• Florida Trail

    That Time I Was On A Podcast…

    Whew, well, it finally happened last week. I recorded a short segment on the Trail Show about the Florida Trail with the crew on The Trail Show! I was very nervous about it but thankfully my nerves were eased by a: it was a phone Skype call and not video and b: the ease in which they had their questions lined up. They are excellent interviewers! I actually haven’t listened to the episode yet, mostly because I’m not interested in listening to myself. However, Chris listened to it and said it was great. I’m not sure where exactly my part comes in at. You can either scroll through and listen…

  • Pets,  Travel & Places

    Feral Cat Love

    Sweet, sweet Little Callie. She lets us pet her, sometimes we can pick her up briefly. Unfortunately she and Fred are both picked on by Tom and Mr. Stripey, and apparently by Ruby on occassion. Sometimes I wish I could bring her inside and she could be a girlfriend for Samson or Leo. Fred, sweet and shy boy. We thought we were going to lose Fred last week. Two weeks ago Ruby was sick for a few days, lingering off by herself and not eating. She appeared miserable but after three or four days she began eating. Sometime in the middle of her sickness Isis disappeared. She has not returned.…

  • Gardening

    Blossoms

    I wish that these blossoms would last longer than I know they will. The magnolia might be ‘Ann’, but we’re not sure. The tag disappeared off of the tree, however it might be lingering somewhere in our piles of garden tags and information….somewhere. The two ‘Yellow Bird’ magnolias have not bloomed yet. Even so, only one will. The second one was rammed down by a buck and we left it to determine if would sprout back in the spring. I’m still tempted to rip it out and put a bigger one back in its place. We have a ‘Jane’ magnolia as well but it hasn’t bloomed yet either. Down the…

  • Gardening

    The Next Garden Phase

    With spring weather appearing Chris and I have been outside in the yard working furiously on various projects. Our current project is what will hopefully be a quick perimeter flower bed around the man-cave. This area had previously been landscaped as per evidence we’ve found in the bed: soaker hoses, old stumps, telephone poles acting as a border, pieces of green plant tape, and other miscellaneous items garden related. We still had plenty of stone left from the other flower gardens that needed to be put to use and they have worked out perfectly for this section. Standing back further in the driveway, the new bed really does tie together…

  • Food

    Pizza On The Grill

    The first thing we cooked on our new grill was pizza. I had seen several people blogging about pizza on the grill and had been intrigued for awhile. We use a dough recipe from a Pampered Chef book that is usually made on a pizza stone, but it worked well on the grill. Bubbling up nice! A little olive oil on the top side… And then flip it over! The process is incredibly fast, so you really need to be on top of your game and have all ingredients ready and on hand. Pizza! I’ve now had grilled pizza three times in the span of two weeks and I am…

  • Nature in the City,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Pineywoods Native Plant Center | Nature In The City

    Over the weekend Chris and I were in Nacogdoches and spent some time around Stephen F. Austin State University and their outdoor botanical parks. The first one we stopped at was the Pineywoods Native Plant Center on the north side of the campus. The directions to get there were a little sketchy for our Garmin to figure out, but eventually we found it. There was a family event going on with kids running to different stations to learn about nature—at one station I saw something called the ‘Bird Olympics’. I wonder what that was about? After walking around the front part of the center we found out there were trails…

  • Baby Teddy

    Wrapping Up The First Trimester

    Now that I’m officially in my 12th week I am starting to feel better. Though, Sunday I was hit with a wretched headache. I had attributed it to not sleeping very well in the hotel the night before but apparently after reading online when morning sickness leaves, headaches enter. Cooooool. I actually hadn’t had a headache in quite awhile, something I had thought had to do with my being off coffee. Sometimes I’ll end up with a caffeine headache on weekends but that hadn’t been a problem since quitting coffee in early January. As I said last week I was going to wrap up my thoughts on the first trimester…

  • Texas

    Caddo Mounds State Historic Site

    Over the weekend Chris and I were in Nacogdoches to attend a short bat seminar. Before we arrived there on Friday we detoured to the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site about 30 miles west of Nacogdoches. I’d seen the park on Google Earth and thought it would be interesting to check out. We arrived right as they were getting ready to close but were allowed in anyway. Unfortunately they’d already closed their register for the day, ($2 per person), so we dropped back by on our way out of town later in the weekend to pay. The man in charge was friendly and let us use their golf cart to…

  • Gardening

    Spring…around the corner??

    It sure seems that way with our forecast for the next 10 days being in the 60s and 70s. Even if spring isn’t around the corner, I think some plants in the yard believe it is. The crocus we planted last year are sprouting and blooming out in the right-of-way. In the edible garden a lot of our greens are bolting. There’s a plethora of yellow blooms out there, so much so that they are attracting our bees! One of the side by-products of the first trimester has been an aversion to vegetables. Therefore a lot of our greens have gone uneaten and I feel really guilty about that. I…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Acne, Food Aversions & Early to Bed | The First Trimester

    The Backstory: Chris and I aren’t ‘old’ but we’re not spring chickens either. We finally decided that we should leap into this parenthood adventure after many years of putting it off. We’ve been married almost 12 years (coming this June), I’m 33 and he’s 34. Not that I couldn’t have gone on with life with just two of us and the ability to adventure into places without a child in tow, but we thought it was worth the time to go ahead and see where this trail led us. Without going into too many details, it was on the fourth month of heading down this path that I got the…