A few days after Spring officially stamped her presence on the calender of America, we loaded up in our vehicular traveling receptacles and zoomed down to the great state of Texas. The weekend was a wonderful and busy experience, playing three concerts in two days for very energetic crowds (especially the young folks at Baylor University ), and getting to rendezvous with the old friends who gave my parents’ such love and fellowship when they were newly-married and raising Alex and Annie down on Rooter Street in Waco.

After the Monday concert, we drove six hours deep into the Kiamichi mountains, regardless of the fact that the name means ‘Go no further!’ in Choctaw (presumably because of the terrifying monsters named the Bigfoot that parol those dark hills). We arrived at our Grandma Jane’s and Grandpa Riley’s late at night, and almost got lost in the beautiful blackness of the forests lanes, but thankfully we saw the sign for the turn-off, and, accordingly, turned-off the road and drove up to our second home (or third, if you count the Hampton Inn ).

We were there to hunker down and do some deep-cleaning on the grounds of my grandparents’ trail camp, but also for the enjoyment of a country get-a-way of sorts and a reunion with our relatives. The next morning, after a delightful, though wary (there are tarantulas and fiddlebacks lurking in bedsheets, you know) sleep, we awoke to a fresh, cold morning in the mountains. After a spoonful of peanut butter, we all got down to work. And boy, if I ever thought that manual labor had its benefits, I was speaking from a completely city-girl mindset. Between cleaning dorms, bathrooms, cabins, raking acres of leaves, power-washing buildings, washing windows, and on, we had our work cut out for us.

About lunch-time, though, Grandma Jane arrived with a whole suburban full of food, and after a delightful meal with Grandma’s touch inherent in the very bread slices, I stayed with Grandma and had the most delightful discussions about her childhood, and also some great tips about the value of ammonia, vinegar, and bleach. I learned about how she used to watch her mother draw water from the well each morning, and longed to do it herself, but her mother wouldn’t let her because she knew she would drop the bucket in the well. Finally, though, she bugged her mother into letting her, and, just as predicted, she dropped the bucket in the well, and from then on she got to draw the water every single day. I can’t wait till I get to Heaven and get to go through the video library of world history

That night our wonderful Grandpa Riley and very favoritest favorite cousin, David Riley, drove up to help us, and we built a grand (or a wanna-be grand) fire, baked brownies, and sat around the flames on upturned logs and munched on chocolate while Benjamin told us freaky real-life ghost ship stories.

After a lovely and very productive time down at the trail camp, we drove up to Davis, OK, where we met our parents and our Grandma Dorothy and Grandpa Bill. It was so delightful to get to see them again! They are some of the sweetest people I know. The retreat center that we played at housed 2200 women for the conference, and my mother did a marvelous job speaking to the women about children as the kingdom of God on Friday morning. That afternoon Scott, Annie, Gretchen, and I had a tremendous time hiking down the Devil’s Bathtub, as it is called, with very Lord-of-the-Rings-ish scenery…giant boulders, magical trees growing out of feathery green mountain-sides, giant roots twisting from rock to rock and forming a bridge for us to walk on. We also found a cave up high in the rock. Scott and I were both brave enough to climb up the cliff (which was considerably high) and look inside the intriguing scene. There was only blackness and Ozarka water bottles in there, though, so we climbed back down again.

That night we played for the women, and then the next day we drove to Ardmore and played at the Washington Theatre there, and had a superb time. On Sunday we piled up in our vehicular traveling receptacle once more, and drove on towards home, saying goodbye to our grandparents Wolaver at their home-town of Oklahoma City. That night we arrived at our home, where my garden had a sad amount of weeds and bespoke an hour of hoeing to my groaning heart, and my own pillow sufficed to comfort me with a night of dreamless sleep.

And that’s the week-in-review!