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Each year the Texas Renaissance Festival (click at your own risk. . .video and loud bagpipe music ahead) is attended by thousands. . .literally. There are die hards who live for it, make costumes for it, plan for it.
The day we went there were 32,000 there and that was just one day of one weekend. The kids and I had never been, Tony hadn’t been in years, and I can tell you right now that Thad will NOT be going as a teenaged boy. The wench costumes and chain-mail slave costumes are NOT for those with hormones surging. As it stood, he was only interested in his wooden sword this year. I’m not really a festival kind of gal, but it was a gorgeous fall day, and the kids had a good time with Tony’s parents and us too. The entire thing is 54 acres. We saw about 10. Here are some of the sights. . .
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- Can you BELIEVE this boy’s eyelashes????
My life is. . .
East
West
Neighborly
In Texas, there are FM roads. It stands for “Farm to Market” and harkens from days gone by. I used to live off of FM 1960–which is now a 6 lane road with a turn lane down the middle lined with all manner of capitalism run amok–and several Sonics.
Where I live now, there are also several FM roads, but my FAVORITE to drive is FM 362. It is about 5 miles longer than my normal route but, on days when I have the time or just want to, I take that way home. It’s 18 miles of curves and hills and pastures and beautiful Texas country vistas.
Once you get to the road I need to turn down to get home, it’s becomes woods again, but if you go the additional 10 miles to the end, you start getting into the very, very beginnings of the Texas hill country. It is worth the drive. So, on Saturday evening, I took my little camera and set off to photograph some sights. . .but discovered that I can simply hold my camera and click, click, click away as it focuses on the yellow line (as did I for those of you worriers) to get shots of the drive–not necessarily what I set out to get, but it made me happy. I took about 300 shots, but I won’t put them all here. You’re welcome.
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- Just Past the turn home.
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- Hill Country Ahead
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- Windows down, music up.
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- Approaching White Hall
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- Little barn
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- FM 362 North
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- Fun
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- Funx2
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- NOT in the road.
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- Hill country-ish
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- Highly recommend the Kia Rondo
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- GORGEOUS. Oh. My. Goodness.
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- Pretty
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- Moo
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- Fun again
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- Fun x 1 million
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- Texas
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- FM 362 South
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- More woods
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- Shade
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- Lone Star–also not in road.
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- Some of you may know this place.
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- Their very own road.
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- More shade
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- Texas 2
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- Curvy
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- Nearly Home
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- Take a right.
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- Baptist Church near the corner
We still have no grass in our “yard.” I used that term “yard” very, VERY loosely. We have dirt. We have weeds. We have lichens and fungi. We have FLOWERING weeds. We have weeds that do a fine IMPERSONATION of grass but not a blade of real, live (in Tony’s book ONLY St. Augustine qualifies) grass.
We still, however, have beauty. And yesterday morning I went in search of it WHILE wearing a sweatshirt. Bliss. Here is what I found. Click on the pictures to see closeup.
So. I am not the most graceful person around. I make no apologies OR excuses. But, today I bought a bike.
I LIVED on my bike when I was a kid. . .I had a light blue banana seat to start with, then moved up to a red Schwinn cruiser when I was in jr. high. I rode up the hill to my friend’s house, around the yard, along a trail in the woods, and to the convenience store at the end of the road. I. was. on. that. bike. But I haven’t touched one since I got out of college pretty much. Now that we have a lovely circular bike track. . .I mean driveway. . .and a black-topped road with VERY little traffic, Tony and I decided we wanted to ride bikes with the kids.
These bikes will not win any awards for snazziness or speed, but boy, oh boy, did we EVER have some fun riding them this afternoon. Mine is sort of a cerulean blue. . .lovely. . .but she needs a name. And a basket. I’ll take a picture of our very own Cruisers soon, but I borrowed someone else’s picture to show you what they look like.
These belong to somebody else, but they are what ours look like.
The lighting is bad, because I took these at night. . .but the desire to do so hit me, so I went with it. Our walls are still frightfully barren, but things are starting to shape up. As you will see from the captions, this was a “group” effort. Even if some of the ladies don’t know they were part of the group.
The first thing you see when you walk into my house. . .along with a pile of shoes by the front door. Floral arrangement courtesy of my sister. Table was my Granny's.
Plaque that is on the table in the entryway. . .it was supposed to go by the doorbell, but I plunked it on a photo stand, and we like it here.
My Granny's drop-leaf table. One day the photo tree from my Momma will have black and white family photos in it. Doily is Italian lace from my friend Carolyn.
This is standing at the fireplace looking back toward the entry and dining room. I conveniently cropped the pile of clean clothes that need to be folded OUT of the shot.
My friend Jennifer helped me with my mantle wall. . .lots of trial and error, but I like it. And more importantly, so does Tony.
My favorite side. . .I\'m normally not a colored candle kind of gal, but this one was just right. It\'s sitting atop a little grapevine wreath. Vase + eucalyptus = $20 @ WalMart.
Top of the entertainment armoire. This was the hard part.
Yes, there are tags dangling from the photo stands and a sticker on the hurricane globe. Long, long story that ended in the breaking of glass. Raided the study for “books to match” my color scheme, cast iron birdhouse from Tuesday Morning, photo of the kids I gave Tony for Father’s Day when Thad was 2.
Dining Room, The cabinet you can see totally see was my Granny's.
Coming into the dining room from the entryway. This china cabinet is the one I got at the flea market.
Crystal dish was given to me by Mrs. Ladelle for my wedding, and the doily was given to my by my friend Carolyn.
Extra chairs for Granny's table. My cousin reupholstered them several years ago. My wall is looking a little purple in this one.
And there you have it. The craft room is also doing much better. . .but the lighting in there at night, while wonderful for reading, writing short notes, contemplation, and readying one’s self for bed, is ATROCIOUS for picture taking.
Y’all come see us!!!!
So the first official week of school has come to a close. In fact, the first official Saturday after the first official week of school has very nearly come to a close. . .and we all survived–even thrived this week.
The kids LOVE–let me repeat L.O.V.E.–their new schools. No tears. No missing of Lamkin or their Cy-Fair friends in excess. Not even a little bit. Kudos to the Magnolia school district and their teachers and students. Thank you for making my children feel welcomed and loved.
Tony, too, had a good week. One day he sent me the following e-mail: “My kids are doing interview questions with each other right now, and I can actually hear myself think. I’m considering asking them to be a little louder. And they are even discussing the questions that they are supposed to be discussing. . .” Obviously, this has not been the case for the past 14 years of his teaching experience. He was in shock.
My kiddos, too, are very nice. . .everything going well. . .some of the “good” behavior wore off a little by 7th period on Friday, and I had to put my school teacher face on, but they settled down quickly, and it’s going to be a good year.
Of course, there were some glitches along the way. Victoria forgot her homework one day. . .and it was for the teacher that had been a little stern with another student the day before. A lunch kit was left on the shuttle bus on the second day of school, so that’s gone. And Thursday morning on my way out of the house, I fell AGAIN. I was not in a rush. I was not being careless. I simply stepped on a loose rock, and down I went. Well, actually, it probably looked like a very humorous slap-stick routine. I kind of wish someone had been secretly video taping it just so I could have watched it later on.
I was walking with purpose toward the car at 6:38 a.m., and very proud of my early departure, when wham, bam, blam. . .the ground moved and I began evasive maneuvers to avoid landing on anything but my feet. I was unsuccessful. After making enough scuffling, falling noises to wake the neighborhood, I landed on my left side near a huge tree that we cut down last summer. My feet were in the air, and I knew there would be a price to pay. Luckily, it was just the price of some pride. I wiggled my already injured ankle–which has been healing nicely–to make sure it was not reinjured. It barked a couple of times but was otherwise okay. I sat up and looked around. Nothing was spinning, so I got to my feet. I saw one shoe where I had left it on the driveway, but the other was nowhere in sight. It did not help that it was 6:40 a.m. and still a bit dark out. I finally located it 5 feet from where I’d fallen (an open-backed sandal, so it became a free agent as soon as the momentum hit) cowering under a particularly large milk weed bush. Next item on the agenda was finding my keys that had been in my hand. My bags were on the ground, but my keys were nowhere to be found. Again–dark out–I finally saw them winking at me from under a clump of yaupon in the opposite direction of my errant shoe. It was more like I exploded to the ground rather than merely falling.
After finding all of my belongings, I decided to take a look at my pants. There was a smudge on the knee, but nothing worth taking even MORE time to go back into the house over. I took a deep breath, climbed into my car, and headed out. It was 6:45.
I got three miles from the house, and discovered that I had forgotten my lunch. At this point, my head start was gone, so I turned around and went back to get it–thus adding 6 miles coming and going to my trip. I went into the house, turned on the light, located my lunch, and just happened to look down at my pants. The foyer brightness showed more than the dim light of dawn regarding the state of my pants. The entire left side of my cropped khakis was covered in what appeared to be the left-over results of a very cranky baby feeding himself creamed spinach with dismal results. I have not had to scrub grass stains off my children’s clothes in several years–much less my own–but I did that night.
So, I changed pants, then walked VERY SLOWLY back to my car and tried to leave AGAIN. It was 6:58 a.m. I was already late for school–so I stopped at Sonic and got a large Diet Coke. On the way there, new abrasions kept presenting themselves like bread crumbs–a pants burn on my knee, a gouge on my big toe, a broken toe nail, jabs in several fingers from the yaupon bush I flattened. . .you get the idea.
I had to laugh.
We’re back in the swing of things. . .
Just got home from the dedication of a new park in Small Town, Texas. There was free watermelon–water slide moonwalks–no less than THREE prayers offered–a color guard made up of veterans from three wars–Johnny Lee sang the national anthem (then took off to the bar down the highway to sing “Lookin’ for Love” 1,000 times I guess)–saw a few beers but no one was drunk–only heard one curse word and that was from a teenaged boy–no one honked their horns in frustration as all 1,000 or so of us waited our turn to get onto the two lane road with one lane going east and the other west–and the only thing I saw on the ground in the way of trash were some watermelon rinds. The fireworks were beautiful. I cried as the color guard posted the colors. Hats were removed for the pledge and EVERYONE said it. Happy Independence Day to you.
From the front part of the drive
Tony recently planted azalea bushes.
***Sigh***
MaMaw is here. I think she is in the kitchen unloading my dishwasher right now. . .after she bought us dinner. We may have to split her in two via the wisdom of Solomon–or at least threaten to the way the kids are both trying to do separate things with her at the same time. Mother Daughter Luncheon this weekend, so I will continue to be absent from my own blog–much like I have been the past two months. Before I go again, however, here’s Easter.
Le Spread on a make-do table.
My baybehs. . .
Heather on my green couch in her lavender dress.
