Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away!

Can you believe it actually rained this weekend!?!?  SO EXCITING!!  Except it didn't actually rain at our house.  No, it managed to deluge the area just a few exits down the interstate.  Oh, and on the OTHER side of our little neck of the woods, but not actually on our house. 

Sigh.

We keep hoping!  Someone out there know any rain dances?

Idyllic Images of Farm Life (minus cow poo smell)

So today I thought I'd post some pictures of life on the farm.  Just because.  Shannon, don't tell Chris.  :)

The kitties that live outside on the porch are growing like weeds!  They love to nap inside this cauldron that we planted with some elephant ears.  I guess it's cool inside it?  Anyway, you can barely see, but the gray cat is hiding there behind the plants. 

We also figure that this is exactly what Samson is going to look like when he gets a little older.  It may not take much longer though - he's already up to 6 pounds!  He's a beast.

So the 2nd garden of the season is planted and ready to grow! 

We have corn, squash, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, and sugar snap peas (they're just coming up).  I had difficulty last time with the tomatoes - we got here so late in the spring that I just planted the seeds straight into the ground, instead of growing them into seedlings first.  Well, this time we planned ahead, so I managed to start all of these plants by seed.  We have 12 tomato plants!  Too bad I don't eat tomatoes.  But Noel does.  And my coworkers have already asked for some too.  :)

Here's a view from the front porch.

And then sometimes, the cows decide to pay us a close-up visit.  This is why we have to keep the gates closed all the time.  The grass is greener on the other side, perhaps?

So that's life on the farm for this weekend.  If only you had smell-o-vision, you could get the full Smell of Nature effect.  Aren't you disappointed?  :)

Don't Forget!

To start off, thanks to everyone on the condolences about my sweet Grandmother. Secondly, we aren't at risk by the wildfires right now, so that's good.

Also, can I just say that you know it's been HOT when you go outside and say "Oh, it's so nice and cool out today! I'm going to take a walk while it's so balmy!" And it's 90 outside. Really. We were excited that it was only a 2 digit temperature today. Craziness.

Two weeks ago, Noel and I took a mini-vacation to San Antonio. Neither of us had ever been before, but we will definitely go back. It's fab!

The view from our hotel was gorgeous:

San Antonio is known for its riverwalk, a pedestrian area surrounding a river that runs right through town. It has restaurants, shops, and hotels all the way down it, and it's just fantastic!

There are bridges across the river, and each are different. Some are quite old too:

San Antonio has interesting sculptures too - this is a really big piece that stands out against the sky nicely:

And...what's this? I forget.....just kidding. It's the Alamo!

And who's this? Why, it's an official Texan! (Holding her new temporary Texas driver's license!) And shooting a finger gun! Because it's the Alamo!

The Alamo was quite interesting. We had heard from several people that it was anticlimatic - it's much smaller than expected, and it's in the middle of a built-up touristy part of town. However, it had a lot of history plaques, a lot of description of life at the time and the battles that took place building up to the battle at the Alamo, and a nice museum.

It was especially interesting since Noel grew up in the town where David Crockett was born, and we then visited where ol' Davy died. We took the opportunity to buy some souvenirs there as well, particularly the ones with David Crockett's most famous quote on it. When he was running for re-election in Tennessee, he said that if they didn't vote him back into office:

"You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."

Indeed.

We also went to the Texas Rangers museum (not the baseball team, the soldiers). Not pictured, Chuck Norris. It had a whole section that was built like an old west town, which was fun.

Note: That horse? Was actually a real horse that was one of the ranger's favorite horses, and was stuffed after he (the horse) died. I have no response to that...

In another part of the museum, they had a variety of Texicana. Here's Noel under an impressive ceiling full of deer horns:

In case you're creating your Christmas wish list, here's a little item you may want to consider - a chair made of horns:

Looks comfy!

The museum even had its own cowboy!

One of the cool things about San Antonio is the Tower of the Americas, an observation tower with a restaurant at the top:

We went to dinner there one night (yes I'm afraid of heights but other than the GLASS ELEVATOR, it wasn't scary), and got to see some spectacular views:

The restaurant itself was really swanky and super nice. The food was phenomenal. YUM!

On our last day there, we went to lunch at a place called Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian style steakhouse that is a carnivore's dream. Skewers of different types of meat cooking over an open flame:

How does the meat get from the skewer to your plate? Waiters bring the skewers around to you and you choose if you want some or not, and they carve it off the skewer! The food was DELICIOUS!! And the waiters are wearing little gaucho pants tucked into their boots! Hee hee.

We essentially walked and ate, then sat down and ate, then sat in the pool and later ate. And then ate some more. Did I mention that we ate everything we could get our hands on? San Antonio is fantastic - we loved it there. And we will be going back!

Sad News

Today's post is a sad one. On Friday, my dear Grandmother passed away. She was one of the most special people I have ever known. She was kind and loving, and very supportive of me throughout the changes in my life.

She was a talented quilter, a square dancer, and an avid gardener. She used to email me pictures of the flowers out of her garden, which is just too cute - a woman of 92 emailing pictures. Very sweet. She had a fantastic sense of humor, and was always quick to laugh. She made delicious fudge, and sewed me my very own square dancing dress once. She and my Granddaddy would drive down every year from northern West Virginia to North Carolina to sit through an interminable dance recital just to watch me dance for a few minutes. Her house was always full of love.

I had taken some pictures of flowers in our yard last week to email to her, but didn't get the chance to send them to her in time. She donated her body for medical research, so there won't be a service. So instead, I thought I'd post the photos in her honor.






We love and miss you, Grandmother.

The Sky Is Falling!!!

Know what this is?

Me either. But I looked it up on the internet, and apparently it's water that falls from the sky. It's called "Rain."

Yes friends, it FINALLY rained last night! We got a big storm! Noel and I sat on the porch and watched the storms.

The lightning was really impressive - it lit up the night like it was midday:

(That was taken at 9:45 pm).

Guess what doesn't photograph well with a regular camera?


Lightning bolts. It turned out weird, but I kinda like it. :)

We're so excited to have gotten some rain! The plants are just soaking it up - hopefully we'll have more coming in the near future!

Space...the Final Frontier....

And here we go, as promised! Pictures from our trip to NASA!

Now, we weren't so sure about what we would find on the tour, because we went there the week that the shuttle landed for the last time. We weren't sure if there would be scads of space engineers weeping into their pocket protectors or what. Fortunately we saw no sad astronauts.

But there was plenty of other stuff to see! Including the astronaut training area. They have pods that look like portions of the space station that the astronauts practice maneuvering around:


I thought it was neat that each piece of equipment has the sponsoring countries' flags above the module's name. There are a lot of surprising countries participating in the space station - not only Russia, Germany, Italy, and France (which you'd expect) but also Brazil!

We saw landing modules and space suits:

And this creepy looking robot thing. Sorry - this was the clearest picture I could get of it. It's a huge gold spider that's used for doing work on the outside of the space station. The multitude of feet make it easy to maneuver. And also make it extremely creepy.

So one of the things I was most excited to see was this android. Boba Fett!

This last picture is just for you, Rachel. Heh heh heh.

You're welcome.

Life has been busy! So I've got lots and lots of pictures to upload. You've probably heard a lot about the drought here in Texas. It's really bad here - we've had about 17 days of 100+ degree days in a row (which even for here is hot!). We also haven't had rain in ages.

It's really sad to see fields of ruined corn.

Our garden's been doing well, although we've been watering it like we're trying to drown it. This picture was from about a month ago - we still have okra and bell peppers left, but everything else has died down already:

We got a LOT of squash and okra! And the nice thing is, it's about time to start a new garden for the fall! We have squash, sugar snap peas, and tomato seedlings that are about ready to plant. We'll probably put them in the garden box on Saturday. It's a good thing to be able to grow your own veggies, especially with the costs of food supposedly going up a lot in the near future!

Life on the farm is still really good. We do have our daily challenges though:

Noel had just finished washing his truck when one of the cows came by and left a present right behind the wheel. HA HA HA! Nice.

So last week, my job sent me to Nashville for work. We stayed at a hotel near the huge Opryland Hotel, and for dinner we went to one of the hotel's restaurants. The inside of this hotel is AMAZING. There's a little river with boat rides, a massive garden/conservatory inside the center of the hotel, and gorgeous water fountains:

They even have fountains that squirt water, with colored lights! It was just incredible.

Noel's son Logan came for a visit too. We did lots of fun stuff, like going to NASA (photos coming soon) and the zoo (photos in just a minute). There was also some MMA style wrestling on the floor.

I feared for the furniture.

Anyway, we went to the Houston Zoo, which is a really impressive, very large zoo in the middle of downtown. We saw the aviary enclosure with faux ruins:

(I want faux ruins in my house).

In other news, I learned my new superpower: I can talk to giraffes. There were several giraffes, and I talked to one of them - "Come over here, handsome! Let me get your picture!" Well, guess what? He came over! And licked my fingers! And Noel got to pet him!

Confession: This following picture is from the aquarium. They have a white tiger. For some reason. It's gorgeous!


We also got to see the tigers at the zoo. One of them was feeling a little warm, so he went for a swim!

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion....

looks tired.

Speaking of kitties, check out this retrospective picture of Samson as a baby:

So sweet, so innocent.

And now, he's a much bigger boy! He and Loki sometimes try to kill each other, but then will settle in and take a nap together.

He looks so cute and precious. And then he looks like a turkey: