Roller skates

That's what I feel like I have on my feet. If I remember what May was like when our kids were at home, that's likely what everyone is feeling like!

So we went to the Caribbean (photos to follow), after we went to San Antonio (again) (photos to follow), have been home a week, and I'm off to Colorado to spend Mother's Day with my mom.

In the meantime I got a new camera and am currently learning to use it.

Saw my little friends buzzing around, and hurried with making nectar for them. 

My 'back yard' - never gets old. 

Are these irises or gladiolas? I can never remember!

Pretty pink. 

Knock out roses - they do fabulously in this part of Texas. Bloom almost year round!

Fake bird nest on the wreath on our front door. The real nest happens to be right above the same door, with a barn swallow sitting on eggs. Very pretty if you look up, not so much if you look directly below her...

It is virtually impossible to kill a crape myrtle. We wacked the daylights out of ours and they all came back. Whether we wanted them to or not. 

Mr. Lizard is on our sun porch every single wine-thirty. He knows all our secrets, and I'm trusting him to be tight-lipped. 

Sweet blue birds living in here. Did I mention I LOVE bluebirds. Especially since they don't build nests right over our front door, when our house is on the market. White globs on the front mat are not the best welcome...

Everyone should own a kayak. Especially if you live on the water. 

Wine-thirty, almost every single night. Love that the sunporch faces the west. 

Glorious.

Fishing for breakfast.

Little customers.



So I'll be back soon with stories and photos of our travels to San Antonio and the Caribbean. Right now I've got to pay some utility bills to keep the lights on, and throw stuff in a suitcase, again.

Did I mention I'm meeting high school girlfriends for margaritas and mexican food at our favorite restaurant Friday night? Girls I haven't seen for either 20 or 40 years. I'm confident we'll all look exactly the same, so there should be no problem recognizing each other. We'll all still have 24" waists and wear size 6 jeans too. Sure we will.

Okay, skates strapped on. Here I go!

P.S. Signing up for some college classes, which means I have to do math testing - yikes! I'll tell you all about that later too. 

Off to the wild blue yonder...

We've started an annual tradition of taking a trip with Don's brother and SIL every year. Year one was local Texas stuff. Two and three were in Branson. This year we chose a cruise here:

Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel - on Carnival Cruises (praying power and bathrooms will be up and running the entire time). And that my Dramamine will work. And that someone on the boat will look worse in a swimsuit. And I won't gain 10 lbs in a week.

I just upgraded cameras, and am taking my new one with me. Hopefully by the time the ship sails I'll be able to take photos that are focused. We'll see.

Back in a week!

Narcissism running amuck!

I'm going to give myself permission to put up a post that is all about us. We started getting the wonderful gift of grandchildren almost 12 years ago. I've been trying to get family photos of ALL OF US for quite awhile, and it's good it didn't happen before because our newest member is only six months old.

But we finally, finally got it done. Kids from Idaho came down, photographer was lined up, dress code was discussed, naps for little ones were attempted and it was a go.

Here's what we got:

Papa and Grammy, sometimes known as Don and Bev

Sarah and her family, Miss Sarah Grace, Miss Addie, Grayson, Caiden & Chris

Leslie and her family, Jeremy & Landon

Dan and his family, Daniel, Janae and Miss Jae Beth

Grown kids sharing a family joke

Us, our kids and 'married-ins' as I call them
You can see here why we call Sarah 'Runt'

All fifteen of us, mostly focusing on the photographer

Sarah's family dog, Scout snuck into some of their shots

With seven beautiful grandchildren, indeed life IS sweet!

Hartfields hamming it up. You can tell Addie lives with brothers!

Kisses for her Daddy.

We tried to get just the grandkids but a certain someone, who had his share of photographs, was less than happy. I jumped in to give snuggles - so wish Papa had joined me, but maybe the craziness scared him off!

Our newest, Miss Sarah Grace, with her Mama, Sarah

Many thanks to Rachel Ledbetter of RL Photography (out of Dallas) for doing such a beautiful job. I will treasure them for years to come.

Mercy!

My 40th high school reunion is just around the corner. (Mercy, how did THAT happen?)

 Combine that with the fact that I'm signing up to take a photography class at the local community college. I pulled out my college transcript, which consists completely of one remedial math and three art classes. Being in the education frame of mind, and since I'm trying to remember the names of many of the 349 people I went to high school with, I also took a look at my high school transcript. The dark, smudgy ink couldn't hide my poor GPA and class standing. Pitiful really.

When I shared the info with my husband (who graduated high school with a 3.8 and attended college for nine years) he said, 'that's what you got without trying; you'd think you would have had a good time, but you didn't.' 

I said, 'what do you mean?' 

He said, 'well, most people with that GPA were partying and having a good time. You didn't. You just didn't care, and you were trying to survive.'

' I told him, 'if any of our kids had brought home those grades they'd have been grounded for life, and been locked away in their bedrooms, possibly to starve.' 

I wonder how my classmates who finished below me fared.  

Did my father really sign those report cards? 

Really? 

Oh blessed hindsight! Who was I back then? 

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 

2 Corinthians 5:16-18 

Update to this post:  yes, we are in fact having a reunion, which means I DO indeed need to lose 10 lbs and do 1,000,000 sit-ups between now and mid-August. And do a better job of studying faces and names than I did Biology 40 years ago.

Treasure Hunting

One of our grandkids' favorite things to do, when they come to the lake, is comb the beach for 'treasures'. Since the lake seems to be down more than it's up, that works out well. We should have about 3-5' of water at the edge of our property, but we don't. We have beach.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

He was mortified to have to wear plastic bags on his feet, but alas he only had cowboy boots. Same boots that needed to be worn later that day for a family photo shoot. I promised him nobody would see him. (Don't tell him he made the blog.) 

The remnants of a gar fish. They're hard to hook because of the long, skinny snout. Got a high 'cool' rating. 

But I still told him we had to leave it there on the beach. No gar bones coming home with us. 

We took confetti eggs down to the beach, and I showed him how to crack them on his chest. I imagine someday that will be a funny mental picture for him, Grammy cracking eggs against her chest. I can't even stand how much I love this picture of that half-toothless grin. I'll love it more when he's grown up and taller than me.

Happy boy heading back to the house, treasures safely tucked into the mop bucket. Plastic bags a bit worn and we ended up having to use a toothbrush on the bottom of his boots, but Mama forgave us. 

East Texas has a well-kept secret - there's a great fish hatchery, close to Athens. We've visited several times with family and friends in tow.

This time we happened to pick "Outdoor Fools Day" to visit. Good choice on our part. There were food trucks, Smoky Bear, a snake show, and some other extra goodies scheduled. The main purpose of the place is to promote love of fishing and the outdoors, and it's really, really, really kid friendly. They even have poles and bait and people to fish with your kid if you don't know how to show them.

Here's a smattering of photos of our day there:

cousins :-)

Aunt Nessie, Landon and Uncle Jer

Uncle D with Daniel - it takes two arms to keep ahold of him!

Jae Beth and Aunt Nessie - pretty girls

Not so pretty but the kids thought it was great

Uncle D teaching his daughter to fish for the first time

22 months is old enough to learn to fish

Here - grab hold of it, it feels funny. 

Landon accepts the challenge and thinks it's great.

100 lb burmese python - kids loved it!

Dan, Leslie, Bev, Don

the wetlands there are beautiful

turtle doing yoga

patient mama

The kids under 4 were free, Landon was $3.50 and the adults were all of $5.50 each. So an inexpensive, fun day outdoors. We took two cars but I heard the kids in the other car were sound asleep minutes after heading for home.

Zoo day

You can't have Texas spring and little people visiting and NOT spend a day at the zoo.

So we did. We only had two hours to spare but squished in as much animal viewing as we could. Landon was our tour guide, choosing what to see this time, and what to save for next visit.

How cute is this? Pretty cute. 

Landon and his pretty mama, Leslie

I swear this horse did not like having his photo taken. Every time I'd zoom in on him he'd walk away. See that look he's giving me? Complete distrust. 

For some reason kids seem to prefer goats, 

pigs, and 

birds over the lions, tigers, etc. Not sure why. 

We did get to check out this massive guy. I think it was a guy. I was so struck by the size I forgot to check. 

Reading the map so we don't get lost. 

Grammy, Papa and our buddy, Landon

Giraffe tongues are a bit creepy. 

Landon loved that he could scootch up by the glass and look like they were sitting together. 

This guy (again, I think a guy) was so intent! Definitely made me wonder what he was thinking. 

Lions were beautiful - enjoying a nap on the sun-warmed rocks. 

Finally, Landon named the guy with the cap Paul, for some reason. The binoculars were his Uncle D's, back about 25 years ago. I love, love seeing our old toys come to life again.

It's been a good number of years since we've been to the zoo, and it's so much more fun with a little person leading the way. That's the up-note. The down-note is that they gave me senior discount without asking. (I didn't qualify.)