Easter - Lake Dallas and Thunderstorms

Happy Easter from Texas!

We miss being with our family. This will be first time EVER to have missed Easter with my grandkids and even some of my kids.

The lightening and thunder hampered the Easter Bunny's deliveries in North Texas. I did spend many hours last night remembering those sleepless April nights in Alvarado too scared to sleep knowing that I was in an open field in an easy to move home with a severe thunderstorm on its way. Like most other nights, we just received a magnificent light show, loud thunder and lots of rain. I did discover that for $12.oo a year I could subscribe to an emergency notification system that would call and/or send a text message if a tornado watch or warning was in my neighborhood. NOAA has fine tuned the process of notification to longitude / latitude rather than county. I couldn't bring myself to buy an annual pass just for one night. I stayed up until the middle of the night until sleep deprivation was too much. Our midnight severe storm finally rolled in around 5am.

We spent Easter with Reba. Very enjoyable visit, but sad to see how much her health has suffered in the past month. She's pale, frail-looking, and has an extremely hard time catching her breath. Tomorrow will be better - she gets an oxygen tank added to her wheelchair and we'll be by earlier in the day.

The remainder of my holiday was enjoyed with phone calls to my kids, grandkids and good friends. Most were hard to catch as they enjoyed their celebration with family, yet we had the enjoyment of touching base with them and sending our love.
(I do know my daughters did an awesome job pulling the family together for the holiday during my absence - THANK YOU with all my heart and gratitude.)

Lewisville Lake - Visiting Clint's Relatives 3/1-14

Can you tell we're in Dallas? Yep, the home of the Cowboys. He had matching shirt, bike, backpack, hat, etc. Hey, Kevin, where's your get-up for the Raiders?

We’ve been a week in Dallas and enjoying the visits with Clint’s family. I didn’t get to attend the Whataburger Games, but I did get to trek out to a very nice camping area near Tyler State Park with John's family. Gracie and Caleb (great-niece and nephew) taught me how to play a new game – I lost both times. Lots of fun and the area is beautiful. As long as I lived in Texas, I’ve never been to that part of the state---hilly and large pine trees. We’ve enjoyed dinner twice and a lunch with John & Suzie – lots of fun. And met their new puppy – Pepper. She's very cute and playful. Of course, she's black... and she's a miniature schnauzer.

Except one day that I was ill, we visited GG (Clint’s mom) every day. She has more visitors and activities in a week than I do in a month! Bingo 3 times a week, movie day, an outing to Wal-Mart, professional performers two different days, high schoolers’ game day, trivia games, beading, and more. Then visitors from family, friends and church plus those she knows in the home. Fortunately she’s one of the most mentally active and loves to visit. Health-wise, she’s more stable than a year ago yet at the same time weaker. I think the diabetes and meds have improved whereas the heart and lungs are still taking their slow toll.

(Just one of the many birds hanging around our campsite.)

This week has reminded me of some of the peculiarities of Texas:

WEATHER – If you don’t like it, wait a day and it will change. In the week we’ve been here, we’ve gone from 93 down to 23 degrees; shorts to heavy coats; no wind to over 35 mph; and we’re expecting rain today. I remember making jokes to cover up my frustration that during the spring, Texas weather would be beautiful during the week teasing me to go out to play and the weekend would bring rain, cold, or miserable weather. I’m amazed that we’ve experienced the same thing 20 years later this week. I feel sorry for the poor folks who love to go boating and fishing and golfing being tempted by nice weather just to have cold and wet on the weekend.

(Just a photo of a cool looking knight we thought Nolan would enjoy. It guards the entrance to a housing area in Hickory Creek.)

SHOPPING – Even though I haven’t done much shopping, I’ve been reminded of one of the best things I enjoyed moving to California…. I could go through a department store without having to listen to twangy country music and smoking. We have discovered that many of the larger towns have city ordinances against public smoking and the smaller towns have better music. Unfortunately we're in a small town that promotes smoking for the fishermen and Texas western pride for the good ole boys. But I do miss the LARGE shops from a metropolitan area. I cannot believe the shopping choices I have. It's great!

We’re currently camped off of Lake Lewisville at Hickory Creek. Very beautiful site. Very large campground - over 130 sites. The lake is in view, we’re surrounded by leaf-less oaks, cardinals, robins, ducks, blackbirds, and tons of leaves to crunch. Unfortunately between the weather and visiting Clint’s family, I haven’t had much opportunity to enjoy the outdoors--- but I have been on a few hikes through the area.