The Last Week in Arkansas and Back Home Via Dallas

As promised, here are some highlights from the last week of our trip to Arkansas, which was in June.  One of my favorite things at home was to be there during a huge emergence of lightning bugs.  It was really amazing.

We visited some relatives and saw some old things of my Aunt Net's.  I spent many Sunday afternoons at her house as a child and as a teenager helped her around the house to make some money.  She had some old dolls that she had sent off to a doll hospital to be fixed up - this is one of them:

She died more than 20 years ago, this was at her daughter's house. 

Caleb got in some extra fishing!

My parents' dogs got some extra loving:

A few weeks after we went home, the dog next to Irene - Tuck - got lost and was never found.  After a few weeks my parents decided the other dog, Nip, needed a companion and stopped at a shelter to see if they could find a good one.  They had a little dog that is very similar in color to these two and about the same size, so they have two dogs again.

Annalise wanted to make California rolls for everyone, so she did!  I don't think my mom will ever use the rest of the Sushi rice :)

Then finally it was time to head back to Miami, we returned through Dallas, so we got to stand on the state line:

And we got to see the Giant Eyeball!

Irene had been very curious about a picture of this eyeball in the National Geographic for Kids magazine.  Not unlike Molly the Pony last year, we got to end our trip seeing something we'd heard about randomly. 

Rounding Out the Road Trip

On down the road we traveled and being in SW Missouri, it was very easy to stop off in

FAYETTEVILLE!

My name on senior walk.

Woo Pig Soowie, does that place feel like home!  It is every bit as beautiful as I remember it and I wish we could have stayed a few days to poke around, but we just spent the night and a long morning.

Heading south we stopped at my brother and sister-in-law's house.

And after a couple of nights in south Arkansas we headed west to Texas to visit my Aunt and Uncle and cousins.

They have goats:

And keep a horse - that is, this is not their horse, but it does live in their field.

This was supposed to be our last stop, but we ended up extending the trip by an extra week.  It is a good thing I did not know about the extra week until the end because I would have been tempted to fill it with more travels and by that time we were all pretty exhausted.  So instead we spent that week relaxing in the country.  And I'll post some of those pictures...eventually!