Fun In The (Slight Lack Of) Sun

This is how I know I've acclimated to the Texas weather. My husband and I determined that since it was such a "nice day" on Monday (95 degrees), we should take advantage of his very rare vacation day and have some family fun at a local farm that has a petting zoo-type area and lots of room to roam around and act all countryfied. If I haven't mentioned it before, we relocated from Seattle about a year ago to a suburb of Dallas that is quickly becoming fairly cosmopolitan, but that still has a working ranch here and there scattered among the office parks, Central Markets, nightmare quantities of chain restaurants... you get the picture.

Anyway, although I grew up in a rural area and am very used to the whole "cow" scene, a farm was a bit of a novelty for my daughter, who spends most of her summers indoors or in the pool (they all do here - too hot for anything else).




We paid our $5 each and did the whole touristy thing, including feeding the chickens, goats and sheep, marveling at the longhorns, petting the horses, and a quick hay ride around the pond, all the while talking about how "pleasant" it was with the "breeze," which pretty much felt like a blow dryer.

Family fun accomplished! We avoided, however, discussing the adjacent sausage plant. Although I'm sure the significance would have been lost on my daughter, somehow it just didn't seem right...