Our July trip to Corsicana Chapter 1

The trip to Corsicana was wonderfully fantastic. It was blistering hot, not surprising for July. However, there were some cool evenings that made it better for watching sunsets. During the first couple of days there were multiple flats on one tire on the golf cart which made John a little cranky but it got fixed by John, Olivia and Owen permanently and then he had no worries about that.

My peeps and I LOVE a golf cart!







It's country chic.

On a less fantastic note, the freaking bugs were OUT OF CONTROL. Some might not feel that newsworthy but let me just say for reals, they were so organized they were moving furniture. As I was mowing....while the lawn mower was in working order....I would hit a patch of tall grass and grasshoppers would go buck wild flying in all directions....including mine! At one time, I had 3 ON me and then one later landed on my face! I managed to maintain control of myself AND the mower but I did "exclaim" some words more than once.

Becky on the other hand, would never have lasted. There would have been lawn mower carnage EVERYWHERE as she would have been forced to leap off the machine while running through the pasture "exclaiming" and whooping as she went. To be honest, I'm EXTREMELY sad that didn't actually happen cause I'm pretty sure I'd still be laughing days...even years later. Come to think about it, I'm pretty shocked that she lives in the same state as so many of her arch enemies. Because if there's one thing that's definitely bigger in Texas, it's the dad gum bugs. The june bugs must eat well all the time because they're the size of small birds and don't EVEN get me started on the spiders. Even as I looked at my phone at night in my bed, a little bug would find my phone light and visit.

I have no pictures of bugs. But it was craziness in bug town.

Many new and strange things occurred while we were there. For instance, one night as Carrie and I were sitting on the back porch, Addy started barking her head off at something on the sidewalk and we discovered it was a snake! Addy tried to get closer and when she did, it struck at her and she was like, "Forget this!" And retreated very quickly. After we grabbed flashlights and tracked it down, John caught it, a small water snake, and put it back in the pond. Addy and the snake did not make friends.

Addy loves to bark at the cows and the donkey in our pasture. But when she went after the donkey and he had had enough, he put his head down and came back at her, ready to send her flying. She freaked and looked quite shocked. So, due to the fact that Addy encountered the snake, almost got rammed by the donkey AND got stung by a bee in the face, she wouldn't rank this Corsicana trip as one of her favs. She spent lots of time under the kitchen table pondering her lot in life.

But the dog loves to run through the big pasture. And we love to watch her as she does.










Addy with her, "Why me?" face.


At least twice a day, I of course had to check for eggs. But I need some answers. Why do you want to have chickens if you don't want eggs. Why confuse the poor chickens by putting plastic easter eggs in their nests so they won't lay their own? How stupid does a chicken have to be to see fake eggs and think, "Oh yeah I forgot I laid the hot pink plastic egg so I don't need to lay anymore." Needless to say, the owner of the chickens, "borrowing" our pens needs to get on board with me because I don't want to find plastic eggs when I go looking for real. I took the plastic out and then he'd put the plastic back. In the end however, he gave up and I won. But because of all the egg confusion, the chickens just didn't perform to my standards and I gathered less than 12 eggs the entire week. In chicken speak, it was completely unacceptable.

But, the chickens love a peach as evidenced by these pictures. They also love grasshoppers. Ewww. I'm not sure I want my chickens that are going to provide my eggs to eat bugs. It's not good. Or at least it's not good for me to know.










Emma, Olivia and I drove around back roads during the afternoons and we found the most beautiful places, all new to us. Then when Carrie, Caitlin and Grandma arrived, we took them back to see. We drove near Richland Texas and Pursely, Currie and Tehuacana. And we drove through Limestone County. Olivia used my phone to direct my turns and we "felt" our way around. She did an excellent job and completely worth every minute. We passed very few cars, but found lots of rolling hills, hundreds of cows, acres and acres of sunflower fields that unfortunately had already bloomed and lots of beautiful horses. We saw baby horses and huge thunderheads....all of it making for lovely afternoons.











I discovered that a well timed, "Hey!!" or a honk got horses attention.
Like this one.








And his friend.




We decided to document this house for fear no one would believe it....because we barely could.


We found a cow out of her house.




We saved a misguided box turtle from the middle of the road.




We thought the tractor mailbox was adorable.


And we even found some Texas blubonnets in July.






This is the first of more to come. I love words and pictures.