Happy Birthday America!

What an incredible 4th of July weekend we had! First, we did something that I never thought I would do. We picked 5 gallons wild mustang (or Muscadine) grapes for us to use to make wine. This was a lot of fun and we really are excited about trying our hand a wine making. Once we got them home we washed them and removed the stems. Next we mashed them with an old baseball bat. We now have the pulp and juice in our living room going through the fermentation process. Once it gets a white mold on top of it, we are going to take it to Beth Kunkle's dad. He is the local wine maker and his wine is good! We are very excited about learning to become amatuer vinters.

Saturday took us to Houston to celebrate Heather's last birthday as a single woman. She prepared fish tacos for us and a lovely avacado dip. OMG! They were awesome! Sally also made a yummy dessert out of our tatume squash. It was awesome! Heather is quite the cook. She is going to make a good little house wife for Jared! After lunch we all went to Sam's and bought Heather a camera for her birthday. After Sam's we went to see Herb and PK. Herb had recieved a bunch of old pictures from his sister. We really had a good time looking at them with him. Also, Jessica was still there. She had to stay over the night because the flooding was so bad from hurricane Alex. After we left the forum we went by Kim's to get stuff for Heather's wedding. We stayed for a couple of hours. Really had a lovely visit.

For the fourth, Sally and I decided to go to the Round Top parade. This is the oldest continuously celebrated 4th of July celebration in the nation west of the Mississippi. This was the 160th celebration. That means that people have been celebrating in Round Top since 1850. That is incredible to me. People have been getting together in that little town to celebrate our nation's independence since 5 years after Texas became a state. The parade was really fun. Too many pics to post here but we saw the governor, lots of beauty queens, amusing floats and a bunch of kids riding longhorn steers. I got my picture made with Governor Rick Perry! We left Round Top and went to Sonic for Hot Dogs. We also went to HEB and got the stuff to treat my POISON IVY. Evidently I paid a heavy price for the grapes we picked. To finish off the evening we went to Washington on the Brazos (the birthplace of Texas) and watched the HEB sponsored fireworks. The fireworks were good but the music on the radio was terrible. In spite of the music it was a perfect end to an almost perfect day.