Saturday, April 30

Up at 7 a.m., but skipped my exercises so I could get ready to go to another town about an hour away to tour a Pioneer Village open house event.

At 10 a.m., the other scrapbook club member arrived, and we three were ready to head out. On the way, we stopped at a roadside market to buy the area's succulent strawberries, fresh picked this morning. There were only about eight quarts left, and I bought two, while our friend bought one. With all the rain we've had and are going to have over the next few days, I'm afraid strawberries this year will be at a premium. The quarts I bought today were fifty cents higher than the ones Hubbie bought only a few days ago.

We arrived at the other town around 11a.m. Daughter and Great-Grandson were already there at the restaurant where we planned to have lunch. While waiting, they spent a dollar in gumball machines featuring prizes, and both got watches.

We were all disappointed that the restaurant hadn't put out all the lunch offerings yet on the food bar. We settled for pulled pork (Mother had fried chicken instead of the baked fish she prefers), and a variety of veggies (Mother wanted mac and cheese, but it wasn't available yet).

Around noon, we headed to the Pioneer Village. The very back seat in the van was down, but Great-Grandson and I managed to pull it back up. There was still room behind that seat for Mother's wheelchair and wheelchair cushion.

It was an overcast, cool day, with the threat of rain, but we were able to spend an hour or so touring the area before it began sprinkling.

The village featured docents dressed in frontier costumes. A "sheriff," dressed in black, handed each guest a deputy badge, but it was too difficult to open the back so I could attach it to my shirt, so it ended up in the bottom of my purse.

Demonstrations were going on all around the village...cooking at a chuck wagon, butter churning and biscuit making outside a house, basket weaving, spinning, etc. The buildings, including a school house, a two-story home, a general grocery store, a train depot, and a jail, were all open to tourists.

Vendors sold plants, jellies and jams, hand sewn aprons and bonnets, and baked goods, as well as refreshment items like ice cream and kettle corn. The gardens were all in bloom...lots of colorful peonies brightened the area.

Daughter and Great-Grandson enjoyed trying their skills at jumping rope near the schoolhouse, modeling bonnets, straw hats, and coon skin hats for snapshots, and winding the May pole. A woman near the jump rope area stepped up and commented that she tried jumping rope, but found that though she was able to do in her mind, her body had a different idea. I think all of us with a few years on us are much more agile in our heads than in our bodies.

The village is small, so we were ready to leave in about an hour and a half. After dropping Daughter and Great-Grandson off at the restaurant, where their car was parked, we three women headed back home. We chose a good time to leave, since it began raining and rained most of the way home. It stopped though as we arrived in town.

Mother went to her house, and I spent a while uploading pics from today's outing to my social network page. Later, I heated fajitas left over from Thursday night, and Hubbie and I had these, with salad, for supper.

We had barely finished eating when a thunderstorm cropped up. Predictions are that we're in for rounds of thunderstorms over the next several days. Flooding is the main threat, but meteorologists don't rule out isolated tornado threats.

Our TV fare tonight included the Hallmark Hall of Fame production, "Beyond the Blackboard," a true life story about the teacher, Stacey Bess, who as a young woman accepts a position as teacher of homeless kids. Through trials and tribulations, she transforms a warehouse space/homeless shelter into a respectable classroom for kids who cannot, because of their circumstances, be admitted to regular schools.

After that, we watched the 2006 Lifetime Movie Network movie, "Night of Terror." A married couple hit a snag in their marriage and decide a family bonding get-away is in order. But it turns to terror on a stormy night.