree straightner. So I went to the house aloe plant and put some of that one there, finished getting ready and off to the air port we went. Naturally I slept the entire way there.

We got there early and eagerly anticipated the arrival of Danielle!! We were all jumping with joy when we saw her. Oh! How could I forget the fantastic toilets that were at the airport! We went to the restroom when we got there and they had this crazy little contraption on them....it was an automatic toilet seat cover dispenser! It was fantastic in theory because none of the 3 that I tried actually worked. It was so disappointing!! I even had my camera on the toilet trying to record it in all of it's greatness! True disappointment. But back to Danielle -- we went to dinner at On the Border. It was scrumptious! We don't have one of those here so it was a treat to dine there. Mmmmmmmmm.

We ended up getting to grandmas later that evening and then they went to the hotel and I stayed with grandma and grandpa. Saturday morning started early (again) and it was Grandma's 80th birthday and Danielle's 25th. Happy Birthday guys! Mom, Dad, and Danielle came over and we opened Danielle's presents, she LOVED her presents! I took Danielle and we went to Walmart to get a couple things for the party, then we went through Starbucks because really....what is a birthday without Starbucks?? Then I surprised her with a mani/pedi and it was wonderful!

Texas in March

Well, I'm a bit of a slacker. I am waiting until the morning that I'm going back to Texas to blog about my last trip to Texas. I'll just hit the highlights. Mom and I went down there in early March right before our birthdays and we had an okay time staying awake on the ride down there.....the way back was a different story. We pretty much switched off sleeping and driving. On the way down there we did pretty good on time. I had AT LEAST 2 hours or more in between each bathroom stop (which if you know me well that's phenomenal for me, I usually dehydrate myself for trips). We didn't leave until about 1 in the afternoon that day so we pulled into Braums in Oklahoma City late that evening for a bathroom and ice cream stop because Braums has some amazing ice cream! And it was my turn to drive so we switched out and we're exiting the parking lot, I'm behind these people, they put their brakes on to start pulling into this parking spot and so I had some room so I went to the right to go around them to exit the parking lot.....seemed like an okay thing to do, people do it all the time right?? Wrong! Those morons couldn't pull their stoopid car into the parking spot correctly the first time so they start backing out as I'm going around them and I slam on the horn, didn't have enough time to check behind me to make sure there wasn't someone behind me, and they lightly tapped the car. So I'm laying on my horn, mom's yelling at them (and me too probably but I've blocked that) and we get out of the car to look and see if there's any damage. We're looking at the car, and an appropriate 10 seconds has passed and I'm waiting to hear "Oh I'm so sorry did we do any damage to your car?" But did I hear that? NOPE! Those rednecks (and no I don't feel bad calling them rednecks because if I was anywhere in the world I would still call them rednecks) get out of their car, and go to walk into Braums! Are you kidding me! That's insane! So I look carefully at the car and I can't see any damage and I'm looking hard because I really want to rush in there and get them out of the resturant to come look at the paint scratch they've doomed upon the car. But alas there was no scratch or anything so they ate in peace while we steamed about it the rest of the way to Texas. Unbelievable!! Prior to that mom ran over a big piece of tire in the road that you couldn't see until you had already run over it. Poor car. Then there was the big black truck that was swerving a bit in the road and I knew they weren't going to come over into our lane so I stayed calm while mom freaked at me for driving past when they could've run us off the road. Oy. So that was Saturday.

Sunday was uneventful for the most part. Monday grandma was supposed to have her surgery but it got cancelled (naturally since we drove down there so we could help out after the surgery) because some of the lights burned out in one OR and there were several critical surgeries.....so we had some extra good days with grandma pre-surgery. We went out to have lunch at one of mom's favorite mexican resturants and this guy was inches away from getting hit by a car....it was crazy! I could've needed therapy for a LONG time. (no comments necessary, really)

My 91 1/2 y/o grandpa had me outside in his backyard cutting and "pruning" some bush bases or something....idk. I was taking pictures outside and he wanted me to take his picture next to his peach tree. It was super cute. A couple days later he had my aunt Martha and myself digging in the dirt. They had some sewage problems and behind their fence was a hole big and deep enough for a coffin and the backyard had all this hard dirt that was unevenly dispersed and it was driving him nuts because then the grass wouldn't grow evenly. So I wore his overalls and plaid shirt and dug in the hard Texas dirt to make it more even with my aunt, grandpa helped out too. Sure enough an hour later the guys who were supposed to have come and done it a couple days prior showed up to finish up what we didn't get finished....boooooo.

Grandma had her surgery EARLY on Wednesday morning, it all went well. We had to wake up earlier than 6, I just can't bear to write how early it was. I fell asleep in the waiting room (shocker). She did really well and it was interesting to be on the other side of the pt/family member thing. Later that afternoon I went to Hastings and picked up my cousins and we went and ate at Whataburger, it was yummy! We made a Starbucks run before church that night.

My aunt got a new little puppy the day we showed up and he is soooooo cute! He's tiny and white and he has a little bite. I liked having a little puppy around, I want one now! Mom and I headed home on Friday, it was our birthday. We had a good day in the car together despite being tired and switching off driving. We had a great dinner with dad at Texas Roadhouse when we got back and did presents and relaxed. It was a great trip. And I'd better get packing because I'm heading back there in just a couple hours!!