Easter and Texas TEA

We're headed west to see sights and also to avoid the frequent violent spring storms in the Southeast. Arizona and New Mexico are much more pleasant before sweltering temperatures arrive with the summer season! En route from east to west, we took some time at our home base in Texas to visit family, swap schoolbooks for the kids and some other items in the storage unit, add some features to the truck and camper, and triage the mail that had been collected by Linda's sister for the past couple of months. We were pleased that the timing worked out to spend Easter with family and also participate in a Tax Day TEA Party. Wish we could say we planned that out in advance, but not so – just coincidence!

It was great to see family! Email, cell phones, web photos help to keep in touch, but it's definitely nice to have the hugs and direct conversation and fun! We parked at the local KOA and gave the camper interior a 'spring clean' vacuuming and wiped down – then a dust storm hit and covered everything with a fine layer of red dirt. Gotta' love West Texas! So…we cleaned again, ordered a bike rack that would accommodate 4 bikes for the family and a tool box for the truck. LOVE the tool box and how it frees up some basement space in the camper. We continue to work at keeping only what is truly necessary with an eye on the weight and logistics of retrieving items. New, moderately priced bikes for the boys and Craig are now part of travel. Our youngest needed bike riding lessons and what better place than at the grandparents lake house! Nice, long, traffic free dirt driveway and lots of encouragers on hand! He picked up basic riding in only one day – no training wheels! He loves his new bike and we're already having a lot of fun at some of our stops with the built in entertainment and exercise.

A trip to the storage unit took care of trading completed school books for fresh material and a couple of kitchen items that are now deemed essential enough to travel along with us. The truck got routine maintenance. We intended to wash the exterior of the camper, but the dust storm and pending travel westward became handy excuses to skip the work – for now. We've had relatively few problems with the camper and the few things that are more nuisance than absolute malfunction, so no warranty work – so far.

Easter was nice and relaxing at the lake. Bluebonnets were in bloom, the weather was very pleasant. We were able to sleep through a possible hail storm under a secure roof with slight worries about our camper parked nearby, but no worries about physical harm to the family! Grandma had boiled eggs for the boys to 'dye' and we prepared 'resurrection rolls' for Easter morning. Resurrection rolls are plain yeast rolls, rolled and stretched to allow placing a marshmallow, cinnamon, sugar and melted butter in the middle. The roll is then folded around the goodies and 'sealed'. After baking, the inside is hollow – representing the empty tomb. This is a tradition for our family, so we just review the symbolism of the marshmallow as the body of Christ with the traditional application of oils and fragrance as we prepare the rolls together. We like the simplicity and also find the rolls yummy for Easter breakfast!

Crappie fish were biting and plentiful, so the boys had a great time fishing with their PaPa – and a tasty dinner.

We didn't take our camera, so no pictures from the Tea Party. In this relatively small community, hundreds turned out with handmade signs to peacefully protest our government's current overwhelming spending spree. From our perspective, this is a long-standing problem but has dramatically escalated at an alarming rate since the last national election. The problem is broader than the presidency but primarily lies with a majority of congressional and senatorial leaders that do not value fiscal prudence on behalf of the taxpayers. Media reports of Tea party events did not portray the people that we saw standing with us on the street that day. We believe that many people are concerned about the future of our country and the financial burden being built up not only for us, but for our children and grandchildren as well. We have written letters and made phone calls in the past to our representatives to voice our opinions on these issues, but we continually find ourselves ignored by the voting record. We don't know what the end result of Tea party participation will be, but we feel strongly enough about the erroneous political direction that actions may speak louder than words. We will be watching for more opportunities to show ourselves opposed to the gross deficit.