So, here it was, a new day, a day to celebrate America's independence and we would be doing everything BUT that! We all got awoken bright and early at 5:15 in the A.M. by none other than a terrible horrible version of opera by no other than the local rooster. I swear, I know we are supposed to be greatful for each new day....but this rooster must have been thanking the good Lord for the past year that he forgot, as he would not shut up! He kept a crowing until I finally drowned him out and fell back asleep somehow.
On our drive in the day before as soon as we passed San Antonio, it began to rain, and here we were 4 hours, 220 miles away, and the same darn "system" was still lurking above us - and would become our best friend (and worst enemy) for the remainder of our mini-vacation as we would soon find out.
We gathered that this would possibly pass and maybe on Saturday like we had planned we would make it out to the beach - but that was still something up in the air.
I left my dad, sister and nieces for a brief while and headed to Martha's, Frank's sisters, house to have Sydney visit with her and her cousins (Gabby and Abby). We were there for a while and Sydney managed to walk out with a Hanah Montana poster who she called "Mermaid," I'm sure thinking it was The Little Mermaid - forgive her she doesn't know any better - the long hair must have confused her!
We then headed for her grandma's house and that was a trip in itself. Frank's sister in law has a Maltese (basically amounts to a big fur ball) off a dog - and too bad for her, Mariposa, was in for a beating at the hands of a 6 year old.
She hugged, carried, squeezed, and did everything else to that dog that you can imagine, all the while just wanting to love the crap out of it. At first it seemed like Mariposa was all about the attention of this little 30 pound, possibly 3 ft something, 6 year old - BUT she quickly found out that if she wanted to have normalcy - she'd have to find a way to play with her toy duck ALONE - away from Sydney.
The only thing that saved Mariposa from Sydney was my phone ringing, which mind you, was weird enough, because I don't think even my phone liked the valley - it acted up the entire time. My emails and text messages would come through hours later, and I of course had no reception, great!
It was Liz calling saying my dad was hungry and if I was on my way to his house. I decided at that point it was time to go so we said good bye and left.
We went and had dinner (yummy greasy tacos) at the local Taqueria Palenque - that is one of the few places I look forward to going to every time I visit.
As much as I'm going to sound like an oink oink, I am not ashamed and will admit I ate, 6 tacos de bistek with a huge baked potato and some frijoles a la charra. YUMMY, is all I have to say, working it off would just have to wait.
We came back and Liz and my nieces and Sydney and I headed out to visit Janet, one of my high school friends, at her place in San Benito via Military Highway past the 2 bumps down 483 (Salinas Blvd). These bumps, if you go at the right speed, or if you are lucky and sitting in the back of whatever you are traveling, will make you feel like your intestines are wanting to leave your body against the will of gravity. Totally fun - not so if you don't like the "roller coaster feeling," because this is somewhat what it feels like.
After about a 30 minute drive, past Los Indios Bridge (which going across will lead you to kill me now Matamoros, Mexico), and past a flashing yellow light on Leal Rd, we arrived at Janet's. She greeted and welcomed us in to her home where she was brewing a home made storm of flour tortillas and what seemed to be frijoles a la charra. Never a party involving Hispanics, where both tortillas either corn of flour, and some frijoles a la charra are not part of the entree.
We stayed for a while, chatted some, got to see her mom which was nice and then decided it was time to get back to my dad's.
Before we went home, we went to a shopping center in Weslaco and did some damage but walked out with some very cute stuff!
We stopped at a fireworks stand since even though Donna prohibits the use of fireworks, they are set up everywhere and people still pop them INSIDE city limits. Liz bought Rebecca some dazzlers - basically a stick with some paper on the end to help light the "firework" and once it catches on fire it sparkles for about 1 minute then burns itself out. I don't really know how many she bought, but we (Ruth, Liz and I) got into the action as well after Sydney and even Rebecca for a while, were having issues with the fireworks. We did that for maybe 25 minutes then our 4th was done and over with!
Pretty late in the evening called it a night.
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