Well, alrighty. We have new gadgets in the house. We have a laster printer and 3D printer. What the heck is a Glowforge?.

Can you hear me now?

It was a hot August day, but Ivy and Romeo and Karma and myself decided to go for a horse-back ride. Well, actually, I decided we’d all go on a horse-back ride and drag these kids along with me. None of these kids had been on horses before (that I know of). So it would be a good first-time experience.

I bought a Groupon for a 1 1/2 trail ride at Cypress Trail Equestrian Center in Humble, TX. We arrived right on time, put on our helmet and fanny pack, and saddled up our horses. Off we went! It didn’t take the kids very long at all to get comfortable with their horses and enjoy the ride.

What do you do when two people in the family have birthday’s in the same week? You have twice us much fun, of course!

Originally, I wanted to rent a car and drive out west to LA and stop in Phoenix to visit Ray & Becky Canatella, as well as do plenty of fun stuff along the way (Carslbad Caverns, for instance). Then, of course, fly back to Houston. But, honestly, even the one-way drive would’ve been a bit much for Ivy to tolerate,…me too, really, I don’t particularly enjoy long drives anymore although I can certainly still do it. Plus, one-way car rentals are SUPER expensive. So I decided to just fly to Vegas and rent a car from there instead.

I found a great deal on Frontier Airlines (just $55 one way from Houston to Las Vegas), so I snapped that up and reserved a cheap economy car while I was at it. When the day came to pick up the car, the guy said, “You can just take any car you want, actually. No extra charge. Do you want that flip-top Camero?”

Uh, heck yes.

So Ivy and I got to drive around in the desert and cruise the Vegas strip in this really nice car. We looked so cool! lol

We spent only about 1 1/2 days total in Vegas, just enough to drive around and gawk at some of the sights, as well as spend about 3 hours in the Adventuredome at Circus Circus Hotel. Ivy really liked Las Vegas! I was a bit surprised. She agreed that we should come back again someday.

On we went toward Phoenix, with a stop at the Hoover Dam. Then rolled into Ray & Becky’s house around 6 pm.

The next morning, I had a big surprise for Ivy for her birthday (23rd/July)…. a balloon ride with Rainbow Ryders! What a treat! I think I enjoyed it more than she did.

Immediately afterward, we picked up Ray and drove about 45 minutes west of Phoenix to Canyon Lake and went to ride on the ‘Dolly Steamboat‘. That, too, was really nice. We also stopped at a ghost town in Apache Junction, AZ called Goldfield and walked around looking for ghosts (didn’t see any).

Then, later, Ivy met some cousins! She met Bazinga the goat, and horses Abu and DramaQueen. She also met their humans, Megan, Addyson, and Allyssa.

It was a long, busy day, but it was awesome. Soon we had to pack up our bags and head back to Vegas to catch a plane (and return this sweet car). We had a final breakfast with Ray at ‘US Egg’ and then headed back. We had a nice treat of GREAT weather (for the desert)… a cold front moved through and the temperatures in the desert dropped to 78 degrees. Nice!! We tried driving with the top down for awhile, but it started to rain. So top went back up.

We also took a break from driving (it is 4 1/2 hours between Phoenix and Vegas) and stopped at a nifty little Museum on Route 66. It was really cheap, too! Just $4 for an adult, and Ivy was free. It was well-worth the money to walk around and look at the displays and watch their movie on the history of Kingman, Arizona (and surrounding area) as well as all of route 66.

We finally make it back home to Houston just in time to have Ivy’s official birthday party on the 27th (my birthday) at the Roller Skating Rink.

Here’s a 7 minute video of the whole trip…. enjoy!

Every year Ray and I send each other a box of random junk. This started when Ray came to visit and left his underwear here. I mailed his underwear back, and just threw a bunch of extra crap in the box just because there was a lot of empty space. It just so happened to be his birthday when it arrived.

So he sent me a box full of crap on my birthday. And, thus, a tradition began.

This is my unboxing…

I decided to spend some cash and hire a landscaper to fix up our yard. Ultimately, I was disappointed with the final result. But parts of it were okay. They certainly did a good job on the walkway in the front yard, as well as fixing up the alleyway along the side of the house.

For being healthy all her life, it was difficult to see her succumb to a mysterious sickness which eventually took her life. She began feeling sick in Autumn of 2018, and then it continued into 2019 when she was hospitalized. On May 20th she passed away.

By her wishes, she was cremated and her funereal held at Walker Cemetary in Mountain Home. The funereal was actually kind of nice. The weather was good, and it was good to see family and friends again. I even met a few people whom I had never met before, but they knew Mom when she was younger.

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Lots of familiar faces. New faces. It was good to see them all.

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She was buried next to her brother and mother, as well as her Grandmother and Grandfather

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After 6 years of schooling at Helm’s Elementary in Houston, Ivy wrapped up her elementary career with a groovin’ moving syncronized steppin’ musical number.

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We borrowed an incubator just to see if we could hatch an egg or two. Sure enough! We managed to catch one hatching on camera…

UPDATE: We managed to hatch 4 chicks, but one died and another one disappeared (eaten, perhaps, by something?). But the remaining two, turned out to be fabulous handsome roosters! The cock on the left in this picture is the one hatching on camera.

Our Easter incident:

Holly and her momma Jane are cooking up an Easter feast in our kitchen. Holly needs somewhere warm to put a large bowl of sticky bread dough to rise. So, she puts in the CLOTHES DRYER…like you do…on top of some clothes that did not completely dry yet.

I come along and turn the dryer on for 20 minutes to finish drying the clothes, and…. Thump, whump, ThUmP, WHuMP… “What the heck is that? Hmm, must be shoes, I guess.”

Awhile later, Holly yells, “OMG! Did you turn the dryer on?!? There’s BREAD DOUGH IN THERE!!”

That’s got to be one of the oddest things I’ve ever heard. 

Needless to say, we’ll be doing some laundry over again. But, believe it or not, some of the dough survived and we had some fabulous great hot-cross buns with tuscan chicken and chocolate cake.

Happy Easter, y’all!

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