Blue Yonder

All These Blessin's

Well, we made it home. And as nice as it is to have all the comforts of our nest, we miss the beach a lot too. Why does vacation have to slip through your fingers so quickly? 

My men are little still, so I don't really know how much of this trip they will remember. If they are anything like their mama, they will remember bits and pieces... smells, feelings, odd little details. 

I'm hoping that they remember the salty taste of the ocean, and the feel of sand between their toes, the great gliding pelicans flying in formation overhead, the sound, the lullaby sound of the waves coming in.

 I hope they remember the booming horn of the cruise ship leaving, spotting dolphins in the bay, holding hands while we walked along the seawall, picking out shells and souvenirs at Murdochs, the cries of the laughing gulls. I hope they remember jumping and riding on waves, building sand castles and scavenging the beach for treasures and unexpected delights, like washed up jellies and clamy-things stuck to bottles and boards. I hope they remember how their aunt June taught them to dribble wet sand off their fingertips to build sand mountains, how their mama and Nana bustled around the kitchen making the first tomato pie of the season, and the charcoal smell from Daddy's grill. I hope they remember that when the table was set, and all were gathered 'round, it was Ryder who wanted to say the prayer. His sweet prayers always made us laugh and even brought a few tears... "Thank you God for this beautiful beach and all our many blessin's" 

I hope my boys remember their Grumpy, teaching them to play 31 - a game I learned to play during family gatherings too, and like them, I tried so hard to add up my cards as quickly as the adults. 

I hope they remember their awe at the aquarium, when the sharks swam overhead. 

I hope they remember the Duck Tour, the way their Daddy remembers doing the duck tour when he was a boy, vacationing in the Wisconsin Dells. I want them to remember eating calamari and fried shrimp, taking showers outside, making sand candles and plaster casts of their footprints. I want Ryder to remember the little plastic mermaid waterglobe he bought me at the Seven Seas Grocery. I want my guys to remember flying kites on the beach, the smell of Nana and Grumpy's coffee in the mornings, popsicles and bowls of cherries on the deck at sunset and all of us, the boys, Mama and Daddy, Nana and Grumpy and Aunt June together, laughing, wishing it would never end.

 I want to put it all, every last delicious bit, in a bottle and save it for always. The closest I could come though, was some sand from "our beach" and eight shells - one for each loved one that shared time together at Galveston. I'm going to put it in my kitchen window sill so that every now and again, we can look at it, and remember...

To Truly Love the Ocean

I am a firm believer that you can't teach a child to care for the earth without helping him fall in love with it's wonders. Well, let me tell you, my boys love for the ocean grew a little deeper yesterday, after a visit to the NOAA Sea Turtle Facility. Basically, it's just a big steel barn (they actually do call it the turtle barn), where they raise a whole bunch of sea turtles. It's part of a decades long effort to increase the dwindling population of sea turtles. Most specifically, the Kemp Ridley, which makes its home in the Gulf of Mexico. They raise new hatchlings until they are two years old (big enough to no longer be prey for crabs and other sea critters)

Then, they each participate in a test. 

See, one of the major killers of sea turtles is shrimping nets. The turtles get caught in them and are unable to come up for air, so they die. 

Scientists like the ones that work at NOAA are always looking for ways to help the fishermen do their job in a way that doesn't harm the turtles. 

The turtles from NOAA help them test their ideas. Each turtle participates in one test before it is released into the wild. 

So they're smart, not just good looking. :-)

We learned all about where they nest, and how they are rescued and cared for and rereleased. Mostly though, we just stared at them and wished we could stuff a few in our pockets.

As you might imagine, the boys' journal pages were FILLED yesterday with little drawings of sea turtles, brochures from NOAA and scrawled words like, "Sea Turtles ROCK!"

(oh, and as an aside, a few of you asked for more information about our journal "word bank" - click here for a better photo, and a few more details) If your little sea lovers would like to learn more about sea turtles you can visit these great sites: www.ridleyturtles.org

www.savetexasturtles.org  www.seaturtles.org

We also picked up a really sweet book that would make a great beach blanket read: Into the Sea 

Speaking of beach blanket... there's one calling my name! Happy Wednesday, folks!

We Interrupt This Program...

Well, we decided that it had been far too long since our toes had been sandy, so we headed south, to Galveston. And OH! It was just what my little broken hearted chicken papas needed. Sun, surf, sea glass and shell collecting, sand in everything we own, lots of shrimp, lazy mornings, chocolate milk, chasing sea gulls, flying kites, staying up way too late. It's been glorious. 

So, I'll be in and out this week, maybe sharing a few words and a few photos here and there, but mostly, I'll just be lounging, and soaking and living it up. Welcome SUMMER!

Oh, and yes, I do realize that it's the first monday of the month, and I've not announced a winner of the last contest, or provided you with a new one... So sorry. I do hope you'll forgive me and bare with me a little bit. I will announce the winner no later than this weekend, and will put up the new contest next Monday. You'll want to come back for that for sure, because I have some really wonderful prizes from Green Leaf and Owl!

Alright, my littles are coated in sunscreen, have buckets in hand and are calling, "Mama let's GO!!!!" 

Waves and sand, here we come!

I should probably come clean and tell you that half the reason we drive out the the berry farm (about an hour away from us) is that afterward we get to go to the famed Bluebonnet Cafe for burgers and pie.

That's right, pie!

Peanut Butter Pie

Coconut Cream Pie

German Chocolate Pie.

There we were, at the table, waiting not so patiently for our lunch. I was confiscating silverware, righting the salt shaker, picking up those little cups of creamer after their "pyramid" fell to the floor, taking each one individually to the bathroom (because the can't all go at once, of course not) and then I looked out the window and saw this:

I had to laugh. There was a time when I made the happy hour circuit. I was dressed to the nines and ready to set the world on fire. I was the next big thing in public relations. I was networking, sure that the next hand I shook would be my ticket to the fast track. There were a LOT of (not so) happy hours, and I can't say a one of them involved pie.

You know, it might be a kinder gentler corporate world if they had. Just imagine, men and women in their pinstripes discussing the merits of bulk mailings vs. print ads over apple pie a la mode.

I think the Bluebonnet might just be on to something!

My oldest was just over a year old when we first took him to Sweet Berry Farm. We have been every year since, and every year it's the same... red fingers and faces, sweaty brows and grubby legs, sore backs and thighs, mental notes of things to remember next year (note to self: sun screen, bottled water, a cooler for the berries' long ride home, cold wet rags for cooling necks and faces), and the same refrain, "It's hot, and there's bugs!"

My children (with gobs full of berries, mind you) like to make it known how miserable they are, how cruel I am to make them work so hard, how much they despise farm life.

Ryder told me, in the field, that this was his "worst day ever!" He promptly took off his camouflage crocks and hurled them across rows of berries - his version of a labor strike. It took five people FOREVER to find one of those shoes. (Another note to self: never buy camo shoes again, red, or blue, but not camo!). Nana even resorted to offering up a cash prize to the boy who found Ryder's shoe. Unfortunately for them, she was the one who found it.

When we filled all our berry buckets, and I suggested we do something new and exciting - dig potatoes - they all moaned and groaned and followed me down the row as though I were leading them to certain death.

But they dug, and they were earnestly impressed with real live produce under the dirt - for a few seconds they were impressed, before the bellyaching began anew. "You're going to wash them before we eat them, right? Do we HAVE to eat them?"

For all that complaining though, after we got home, and cooled off, drank a gallon a piece of water, peeled off sweaty clothes and stood under cool showers for far too long, do you know what I heard?

"When will the blackberries be ready for picking Mama?"

"Yeah Mama, and when will the peaches and blueberries be ready?"

They can't wait to go back.

They talk endlessly over the dinner table about how "we dug those potatoes Daddy! Right out of the dirt! They're really good, huh?"

They've been playing "farmer", discussing just what they would plant and who would do the picking. Both of these things are under ongoing negotiation, but one fact is clear - the chickens are relegated to "bug patrol".

When my guys, in all their farm planning, need a snack, they run in and out of the kitchen for handfuls of berries to carry outside, hollering as they run off "Aren't these the sweetest berries ever?"

And it's true, they are. We bought a basket of California berries at the store today, just to do a taste test, and while those were bigger and prettier than ours, our little berries packed WAY more taste.

That's kind of the moral of the story I guess - you have to endure a little ugly, to get to the sweet.

If you're a little fiddle player, or the kind of little guitar picker that proudly displays his (sort of) calloused fingers, Gruene Hall is the stuff dreams are made of.

If you didn't know any better, you might pass right by the place and not look twice at the unassuming building with it's whitewashed facade. Frankly, it looks more like a chicken house than anything one could call legendary.

Walk through that little screen door though, and you find yourself on the same ground where once stood some of the true greats - Ernest Tubb, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and some of my personal favorites too Lucinda Williams, Kelly Willis, Charlie Robison and Slaid Cleaves.

As the oldest still operating dance hall in Texas, you'd think they'd get the bug to renovate, pretty and polish it up a little, but they don't and they like it that way. I do too.

Everyone of those tables is covered in carved names. The floor is creaky and old and there are a few spots you might just fall through if your two-stepping gets too rowdy. Gruene Hall is hanging on to it's history though, it's grit. It wears each and every flaky bit of paint and gouged wood as a badge of honor. It is a true testament to aging gracefully.

I told my aspiring musicians that as for me, if I were going to rosin up my bow, I'd rather play a place like that than a big fancy auditorium any day. If I was going to make music I'd want to be down in it, where I could see the dust flyin' off the boots, you know?

I'm just sayin' that it's good, really good, that in an age of fast fame and bright lights there's still places where it's the music that matters.

The boys and I are going to hit the open road for a few days. We're headed over the hills and through the woods to Granny's house. (no really, we live in the "Hill Country" and we're headed to the Davy Crockett National Forest!)

This young man is at that lovely, "I can do it myself!" phase.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

We'll be back with stories to share on Monday.

We live in an old neighborhood, so, when just a block from us, a new sidewalk is being laid, it's big news. Even bigger is the news that the sidewalk actually turns into a sort of greenbelt, blazing a trail along the creek through the woods.

We set out today to make our first official bike trek down the trail. We knew that it would be a long, cold ride, but I remembered a coffee house about halfway on the loop down the trail and back around side streets to our home. So, I thought with a little hot chocolate pit stop, we should be able to make it.

This idea actually held a deep satisfaction for me, because I would very much like it if we could ride our bikes more places. We just don't live in the kind of community where you can forgo a car altogether, and just get by on pedal power.

Japan comes to mind (as it often does).

I could have taken hundreds of photos of long stretches of bikes, just like this one. With gas at about $6 a gallon, and parking ridiculously expensive and difficult, bike riding seems to be the preferred method of transportation. There, every bike has a basket, many have seats for children on the back, and some even have seats for children on the back AND the front. * (edited to add a footnote about the masks people wear in Japan - see bottom)

So, off we went, feeling full of adventure and proud that we had an actual place to GO on our bikes. It didn't take long though, for the tales of woe concerning frozen fingers and cheeks to begin.

We braved on, and reached our destination only seconds before we faced certain death by way of hypothermia (that can happen at 48 degrees, right? :-). We arrived at the coffee house.... the very closed, and in fact OUT OF BUSINESS coffee house.

It took all that I had to rally the troops. We pedaled on and finally made it to our gym, which has a cafe, and thankfully, hot chocolate. Make it a tall, and throw in a raspberry fudge brownie for the arctic explorers, please. (Why do they have things like that at the gym?)

Note how all ten of his little digits are soaking in the warmth of that drink!

The boys thawed, and managed to make the trek home again. You should have heard their tales for Daddy though. I think they might have even conjured up a polar bear for effect.

Hope you are staying warm today!

* About those surgical masks that you see Japanese people wearing in a lot of my photos... It's actually really cool. People wear them there if they have allergies, to keep out the pollen, or if they have a cold, to spare others, or if they have something big coming up (an exam, or vacation, say) and don't want to risk getting sick. I saw TONS of people with them, even little kids. I think it's such a nice idea, keeping your germs to yourself.

Lucky us... my Dad had a business meeting an hour and a half south of us, in San Antionio. So, he and my mom asked the boys and I to come along for the ride.

It was just one night, but man, did we manage to cram a lot of learning and soaking, walking, oohing, ahhing and good fun out of it!

First, Grumpy (that's what they call my Dad) and Nana, treated us to Mexican food and a boat ride on the River Walk. The twinkly lights and chilly night were magic.

Afterwards, a night time stroll past the Alamo, hand holding, stories of heros of old, then a cozy night tucked into a poshy piled high bed in a fancy pants hotel. (Thanks, Nana and Grumpy!)

In the morning, a swim in the giant tub, followed by breakfast with a mariachi, at the historic Mi Tierra,

... where we learned that refried beans are GOOOOOOOOD on breakfast tacos, and that Mexico has a wonderful way with pastries.

Some Mexican market shopping, some street car riding, some more river walking and a tour of the inside of the Alamo = a very good day indeed.

We came home full of inspiration... to know more about the Alamo, Texas History, our Mexican heritage...

not to mention Lucha Libre. (that's my boy, on the street car, in a mask that he absolutely HAD to have at the Mexican market)

As for the Mama, I came home inspired to get back to cutting..

Can I just say, field trips ROCK!?!

Remember, not too long ago, how I was putting on my brave face, trying not to complain that it seemed the whole world had been given the gift of glorious fall while we Texans were still sweating it out?

Well well well... my how things have changed.

This, was during our camping trip. It was taken on Tuesday, when it was 84 degrees.

This, was taken moments ago in our backyard, where it is a whopping 48 degrees. An exact flip flop of digits, in only a matter of days.

I guess it goes without saying that my head is spinning a little as I dig through boxes and try to find our wayward gloves.

Happy Hour

I should probably come clean and tell you that half the reason we drive out the the berry farm (about an hour away from us) is that afterward we get to go to the famed Bluebonnet Cafe for burgers and pie.

That's right, pie!

Peanut Butter Pie

Coconut Cream Pie

German Chocolate Pie.

There we were, at the table, waiting not so patiently for our lunch. I was confiscating silverware, righting the salt shaker, picking up those little cups of creamer after their "pyramid" fell to the floor, taking each one individually to the bathroom (because the can't all go at once, of course not) and then I looked out the window and saw this:

I had to laugh. There was a time when I made the happy hour circuit. I was dressed to the nines and ready to set the world on fire. I was the next big thing in public relations. I was networking, sure that the next hand I shook would be my ticket to the fast track. There were a LOT of (not so) happy hours, and I can't say a one of them involved pie.

You know, it might be a kinder gentler corporate world if they had. Just imagine, men and women in their pinstripes discussing the merits of bulk mailings vs. print ads over apple pie a la mode.

I think the Bluebonnet might just be on to something!

It's Hot and There's Bugs!

My oldest was just over a year old when we first took him to Sweet Berry Farm. We have been every year since, and every year it's the same... red fingers and faces, sweaty brows and grubby legs, sore backs and thighs, mental notes of things to remember next year (note to self: sun screen, bottled water, a cooler for the berries' long ride home, cold wet rags for cooling necks and faces), and the same refrain, "It's hot, and there's bugs!"

My children (with gobs full of berries, mind you) like to make it known how miserable they are, how cruel I am to make them work so hard, how much they despise farm life.

Ryder told me, in the field, that this was his "worst day ever!" He promptly took off his camouflage crocks and hurled them across rows of berries - his version of a labor strike. It took five people FOREVER to find one of those shoes. (Another note to self: never buy camo shoes again, red, or blue, but not camo!). Nana even resorted to offering up a cash prize to the boy who found Ryder's shoe. Unfortunately for them, she was the one who found it.

When we filled all our berry buckets, and I suggested we do something new and exciting - dig potatoes - they all moaned and groaned and followed me down the row as though I were leading them to certain death.

But they dug, and they were earnestly impressed with real live produce under the dirt - for a few seconds they were impressed, before the bellyaching began anew. "You're going to wash them before we eat them, right? Do we HAVE to eat them?"

For all that complaining though, after we got home, and cooled off, drank a gallon a piece of water, peeled off sweaty clothes and stood under cool showers for far too long, do you know what I heard?

"When will the blackberries be ready for picking Mama?"

"Yeah Mama, and when will the peaches and blueberries be ready?"

They can't wait to go back.

They talk endlessly over the dinner table about how "we dug those potatoes Daddy! Right out of the dirt! They're really good, huh?"

They've been playing "farmer", discussing just what they would plant and who would do the picking. Both of these things are under ongoing negotiation, but one fact is clear - the chickens are relegated to "bug patrol".

When my guys, in all their farm planning, need a snack, they run in and out of the kitchen for handfuls of berries to carry outside, hollering as they run off "Aren't these the sweetest berries ever?"

And it's true, they are. We bought a basket of California berries at the store today, just to do a taste test, and while those were bigger and prettier than ours, our little berries packed WAY more taste.

That's kind of the moral of the story I guess - you have to endure a little ugly, to get to the sweet.

A Texas Legend

If you're a little fiddle player, or the kind of little guitar picker that proudly displays his (sort of) calloused fingers, Gruene Hall is the stuff dreams are made of.

If you didn't know any better, you might pass right by the place and not look twice at the unassuming building with it's whitewashed facade. Frankly, it looks more like a chicken house than anything one could call legendary.

Walk through that little screen door though, and you find yourself on the same ground where once stood some of the true greats - Ernest Tubb, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and some of my personal favorites too Lucinda Williams, Kelly Willis, Charlie Robison and Slaid Cleaves.

As the oldest still operating dance hall in Texas, you'd think they'd get the bug to renovate, pretty and polish it up a little, but they don't and they like it that way. I do too.

Everyone of those tables is covered in carved names. The floor is creaky and old and there are a few spots you might just fall through if your two-stepping gets too rowdy. Gruene Hall is hanging on to it's history though, it's grit. It wears each and every flaky bit of paint and gouged wood as a badge of honor. It is a true testament to aging gracefully.

I told my aspiring musicians that as for me, if I were going to rosin up my bow, I'd rather play a place like that than a big fancy auditorium any day. If I was going to make music I'd want to be down in it, where I could see the dust flyin' off the boots, you know?

I'm just sayin' that it's good, really good, that in an age of fast fame and bright lights there's still places where it's the music that matters.

Heading Out

The boys and I are going to hit the open road for a few days. We're headed over the hills and through the woods to Granny's house. (no really, we live in the "Hill Country" and we're headed to the Davy Crockett National Forest!)

This young man is at that lovely, "I can do it myself!" phase.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

We'll be back with stories to share on Monday.

A Long Cold Ride

We live in an old neighborhood, so, when just a block from us, a new sidewalk is being laid, it's big news. Even bigger is the news that the sidewalk actually turns into a sort of greenbelt, blazing a trail along the creek through the woods.

We set out today to make our first official bike trek down the trail. We knew that it would be a long, cold ride, but I remembered a coffee house about halfway on the loop down the trail and back around side streets to our home. So, I thought with a little hot chocolate pit stop, we should be able to make it.

This idea actually held a deep satisfaction for me, because I would very much like it if we could ride our bikes more places. We just don't live in the kind of community where you can forgo a car altogether, and just get by on pedal power.

Japan comes to mind (as it often does).

I could have taken hundreds of photos of long stretches of bikes, just like this one. With gas at about $6 a gallon, and parking ridiculously expensive and difficult, bike riding seems to be the preferred method of transportation. There, every bike has a basket, many have seats for children on the back, and some even have seats for children on the back AND the front. * (edited to add a footnote about the masks people wear in Japan - see bottom)

So, off we went, feeling full of adventure and proud that we had an actual place to GO on our bikes. It didn't take long though, for the tales of woe concerning frozen fingers and cheeks to begin.

We braved on, and reached our destination only seconds before we faced certain death by way of hypothermia (that can happen at 48 degrees, right? :-). We arrived at the coffee house.... the very closed, and in fact OUT OF BUSINESS coffee house.

It took all that I had to rally the troops. We pedaled on and finally made it to our gym, which has a cafe, and thankfully, hot chocolate. Make it a tall, and throw in a raspberry fudge brownie for the arctic explorers, please. (Why do they have things like that at the gym?)

Note how all ten of his little digits are soaking in the warmth of that drink!

The boys thawed, and managed to make the trek home again. You should have heard their tales for Daddy though. I think they might have even conjured up a polar bear for effect.

Hope you are staying warm today!

* About those surgical masks that you see Japanese people wearing in a lot of my photos... It's actually really cool. People wear them there if they have allergies, to keep out the pollen, or if they have a cold, to spare others, or if they have something big coming up (an exam, or vacation, say) and don't want to risk getting sick. I saw TONS of people with them, even little kids. I think it's such a nice idea, keeping your germs to yourself.

Remember the Alamo

Lucky us... my Dad had a business meeting an hour and a half south of us, in San Antionio. So, he and my mom asked the boys and I to come along for the ride.

It was just one night, but man, did we manage to cram a lot of learning and soaking, walking, oohing, ahhing and good fun out of it!

First, Grumpy (that's what they call my Dad) and Nana, treated us to Mexican food and a boat ride on the River Walk. The twinkly lights and chilly night were magic.

Afterwards, a night time stroll past the Alamo, hand holding, stories of heros of old, then a cozy night tucked into a poshy piled high bed in a fancy pants hotel. (Thanks, Nana and Grumpy!)

In the morning, a swim in the giant tub, followed by breakfast with a mariachi, at the historic Mi Tierra,

... where we learned that refried beans are GOOOOOOOOD on breakfast tacos, and that Mexico has a wonderful way with pastries.

Some Mexican market shopping, some street car riding, some more river walking and a tour of the inside of the Alamo = a very good day indeed.

We came home full of inspiration... to know more about the Alamo, Texas History, our Mexican heritage...

not to mention Lucha Libre. (that's my boy, on the street car, in a mask that he absolutely HAD to have at the Mexican market)

As for the Mama, I came home inspired to get back to cutting..

Can I just say, field trips ROCK!?!

Swim Suit To Scarves

Remember, not too long ago, how I was putting on my brave face, trying not to complain that it seemed the whole world had been given the gift of glorious fall while we Texans were still sweating it out?

Well well well... my how things have changed.

This, was during our camping trip. It was taken on Tuesday, when it was 84 degrees.

This, was taken moments ago in our backyard, where it is a whopping 48 degrees. An exact flip flop of digits, in only a matter of days.

I guess it goes without saying that my head is spinning a little as I dig through boxes and try to find our wayward gloves.