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. 
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. 
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