Bellville

After we got back to San Marcos Grammie and Paw Paw called and said that they wanted to take us to my great grandfather's ranch in Bellville, TX. So they came up to my Grandad's house and picked us up . The trip was about 2- 2 and a half hours long into the country. My great grandfather has about a hundred cattle .
When we got there he said that God had given him something from nature and that gift was a wild pig in a trap. So when his ranch hands got back we headed out to the pasture to take a "Look" at it .

(This is my great grandfather. He turns 89 in march and he works like a mule from 5 a.m to 9 p.m.)

When we got there the pig was snorting and running around inside the trap and I was to scared to go up and take this picture, but I did. Then Colby came over and started shooting it in the head with a .22 caliber pistol. The bullets just bounced off it's head, so they had to go to the backup plan which was of course another gun except this time the bullet didn't bounce off. It went through his skull and knocked him down. They lifted the trap and cut his throat which wasn't the most enjoyable thing to watch.
Then we took him up to the house, hung it up on a tractor, and cut it's head off. Blood came gushing out! OK, I'm joking, hardly any blood came out. Then they started cutting the skin away from his hind legs and worked their way down.

This is the head. Isn't it pretty?

This what it looked like after they skinned it and cut it down the middle. All the guts came out and my grandpa's dog was licking at the guts and growling at anyone who came near her food. Then they started pulling out the intestines and the organs and A.J came over with the heart and asked if I wanted to hold it. I refused and he threw it back in the pile. I would not recommend this job to the squeamish.
Then they started to cut it up and put it in the icebox. They used an electric saw to do this and it cut through about everything. The guy on the left is Colby and the one on the right is A.J.

The place hams come from is the legs. Think about this picture next time you're eating or preparing ham. Just don't turn vegetarian, I'm anti vegetables. I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I did. We had a great time in Bellville, but this was definitely my second favorite part. My favorite was hanging around with a bunch of rednecks and family.

The Great State Of Texas

So all month we were in Texas and oh yeah Oklahoma to but we had an awesome time there (in TX I mean). First my mom and dad went to the Inn Above Onion Creek for my uncles 40 th birthday. My Uncle and Aunt live in a little town called San Marcos which is about a half hour out of San Antonio. Our 3 cousins are crazy. Well at least 2 of them. Jonah and Madeline are the crazy ones. Maisie is definitely not as crazy she just loves playing with her moms I-phone. The inn was amazing! It had very homey rooms, sunken tubs, and fire places that were on both sides of the wall. Willy Porter, an amazing guitarist, did a concert for the birthday party! I have never seen anyone move their fingers so fast and change chords so rapidly! My brother, sister and I stayed with our Aunt who took us to see the Water Horse. That was a great movie and it had a great story. It was a little scary for my sister. She still liked it though. We stayed at my grandad's house. He is a Resistol salesman and has lots and lots of cowboy hats.

Then after the party weekend we went to Grammie and Paw Paw's house in Hondo. While we were there we went fishing at a little ranch and also went paddle boating. I caught the only fish of the day and my brother was very disappointed he didn't catch anything. My grandparents gave me and my brother Texas T-shirts. Then we headed back to San Marcos were we switched cars with Aunt Melissa.

They have 2 hybrids that I just loved. One was a Toyota Highlander and the other was my favorite. It was a Honda civic with a GPS system. We loaded up in the Highlander and headed to Oklahoma. We couldn't drive the entire way so we stopped in Dallas and stayed the night in a hotel. It had a pool and we swam all night it seemed.

The next day we had lunch with the Franklins in Sulphur, OK and then headed to Tulsa and spent the night at the Murphy's house. On the following day we had a party with all of the friends we've known since they were in college and came to my mom and dad's church or Bible studies. Now they have lots of kids and I got to be babysitter. That was an interesting experience and we had chaos with the kids for about 2 hours! The next morning we went to U.H.B.C University Heights Baptist Church where people just walked up to me and knew everything about me but I knew nothing about them! That evening we went to the Smith's for dinner. They have 4 boys and the youngest, Sam, I've known for forever it seems. We spent the night at the James' house and in the morning we headed to see more Oklahoma friends. The Jones' and the Meffords who have 4 girls and 1 boy. We played lots of pool and ate really good fajitas.

The next day we drove to the Graf's house in Georgetown, TX - friends of my mom and dad's. They have 4 kids our ages. But they had school in the morning and they couldn't play for long. We headed back to San Marcos where we played on the rocks around Grandad's house, had a Christy movie marathon, went to see the new Veggie Tales movie, visited the Texas Museum, and the Harry Ransom Center where we saw a copy of the Guttenburg Bible. We also got to go to Enchanted Rock with Uncle Stu and Aunt Melinda and the rest of our San Marcos family. Uncle Stu took Maisie, Jonah and me into Enchanted Cave. That was so much fun and it could be dangerous. In some places there were only 12-15 in. wide cracks to crawl through to keep going and cracks that slid away to who knows where! We didn't get to play much with our cousins though, because they had the flu. I really liked our time in Texas.
Sorry if this post was a little long