What an awesome weekend. We were blessed to be with old and new friends as we cooked at the Dewberry Festival.
Friday, was typical. About 5:30 the tornado sirens went off around the area. The TV and radio were interrupting with that lovely severe weather beep... Now, for those of you who know me, you're thinking - "Shelly was freaking out." Well, you WRONG! For the first time ever, I was very calm and collective, and I realized what I've put all of you through over the years. I found on Friday that my beautiful little niece has one of my traits... She is TERRIFIED of bad weather. So, the maternal instinct in me kicked in and I had to keep her calm.
We were cooking the chili and when that weather bulletin came on the TV, I saw a tiny little me in the room. As I was trying to explain to her that it was all okay, Mom called. Thank goodness, because I was running out of things to say that could make it better. She went in to the bedroom and talked to mom just as her little friends runs in the camper door yelling that there was a tornado in Buckholts (a town about 12 miles away). I did ask them not to use that word, since Presley was worried about the tornado coming to us. So, mom has her calmed down and she goes outside to play as child #2, the nephew, comes running in and asking me if the tornado was going to come get us... I told him "no" and we looked at the TV screen as I was showing him that it was going around us, not coming to us. He smiled and said "Good, cuz I don't want to get blowed away." Now, how cute is that???
We ended up missing all of the bad weather and Saturday morning was BEAUTIFUL!
My oldest and dearest friend, Diana, and her family joined us this year. We had a great time. You know, we would spend every waking minute together back in the day. We don't get to see each other often, but being together this weekend was as if no time had passed. It was awesome! I am hoping to make this an annual thing.
Our good friends Ricky and Linda drove up from Bryan, so we were able to visit with them too! Now, sad thing is they had to drive 50 miles to see us when we live in the same town... We need to work on that!
So, the cookoff - we didn't win, but we were in the top 20 with our beans and brisket. That is great considering there were 65 teams!
I took today off work in order to clean everything up from the weekend. It is by far the most fun cookoff, but it's exhausting. We thought about coming home Saturday night, but there was no way I was coming home to unload that truck! We stayed with Dad and then came home after breakfast.
I realized that I didn't even get to go look at all of the arts and crafts booths. I also forgot to go get my free frisbee from Sondra! Which reminds me, I need to go see the JP today about that ticket... Lovely....
