The Last Leg

 Our last week in Mississippi was a good one.  We left Hburg on Wednesday and headed up to Decatur again.  When we got there we found out we would get to go pick peas after supper.  Not just peas, but purple hull peas - my favorite!!  So we drove out into the country to Mr.Gresset's house where he generously allowed us to pick 3 rows of his peas!  It was crazy hot - sweat was dripping off of us the whole time even though we weren't out there until after 7pm.  This prompted some interesting discussions about living without air conditioning and working in fields in the middle of the day like people used to have to do.  Needless to say - we are all super thankful for our air conditioner and for hobby farming (as opposed to farming for sustenance or livelihood). 

 

 Gwyn was not too fond of picking the peas.  I don't know how I have raised a child who is afraid of bugs, but as we found out at the entomological museum - Gwyn is no fan of bugs.  We found her calling though!  She thoroughly enjoyed running the shelling machine.  She sat there and shelled the whole bunch with Papaw and Mr.Gresset.  Then when we got home she really wanted to help can them, but it was too late at night.  So the next day she helped Papaw can a mess of snap beans. 

I had promised Celee that I would make her a princess dress for her birthday (Dec.) and so finally, 7 monthes later, I sewed it on Thursday and Friday. Now it is done!  Celee, Lyla and I went and found 5 geocaches in Newton Thursday morning too!  Bless her heart - Lyla even got some battle scars as we had to walk through some dense brush to get to one of them and her little legs got scratched up.  She was kind of proud of them though - after we put band-aids on them of course. 

That afternoon we all went swimming at the Newton Country Club.  I forget how nice it is to swim in a normal swimming pool where there are not many people and it's deep enough for a diving board.  All three girls had a blast jumping off the diving board!  Even Lyla - as long as she's got a noodle tied around her, she doesn't care how deep the water is.  Gwyn and Celee were getting really good at diving to the bottom of the 10 ft. too.  I got to show them some of the games I played when I was little at the pool like doing the washing machine and playing alligator.  We even got Mimi to do a flip off the diving board! 

Jason left of the train headed south Thursday night so Friday morning we got up to drive to Jackson to get him!  We got there just before his train did and boy were we all glad to see him!!  I had warned him to be ready for excessive tactile lovin' and he obliged.  We ate at Dickey's Barbeque for lunch on the way home.  Dickey's is the one BBQ place that I like! They have awesome beef brisket.   And they have free soft serve!  What could be better?  I even introduced Jason to geocaching b/c there was one placed behind the shopping center where Dickey's was.  :)

We rested for a while and then we were off to the Neshoba County Fair - Mississippi's Giant Houseparty!  For those who may be un-enlightened, this isn't just a county fair.  It's a racetrack with hundreds of cabins built around it in "neighborhoods" where people go and live for one week out of the year.  There are carnival rides and games, but the call of this fair is the atmosphere.  There's a founder's square where bands and other entertainment play, horse races, a rodeo, a pageant, grandstand entertainment, a flea market, a 4-H expo hall, and so much more!  As a teenager I always found some friend whose family had a cabin and stayed with them at least a couple of nights during the week.  Well Friday night was the first night of the rodeo so we went.  The girls loved it!  It rained like crazy for a while but by then we were safely tucked away in the expo hall.  Then we headed to the grandstands to get a seat for the rodeo.  Lyla started complaining that her stomach hurt although she hadn't had anything but lemonade so I was pretty sure it couldn't be blamed on fair-food.  It wasn't long before I was in the bathroom with her where we spent most of the next 2 hours.  Bless her heart! (again) She was so sick!  I can't think of many worse places to get stomach-sick than a fair.  When she was finally able to, I just sat in the stands away from the rodeo so she could get some air and she fell asleep on my lap.  Everyone else, in between looking for and checking on us, watched the rodeo and then my mom took Gwyn and Celee to ride some rides before we left.  Gwyn and Celee (and Lyla at least at first) had a great time and can't wait to go next year!

We were all pretty pooped so we slept in Saturday.  When we finally got up we went fishing.  This was the one thing Jason wanted to do in his one full day in Mississippi so Pete took us out in the country again to a friend of his's pond.  Gwyn was dead to the world so she stayed home with Mimi.  We did have to stop to get bait, which in Newton means going to this old lady's house where she runs a bait shop out of her yard. 

We got our crickets and we were off to the pond.  Celee and Lyla did really well.  They both caught two, one of Celee's was caught completely by herself.  We ended up with 9 good sized brem by the time we ran out of crickets.  I did catch one of them, although I will admit that I can not bring myself to hook a cricket.  I had to get Pete or Jason to do it every time.  I just can't do it, and I can't watch when they do it.  Then I just get it in the water quick before I can think too much about it.  After about an hour and a half, we were all ready for lunch so we went home to get ready for the fish fry. 

My Great Aunt Faye and Great Uncle Robert, my Aunt Gale and Jason's mom all came up that afternoon.  I love being around my extended family!  Celee ended up being Papaw's helper and she helped him fry all the fish in the cooker.  Then we all got to eat!  Lyla got to eat her first fish fin "chips."  I never realized until adult-hood that other people don't always eat the tail fins.  My grandparents always told me they were like potato chips and we ate them.  Gwyn and Celee learned how to eat bone-in fish, another treat I forget about living in a land of store-bought fish.  We also got to celebrate Lyla's birthday (again) with a yummy cake my aunt brought. 

We got up Sunday and drove the long way home.  We have started going up through Paducah and Metropolis instead of up 55 into Arkansas.  The ride is much more pleasant and I don't really think it adds much to the time.  There are a lot more eating, gas, and restroom choices going that way too.  And of course, we stopped and got two more geocaches on the way!  We were all pretty tired by the time we got to Champaign, even Tinkerbell.  It's weird to be back after being gone a month.  We had to check out our the deck and see what all the plants were doing and of course give some love to Moxie and Ozzie (our cat and guinea pig).  Now it's back to the routine.  I am excited to be back, to get working on various projects again.  I've missed our small group.  And Girl Scouts will ramp back up in few weeks.  But there are still a few weeks of summer things to do in Champaign.  So the summer isn't over, but it's close. 

Hattiesburg

This past week has been a little more relaxed than the previous few.  We've been in one place the whole time at least!  We drove down to Hattiesburg to stay with "Monty and Pop" for the week.  Our first item of fun was the Petal School District's Health Fair.  I kinda felt bad going b/c we don't live here, but Monty's office organizes it so we felt like it was ok to rack up on the goodies and fun anyway.  The girls got the eyes, hearing, teeth, and speech checked.  They got their height and weight checked too, but the college kids who were in charge of that station didn't make Celee or Lyla take off their cowboy boots, so they both measured heavier and about an inch and half taller than they really should have.  Then various organizations that provide services in Forrest County were there giving out goodies and running activities.  Celee even got fingerprinted by the fire dept.  The girls also got a sack breakfast because we got their early and a sack lunch because we stayed late.  There was also a bouncy house and an obstacle course and balloons, so basically the girls had a blast and we stayed the whole morning.  (And it was coming a torrential downpour outside so I wasn't in a hurry to leave either.) 

Later that night we got to go out to Brownstone's which is a New Orleans-style restaurant downtown where we had dinner with a friend of mine who helped organize the trip I had taken to Guatemala two summers ago.  The food there is super yummy!  And the girls were excited that even the kids' meals come out looking all fancy with seasonings and garnishes around the plates.  It's pretty cool when a restaurant makes corndog nuggets look fancy. 

Pop also got home from Montana late that night, so the girls made him welcome home signs and waited up for him.  We hadn't seen him since Christmas so we were all glad he was home!!  The rest of the weekend was spent having as much fun with Pop as possible.  We went to the movie theater to see the new Ice Age movie (I was pleasantly surprised that it was quite funny).  We ate out.  We went to the indoor inflatable playplace here.  We played in the yard. I must mention that since Celee became a hoola-hoop star, the other two have been working on it and this weekend Lyla finally got the hang of it!  Now she's trying to perfect some tricks to equal Celee's hoola-hoop feats.  The girls also set up a Montgomery Restaurant complete with a menu for us all on Saturday.  They took our orders and brought us appetizers.  They even fixed our plates and brought our drinks. 

Since Lyla's birthday is pretty soon, we also celebrated her birthday here.  I can't believe she's going to be 5!  What happened to my preschoolers?!  Shouldn't they somehow all still be 3 or 4?!  I guess not, so now I officially have 3 school-aged children.  Well, in two weeks I'll have them.  I can still count Lyla as 4 for two more weeks.  Back on the subject, very appropriately Lyla received a light-up hoola-hoop for her birthday.  She also received a Bitty Baby (American Girl baby doll) which she named Kate and who has gotten doctored, dragged around, fed, and changed continually since Saturday.  I think Lyla likes her.  :)

We all went to church Sunday at Asbury Methodist Church in Petal.  This is the 3rd time we've gotten to go there on this trip.  I am so thankful for those 3 times!  I've felt so refreshed and challenged by the sermons and by what God is doing in that congregation!  The sermon this past week was centered around a passage in Zephaniah in which Israel is warned against growing complacent.  What a great reminder for me!  When things get too comfortable, too blessed, it is way too easy for me to just appreciate the blessings rather than to seek out what God had blessed me to do.  I forget to be a steward instead of a consumer.  And I'm pretty sure that God is trying to tell me something because I ran into the other verses read by the preacher everywhere for the next 2 days, from the walls of a restaurant to the passage in my devotional, to things quoted on the radio.  I'm excited to see where God is going with this!

We were all sad to see Pop go, but he had to fly out again Monday morning to another job.  So with just us girls left in the house, we decided to go to the beauty shop!  Gwyn and Celee had decided a while ago that they wanted "swoop bangs" so we headed off to get that professionally done.  (I usually trim the girls hair myself although I have no skill in this area.  I think they are getting to an age where it's best left to professionals though.)  After they got there, Lyla decided she wanted hers' cut too so they all three got new haircuts!  This was Lyla's first time getting her hair cut by someone other than me and she did really well sitting still and being patient.  And thank heavens! they all liked the cuts they got.  It's always my fear they they won't like it when it's done and get upset (that happened to me once when I was little) but they were happy with it.

On Tuesday we got to go to my friend Emily's house to visit with my girl friends from school and to see her new baby Alex!   He's so adoreable!  I got a little of my baby fix by holding him for a while.  The girls got to play with their Mississippi friends.  I've know these ladies since we were 11 and 12 years old and it's so awesome to me to see our kids playing together.  It's always nice to be around people that you share that "sod" intimacy with - the being known kind of friendship.  Nobody knows you like people who stuck with you during the crazy teen-aged years and are still sticking. 

Emily's dad also introduced us to geocaching!  Celee, Lyla and I went with him and Emily and found 4 that were all pretty near to Emily's house.  We even found one whose hint was "a squirrel colonoscopy."  The girls thought it was especially funny to pull the paper log out of the squirrel's hiney to write their names that they found it.  Celee really enjoyed geocaching!  She and I did two more today on our own.  We found one at the USM tennis courts and one at the Hattiesburg Zoo.  The zoo, by the way, has really been made nice.  There is an awesome water play area and they are building new exhibits and activity rooms.  We had a great time there today even though it was really hot and humid.  Thank heavens for misting fans and squirting water!

Now we're off to Decatur for the last leg of our Southern adventure.  And it's t-minus 42 hours until we pick Jason us at the train station!  What can we get into in Newton County over the next 3 days......

1200 miles and counting...

I feel like we have done a lot in the past week.  So much for my "spending enough time that we just have lazy days to sit around" summer!  I guess it's against my nature not to try to do things when I have time to fill.  So this week we left Jackson and headed north toward my Aunt Gale's house in Starkville.  Along the way I asked the girls if they'd like to see where my Papaw Chamblee grew up and they voted 2-to-1 to go see it.  (If you know my girls, you probably know which one didn't want to)  Anyway we left the trail and ventured to Freeney.  After driving through it I actually couldn't remember how far away from the "town" Papaw's childhood home was, so we opted to go back into Freeney and see the "grocery store" there.  Oh my!  I wish I would have had the mind to take a picture.  The Freeney Grocery store is like stepping back in time about 70 years.  There are 2 old-timey gas pumps out front and yes they do sell groceries, but also hardware, Choctaw baskets, and who knows what.  The lady inside knew my family (of course) and gave the girls each a glass bottled coke out of an old chest freezer complete with a bottle opener.  She said to consider it a gift from Papaw.  I had to explain to the girls when we left that people out in small towns will figure out who you are and how they know your relations no matter where you go in Miss.  After this cultural experience we were back on the path to Starkville.  I had looked at several websites to see what there was for kids to do in Starkville, and Gwyn had decided that the fossil and geological museum and the entomological museum sounded fun.  Both of these happened to be on campus, so the next day we set off.  I called ahead to the Dunn-Seiler Museum because it doesn't have regular hours, but opens for groups and such.  They opened it for us and then a super nice professor, John Paul Jones, gave us a wonderful tour and explained so much to us!  He even brought out his private collection for us to see and touch which included 4 hadrosaurus eggs and a toenail. How cool is that to get to see and touch these fossils! 

We also got to see the difference between a mammoth tooth and a mastadon tooth, the 1st more like horse's teeth and the 2nd more like ours.  They have a complete tricerytops skull there and a sabor toothed tiger - so cool!  The girls got to ask lots of questions and see lots of different rocks and minerals in addition to the fossils - It was great!  We even got an invite to come back and dig with the geology classes if we're back in town.  After lunch we headed over to the Entomology Museum, which I had already warned the girls might not be as exciting as the fossil one.  Most of their collection is kept cataloged for research so really only a minimal part of the collection is on display.  Anyway we went and thankfully the butterfly case was first, because after Gwyn and Lyla saw the display on insect pests and the afflictions they can produce in humans, they were pretty much grossed out and done.  While Celee kept a scientific head, I can pretty much be sure the other two will not have an interest in entomology. They were totally interested in the MSU ice cream though!

So after the girls sketched some of their favorite insects, we headed home to swim.  It rained a lot that morning and later that night, but Friday was sunny so we decided to go swimming again.  The girls got some more wildlife experience as we had to fish 2 dead tree frogs, 1 dead bullfrog, and a live crawfish out of the pool.  I put the bullfrog over in a bush and it just looked like a live frog sitting there, the crawfish was mercifully put back near his pond.

After all that excitment we headed to Decatur, my home town.  We all were to get together at Turkey Creek Water Park, which is a reservoir build by the corp of engineers, to stay the weekend in a cabin there for an Ezelle family reunion.  It was great getting to see so many of my extended family members and the girls getting to play with more cousins.  My cousin's daughter got to spend the 1st night with us and Jeffrey got to come and spend the next 2 nights with us in the cabin so it was like a cousin sleepover party the whole weekend.  The kids played in the lake for hours, trying to catch minnows and giving up to catch lilypads instead.  We all got ate up by ants, but we all had a super time.  The cabin was small but just right for us.  We even had a sort of sing-a-long on the deck one evening while I played every song I know on the dulcimer.  I felt like I was transported back in time for a while.  Oh and Lyla has fallen in love with her cousin Jeffrey.  He is like the most awesome big brother ever!  And this is kind of cool considering that in his family he's the youngest of 4. 

My big accomplishment for the weekend was that I ran in my first 10K on Saturday at the ResRun.  I had gotten up Thursday to go run.  I wasn't familiar with the roads around Gale's house, but I figured I'd just run and then eventually turn around and run back.  It was misting rain the whole time and I just didn't get tired.  Finally I decided to run to the next mailbox and turn around, that way I could map it when I got back based on the address I turned around at.  I still don't know if I quite believe the map, but it said I ran 7 miles.  So then I decided if I could run that on Thursday, I could run the 10K on Saturday so I registered for it.  It wasn't nearly as easy as Thursday.  It was sunny and hot and Philadelphia is a lot hillier than Starkville.  But I finished, definately in the back of the pack but not last.  Now at least I know I can do it and I met that goal a little sooner than I had anticipated.  I even got to have my picture made with the 2012 Choctaw Indian Princess.  (That's Pete's finger on the pic ;) 

After leaving the cabin and settling in at my parents' house, we did just chill for a bit.  My mom took the girls swimming and riding on/driving the golf cart and I stayed home to try to make a muscadine cheesecake.  I think I finally found the mysterious flour-based cheesecake crust I've been looking for!  I was mixing and matching recipes to get what I wanted though, and this one collapsed in the middle.  At least it tasted good - and of course I will have to keep trying to get it right! 

Tuesday the girls did finally get to go ride horses.  The horse stables where they had been signed up for camp asked if we'd like to come have a complimentary lesson because the camp had been cancelled.  Yes!  Lyla and I got to do it too!  The girls had a blast!  Gwyn road Colonel.  I rode Cowboy.  Both of these horses were old teamster horses.  Celee road a Welsh pony named Minnie  And Lyla road a pony named Misty.  I held on to Lyla's lead, but Gwyn and Celee got a lot of practice directing their horses - especially because Colonel was very old and didn't want to do much and Minnie really really wanted to eat the grass beside the barn most of the time.  Then the girls got to groom their horses for a long time and feed them treats.  It was very nice.  I think with more experience the girls would be quite good riders, especially Lyla - she's a natural.  I don't know if it's because she's so young, or just head-strong, but she doesn't have any fear of the horses (which frightened me at times) so she just did what Alison Scott the owner told her without reservations.  Celee has been thrown by a pony before and so she has some understandable fear, even though she's our family's horse-lover. 

Today I took the girls to Williamsville, another old-timey store/town.  I promised them we would look for them some real cowboy boots, not the "fashion" ones they sell at Children's Place they told me.  We did find some for Lyla and Celee, but they did not have any that Gwyn liked in her size.  She's in that weird phase where she's at the end of children's sizes and the beginning of women's sizes.  So we'll just have to keep looking for her some.  Lyla and Celee were quite proud of their real cowboy boots though.  After that, lunch, and a much-needed nap for Lyla we headed out again - this time to Hattiesburg.  Since leaving Champaign, we've put around 1200 miles on the van so far and there is so much more I'd like to see and do!  I will content myself with a fun week in Hburg for now. 

I found this picture of me and Jason that I like and since I miss him so much, I'm putting it in.  Doesn't he look handsome!  :)

A New Gameplan

Whew!  We had an awesome time at the beach!  The water was warm, the food was yummy, the pace was slow and the sun was sunny.  (Haha, that rhymes!)  It only rained one day while we were there and that in itself was pretty cool.  We got to watch the storm roll in and the lightening crack over the ocean.  The surf picked up quite a bit and we watched I don't know how many people's tents, floaties, umbrellas, and stuff blow away down the beach b/c it had all been left out.  On the last morning Celee, Lyla, and I went for one last walk on the beach and we got to see a sea turtle nest.  It didn't look like anything to me, but it had been roped off and a sign put up not to disturb it.  So I took a picture of it anyway just so I can say I did see a sea turtle nest.  The bad part is that I was using Jason's phone to take beach pictures and now he's back in Champaign with his phone.  The good news is I did find my phone when we got back from the beach!   Now with phone in hand I got the much-deplored text from the horse camp that Gwyn and Celee's camp had been cancelled because too many other children had backed out due to heat.  Mind you it's been hot here, but not the 100+ that Champaign has had.  I don't know why it irks me so much that they cancelled on the Sat. before the camp through a text message.  It just all seems rude to me.  The girls were super disappointed too.  The horse riding camp was the thing that the rest of our trip was planned around.  And I hadn't let them sign up for any Girl Scout camps or anything because they were doing this one.  Oh well.  We decided to stay in Jackson with my family anyway and so far we are having a great time. 
After picking up Tinkerbell from my mom, we headed to Jackson to take Jason to the train station.  The girls were finally getting to watch the final Harry Potter movie in the car.  We made them wait to see each movie until we had read the book and we've been reading the books in order since before Christmas.  Finally, Friday night we finished it!  We got to the train station way too early, so we ended up sitting in the parking lot of a Walgreen's watching the epic last battle scene from the last movie.  Then we really did have to take Jason to the train.  I hate that feeling of parting.  I know lots of people's husbands get deployed or travel for business a good bit, but that isn't how we've ever had to be.  So it's weird to be here without Jason for the rest of the month.  I just hope he doesn't get lonely (hint for our CU peepes!)  or eat too much junk food.  ;)

The girls are super enjoying there time with their cousin Jeffery.  And of course my sister Christine is such a good host we feel right at home!  We had planned to go to the Children's Museum here on Monday, but they are closed on Mondays so we ended up going to the Mississippi Museum of Science instead which was really fun.  They had a pretty neat-o exhibit on dinosaurs with lots of animatronic dinos.  The kids especially loved that all the big dinos had baby animatronic dinosaurs as well.

 They have a lot of different aquariums with native fish and wildlife and I saw the biggest snapping turtle I have ever seen in my life!  I sincerely hope I never see one that big in the wild.  I think it could easily take someone's hand or foot off.  Lyla really wanted to take pictures with my phone while we were there (I think because Celee had the forsight to bring her camera and was taking pictures herself).  And wouldn't you know that what was in front of her when she went to take pictures was 2 turtles "playing." 

There is also a really nice system of trails that is part of the outdoor portion of the museum with boardwalks and observation stations.  The girls especially liked seeing a real-life swamp complete with green algae and cypress trees.  We had fun imagining what might be under the water.  We also got to learn what a slough is, as several parts of the trail overlook sloughs off the Pearl River.  And there were frogs everywhere!  At first the kids wanted to catch them, but they were all yellow and orange colored so we were afraid they might be poisonous.  They were pretty cute though.

We did get to go swimming today but those sporadic Mississippi rain storms cut that short so in the afternoon we did go to the Children's Museum.  What fun!  It's a pretty good sized place with several things that I haven't seen at other children's museums.  Like the Digestive System playground.  You enter the mouth, crawl down the esophagus, enter the stomach, spiral down the small intestines, go through the large intestine, and then get "flushed" out at the end down a slide.  Their stickers and things at the museum say "I got flushed at the Mississippi Children's Museum."  Hilarious!  Especially because Lyla wanted to do this one over and over, so I kept joking with her that she enjoyed getting "pooped" out.  They had a really neat boat playground that all four of the kids enjoyed.  There was also a shell of a Nissan Altima that the kids could jack up, change the tire, wash the windows, fill with gas, and of couse pretend to drive.  They played in that for a long time!  When they all got in together I told Christine that was the "Lord help us" picture of the future. 

We are super enjoying spending time with family and getting to just chill and let the kids play together.  They have had so much fun playing zombie chase, Just Dance, and just being silly together.  None of us want to leave tomorrow, but I told Christine tonight that when Lyla is comfortable enough to disobey her (instead of just me) we will probably wear out our welcome soon anyway.  ;)  So we are off to Starkville tomorrow to see what trouble we can get into.  I did like the slogan on the "water tower" at the Children's Museum that said, "Exploring Mississippi the Magnolia State."  I feel like that's kind of what we're doing on this trip now that our plans got changed.  The new plan is to explore Mississippi and soak up family, and the country, and fun times with my girls.  I will note that as we were leaving the train station, the girls starting making up a song about being in the country and I had to remind them that we were in the middle of the largest city in Mississippi actually.  They just changed their song to "We're in the city, but it looks kinda like the country..."   :)