A Night In Paris...Texas

Allan and I had a fun date night last Friday night.  We went to Paris...Texas, that is.  Paris is our go-to place for shopping, eating out and movies and such.  It really is a neat little town.  Well, it is bigger than our small hometown, but still not a big city either.
Anyway. we left to go on our date!  Our first stop was 'The Man Store"-Home Depot.

Since we are building our house, we have become 'regulars' at Home Depot.
After a very quick shopping trip in there, we went to eat next.  We didn't get our mid-week Mexican food fix this week so we chose one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, TaMolly's!

We had a great supper of chicken quesadillas and chimichangas!
After leaving there, we went to see the Eiffel Tower!  They built a small replica of the real Eiffel Tower, complete with a cowboy hat!  I had been to see it before but never had a camera with me at the time, so I really wanted to take pics of it.

It really is neat!  Just in case you think you might want to climb it, there is a strong warning against it:

So, don't EVEN think about it!  I imagine lots of mischievous kids have surely tried it.
Underneath the tower is a large outline of Texas.

 The grounds here are beautifully landscaped with gorgeous crepe myrtles.
Next to the Eiffel Tower they are building a Red River Valley War Veteran Memorial.  It was very impressive and it's not even finished yet!

On each of these stones, are the dates served, the armed forces branch served in, along with the person's name.  It is really a very nice tribute to our veterans.  We plan to go back frequently to see the progress and then the finished project.
We left here and headed downtown.  The downtown square in Paris is just beautiful.

 I had reserved  tickets to see "Leading Ladies" at the Paris Community Theatre, so that's where we headed next.

We had so much fun!!  This play was one of the funniest ones we've ever been to there.  We literally laughed from beginning to end.  The cast was great with several familiar faces from plays we've seen in the past.  We go to quite a few of their performances and always have a great time.  I have to say, though, that "Leading Ladies" was definitely one I could watch again...so, so funny!
After the play, we made a quick Sonic run as we headed home.  It was a great Friday night date night!

Father's Day & Birthdays

Hi!  I hope everyone is having a "Happy Monday" today! 
We had a pretty busy weekend but a fun one.  Colby came home Friday to celebrate Father's Day and also his birthday, a belated one.  Saturday, both of my brothers and their families came and we all went out to eat with Mom & Dad.

We celebrated Colby's 23rd birthday with a strawberry cake and  our favorite waiter brought him a plate of strawberry sopapillas. 

We all sang "Happy Birthday", led by our waiter, Manuel.

Dad opened up part of his Father's Day gifts.  Thunder Up!

After lunch, we went out to mom and dad's house for more gift giving and visiting with each other.  We missed having Ashley home with us this weekend.

We walked down to the garden and checked the blackberry bushes.  They were loaded so the berry picking began!

The little kids just love the garden.  I think they ate way more berries than they ended up taking in the house.

I think I smell a fresh blackberry cobbler in the near future!  Mom makes the BEST cobblers. 

"C" was sort of Colby's shadow for the afternoon.  He is such a big talker and talks ALL the time!

Later in the evening, we decided to go to Paris to eat supper and shop for a bit.  We ended up in Blossom to eat at Weezy's.

They have such good food and great prices!  Allan and I both had  a cheezy weezy (cheeseburger) and Colby had the fried catfish.  We came back to Paris and went to the "Man Store", Home Depot.  We got Allan's Father's Day gift, which in a way is pay back for the weedeater he got me a while back!

Sunday was a great day at church.  I'm so thankful for all the Christian fathers in our congregation. 

Viewing Venus

As most of you know from the news last week, the planet Venus crossed the sun last Tuesday.  This will not happen again for more than one hundred years.  Our preacher set up his telescopes and binoculars on our church parking lot and we were all invited to come watch the transit of Venus across the sun.  It was very interesting. 

Steve explained what was happening to the group of kids that came. 

Some brought welding shields and were able to look directly at the sun  through them.

Steve is checking the progress of Venus and making adjustments to the equipment so we could all keep track of it.

The kids would play a while and then come back to take another look.

Some of our church members just followed the shade around the parking lot!  It was a pretty hot evening to be outside.

The little black dot is Venus.  The clouds began to cover the sun and obstructed our view later and we weren't able to see the final crossing.

Even though it was a hot evening, we all stayed and just enjoyed each other's  company.

This cute little puppy came too and had fun playing with the kids.

A Working Weekend

Happy Monday!   We had a busy weekend with lots of working at our new house we're building. Mom came to work several days too.  She is a work horse!!

She planted several redbud trees and then did a lot of raking and clearing.  She's dying to burn brush but I wouldn't let her yet!  She wore me out just watching her...while sitting on the porch...drinking a Dr. Pepper.

Saturday, Allan and I got up kinda early and headed out to work. 

Allan is still working on wiring and putting vents in the bathrooms.  I think he sees the light at the end of the tunnel with all of this electrical work!  I spent the morning sanding and sanding and sanding.  I FINALLY finished all that I can do in the master bath so I started on logs in the master bedroom.  My arms are so sore from all of this!

We went back to town for lunch and then Allan had his Taekwon Do black belt class.  I went to clean the church while he was gone to class.  We went back out to the house late in the afternoon.  We took stuff to actually cook our first meal out there!

Allan bought a little campfire type grill a while back so we decided to try it out.

It was all so good!!  Grilled chicken, fried potatoes, and mom's homemade garlic bread...so delish!

Sunday after church, we went to Antler's to eat at Molina's up there and surprise our friend, Stevie.  She was so excited to see us and we had a great visit with her while we were eating lunch.  I wish she'd come back to OUR Molina's!

Even though, I'm worn out from the weekend, I can say it was a great one!

Have a great week!

Homecoming Weekend

As I mentioned in one of my posts last week, our town's Homecoming was held last weekend.  The festivities began with a rodeo parade on Friday afternoon.  We had a great time!  We always sit on our church lawn and this year so many of our church family came too and we all just had a fun time together.  Get ready for picture overload!

One of the rodeo queen contestants was a granddaughter of one of our church families.  We all held up signs supporting her throughout the parade.

And, there she is, along with the other queen candidate.   Our hopeful winner is the one in the red, white, and blue.

There are always old cars..

And dream cars...

...and other modes of transportation!  This one looks like it would be a fun ride!

Louie the lightning bug!
There are always colorful characters...

Of course, you can't have a parade without 'Old Glory" and the Oklahoma State flag.

 The One Arm Bandit!  He is the special entertainment at the rodeo and he really puts on a great show.

Saturday afternoon was the annual Firetruck Parade.  Firetrucks from all over the area come to participate and it's really neat to see all the different trucks. I'll only share just a few because there were SO many!
Smokey the Bear is on this truck!

This is our friend, Henry, picking up candy!  I always tease him that he takes candy from children and it looks like this little boy with the chainsaw is armed and ready to take Henry on if necessary!   This little boy, that I didn't know, was more interested in showing me his chainsaw than he was about watching the parade.  He just kept coming over to me on the church steps and showing me how it worked, as the firetrucks were going by with their sirens blaring!   He was too cute!

Saturday night, Allan and I went to the rodeo.  We haven't been in several years and there had been some renovations made to the arena so we decided to go.

The entrance to the arena was something new that we hadn't seen before...a tribute to Todd Whatley &  Lige Hammock, whom the arena is named after.

The crowning of the rode queen was first.  "T" waiting for the results to be announced.

And she won!!  We were so excited for her and her family!  She is a beautiful girl!

There was a tribute to a lady who was rodeo royalty many years ago and she passed away last fall.  She was one of our local teachers and loved by a lot of people.  The rider-less horse was led around the arena in honor of Mrs. Betty Muntz.  It was a very moving moment.

Next was the National Anthem sang by one of our local girls.  She did an amazing job! 

 The rodeo was great.   It was all so exciting, especially the bull riding.  The one event that I can not watch is the calf-roping.  That just breaks my heart to watch.  I sit there, secretly rooting for the calf, hoping that he gets away!

One event that is always so funny is the 'dressing a calf' event.  Teams from our local banks have to race to put a pair of panties on a calf.  I'm so proud to say that OUR bank was the winner this year!

The clown was a hoot!  He had some really funny jokes and we laughed a lot!  I can't remember his name but it was announced that he was one of the top 5 rodeo clowns in the nation.

The main attraction was John Payne-The One Arm Bandit.  He was great as always, even though the animals didn't fully cooperate with him this year.  We have seen his act before and it's always amazing!  In years past, he has had long horn cattle that he made load on top of the trailer.  This year it was two buffalo!  He would get one of them up there and as he went off to round the other one up, the one on the trailer would decide to come back down.  This went on and on and on and he just wasn't able to get them both up there this time.  Still, he is a great act!  We had a fun time!

This weekend was also Colby's birthday weekend  and he wasn't able to come home to celebrate with us this time.  I'm hoping he'll come in the next few weeks.  He was in good hands with friends and other family though and ended up with two strawberry cakes!

I don't know why this picture won't flip...grrrr.  Anyway, Colby loved his "Thunder Up" cake and all he asked for his birthday was for Thunder to win...and they did!!

I can't believe my baby is 23!  I'm so proud of the young man he's become.