Hey y'all...Hope you're all recovering from your wild and crazy July fourths - or would that be July 1/4's? Hey, I never promised you grammatical correctness here...you get my point, let's move on.

We are bringing down the house here in Tejas - trying to keep cool in the midst of 100+ degree weather. We've managed to do a pretty good job - after all, it's a "dry" heat, right? We actually had a little cooling trend here today - got down to about 93 degrees - Grandpapa kept saying if it gets any cooler we'd have to break out the coats.

Thought you'd all be on the edge of your seats waiting to hear what we've been up to, so I'll do a little recap. I gave you the Reader's Digest version in the post title...but I'll follow up with a few pictures and a little commentary.

The Dremel...one of mankind's most useful tools. Do you not know about the dremel? If not, immediately go down to the Home Depots and find out all you can about it. When Abby was a baby, she would get the crusty nose. Those of you with kids know what I'm talking about. Even if you don't have kids - you've had a case of the crusty nose. Don't pretend like you've never had one. Anyway - when Abby had the crusty nose, Grandpapa always said he was going to go get the q-tip attachment for the dremel and take care of biz. Now see...if you don't know what a dremel is, that won't make alot of sense. So - all that to say, Abby & Grandpapa had a little time with the dremel today. NO, there were no q-tips involved thank goodness! They were working on a little project together.



As you can see, Abby's has her safety goggles on...Grandpapa's motto is: SAFETY FIRST.

Of course, you have to balance out your workshop projects with a little domestic activity. That would be Grandmama's area...here, you can see Abby in the kitchen assisting GMM with the lemonade pie we had with our 4th of July meal.



Abby did most of the work on the pie herself, down to the licking of the spoons, beaters & bowl. I think all the licking took place prior to the mixing of the pie filling, but I'm not sure...let's hope.

Once again, it's all about balance. Workshop project and domestic activity must be balanced with the right amount of blowing stuff up. Yeah...huh, huh...blowing stuff up is cool.

Just let me have my pyromaniac moment, please, ok?

In honor of our country's 233rd birthday, GPP purchased the Costco package of fireworks, complete with Eyeballs, Happy Penguins, Poppers, Bumble Bees, Snakes, Sparklers and those little things that look like booger papers that you throw on the ground to make popping noises.



One thing about GPP...he's all about safety. His motto is: SAFETY FIRST (my motto is, REPETITION AGAIN). I took one look at that box of firecrackers and my finger turned into a bic lighter...I was ready to tear into them and light stuff. But GPP had to have a staging area AND, the lighting area had to prepped. That included soaking of the wood and grass in surrounding areas as well as proper safety gear for those under 7 years of age.



Abby is not afraid to watch fireworks (we have 5 years of Titoland to thank for that!). However, the thought of lighting one up or holding onto a sparkler put her in a tail spin. Mike and I trust GPP (20+ years in the military and some of those as fire marshall) and had no problem with him teaching her respect for fire and proper techniques for dealing with it. She was apprehensive at first. She could barely light the wick without GPP there holding the punk (fyi - that's a big long incense looking thing they use to light the fireworks...don't know if that's official, but hey, GPP said). After she lit it, she would run for the hills like a little school girl. Of course, she is a little school girl, but that's beside the point. It took a little gentle - and I do mean gentle - coercing, but by the end of the night, Abby was running the fireworks show! She knew the names of all the fireworks and was instructing the onlookers about what was going down - all this with her hand on her hip. Those of you who know Abby personally can visualize just what I'm talking about.

During all this display of fire power, I had a chance to play with The Reb and see what kind of fun images I could get. Here's one of my favorites - this one is called the Eyeball.


One thing that I didn't squeeze into the post title is our trip to Rangers Stadium on Friday night. A great game (Rangers won 3-1) that included a home run and a post-game fireworks show. We were WAY up high, but they were still great seats (and thank goodness, in the shade!).

Be sure to visit the DropShots account for all the pics...you know, I don't post them all here. These are the teasers, people. Go there, make comments on them...let me know that you're out there.

So there you have it...another update from the Club. You will probably hear from us again before we leave at the end of the week. So keep your bookmark handy.

Keepin' it real in Tejas,

k