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I spent last week in the big city and survived the insanity:

I do not know how people deal with this every day. I'm not impatient so that's not the problem. It's just that there are SO MANY people! It makes me claustrophobic. I cannot breathe in town. But I hadn't been to see my mom in too long. We filed an extension for her taxes since I couldn't get down there until DH's back healed so that's what I tended to this trip. It was also her birthday so it was really good to get to spend it with her although I spent 90% of it working on those blasted corporate taxes. I told her we should go do something fun for her and she said that me doing her taxes was the best birthday gift ever. LOL.

My folks started their real estate business over 40 years ago and they built it from the ground up. They bought large pieces of property and subdivided it into smaller acreage. They carried all of the notes which means they did all of the financing for said notes and they had a couple hundred at the time. My mom and 2 or 3 salesmen showed the property on the weekends, and my folks did everything else themselves. This year marks the end of an era. All the properties have been sold and paid off. It's kind of bittersweet because although Daddy has been gone for almost 8 years, it's a business they built together. But this means this was the last year for corporate taxes. Yay!

My folks built a home 20 years ago in a subdivision and although, it's in a city, it's quiet and the homes back up against a ravine that is not cleared. Thus, they have regular visits from the wildlife that hang out there. A few years back, a couple of deer got caught in the neighbor's fencing that separates their front yard from their back yard. I just happened to walk out to my truck and the neighbor said that they were stuck in the fence. They had attempted to walk through and their front halves were on one side and their back halves were on the other. He had called animal control, but it was after hours and they would not come out. Poor deer were practically frantic, as was the neighbor. I circled around behind them, tried to pry the bars apart and then picked them up and  helped navigate them through the iron bars. They happily bounded away and when the neighbor looked at the bars they had been bent. He was astounded and asked me how I had bent iron. LOL. I told him it had to have been the good Lord because I had not eaten my Wheaties that day.

I was reminded of that incident because the neighborhood has a new resident as of 2 weeks ago:

Most of the neighbors have water elements in their yards and their yards are not fenced in the back so the deer are free to roam. This Mama and her baby were just hanging out every morning as we ate breakfast.

We have a lot of deer and antelope out here, but we seldom see the fawns and they certainly don't hang around our dining room window. The neighbors love seeing them, but it's kind of sad because they don't really have a very large natural area, they are surrounded by houses and the interstate is just a mile away. Still, the Mama looked like she was in good shape and her fawn was happy and gallivanting about:

It was a good week, but it's a long drive and I was glad when I finally turned down the dirt road. When I pulled up, this greeted me:

DH had built a fire and we dined on hotlinks as we visited and caught up with each other well past out usual bedtime. It was the perfect way to be welcomed home!