Spring cleaning and Texas history

I believe spring has sprung!  I got around to mowing last week for the first time this year.  It normally takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to do all the yard plus the alley.  It took over an hour and a half to get it done this time!  The grass isn't really growing yet, but the weeds are terrible.  The alley was grown up as high as my knees.  I'm really needing to do some serious yard work.  I didn't do any trimming last year since I was out of commission due to my surgery during the springtime and then the summer was SO hot and dry.  So it is a real mess now.  Maybe Dennis will be able to help me with it before he has to go back to work.

We had a very nice crowd at services Sunday.  Chris K's family were down for the weekend and were at Highway that morning.  It was so nice to FINALLY meet Shelley in person!  We've been visiting on facebook for years now and "sharing" each other's sons.  I'm thinking we'll have many more opportunities to visit with Chris living here now.

I spent most of the day Monday doing some reorganizing and cleaning.  Took down ALL of our books and pictures and knickknacks from our bookshelves and rearranged everything.  Dennis has been busy working on Stephen's muzzleloader that he is building.  It is shaping up quite nicely.  He's almost ready to start staining the stock.  It will be a beautiful work of art when he completes it!

Dennis and I have been doing some historical touring lately.  Saturday we drove to FW and went through the Civil War Museum located off loop 820 in White Settlement.  It was a very interesting and well managed facility, exploring the Civil War through a uniquely Texas perspective.  Today we decided to take a historical tour of our area.  We have driven by the ghost town of Thurber many times while driving west on I-20, so we decided to go check it out first.  We went through the W. K. Gordon Museum and learned about a part of Texas history of which we were both ignorant.  After a hearty lunch at the Smokestack restaurant, we drove to Ranger to try to learn more about the oil boom which took place in the early 1900's.  Unfortunately their museum was closed when we arrived.  We next tried to go to the museum in Eastland but found it closed, too.  So we headed north to Breckenridge and visited their local historical museum.  The drive was beautiful.  The trees are beginning to leaf out in that lovely light spring green that contrasts nicely with the dark green cedars scattered throughout the hillsides.  There were several wild plum thickets and pear trees blooming...showing off their lovely white foliage...with an occasional redbud tree and its splash of color.  We enjoyed our day of sightseeing and even learned a few things along the way!