• Thoughts

    Currently | Late September

    From September 2009 In My Head I’m thinking about how fast we’ve sped through September already! I am also thinking about how glad I am for the Autumn Equinox. I’m finding that so many people have latched onto loving Fall in the last few years. There’s just something about the light and the colors that make it a magical season. I decided to go through my archives and pick some old posts from the last five years from September. It was fun to go down memory lane: 2010: + The Ocean 2011: +16 Miles Through Sam Houston 2012: +Making Way for New Growth 2013: +Cedar Brake Outer Loop | Dinosaur…

  • Hiking,  Local Adventures,  Outdoors

    Local Adventures | On the Lone Star Trail

    It’s been a long time since I have categorized something as a Local Adventure, though I have had other blog entries that might have been written as such. I decided this hiking trip should be labelled as a Local Adventure and so here we go! After having quite a busy and hot summer (when is it never hot in Texas during the summer?) Chris and I sat down and planned out a pretty full autumn and early winter, filled with camping trips and other excursions. We have a lot on our plate at home, too, with general yard and house chores. Sometimes, a lot of the time, I tend to…

  • Gardening

    Planting Cypress Trees

    Chris has been working on the shoreline of the pond in front of our house lately. Elephant ears have taken over the shoreline in many areas of the pond, particularly where people aren’t maintaining the shoreline as much. We tend to keep our shoreline wilder than many others but that has meant letting the elephant ears get out of control. A year and a half ago Chris worked on knocking them back on the south side of the pond but the north side remained. That area has since gotten overgrown with elephant ears and they have choked out some of the other plants we’ve put down at the shoreline. Chris…

  • Bees,  Gardening

    Honey Harvest

    This year the bees have been doing very well. Last year we had the freak freeze/ice storm in early March just as we were leaving for Florida. We had left the hive unprotected and thus at least half of the bees perished. It was touch and go for awhile and then we ended up with a bad hive beetle infestation. I believe Chris pulled only a comb from the hive, giving us a quart of honey for last year. It was rough last year for the bees. Chris got the hive beetles under control and has been able to take care of the bees better this year and so we…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Party Time!

    Growing up we didn’t have a lot of birthday parties. My parents didn’t always have a lot of extraneous money so most birthdays were quiet family affairs. Even so, I’m still not a big party person (hello, introvert) but I knew that I definitely wanted to have a big bash for Forest’s first birthday. Since Forest’s birthday is so close to Labor Day here in the US we will always have a good option for throwing a party or doing a little weekend getaway as a little family. For Forest’s first birthday we kept it pretty simple inviting my mom and dad, Chris’ mom and step-dad, and Chris’ dad and…

  • Florida Trail

    Help the Florida Trail

    The Florida Trail has had some hardships in recent years, some I touched on in this post, but more recently a large swath of land in the panhandle is for sale and the Florida Trail was kicked off of this land and rerouted through a roadwalk. Unless anyone has several million dollars to faciliate a corridor being accessed through there, or better yet whatever billion it’ll take to buy the whole area outright (come on, let’s make another National Forest!), for the current short-term outlook the Florida Trail won’t be going through this area. Since the option of really helping that area out isn’t going to be something I or…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    First Birthday

    Alright, strap yourself in! This is going to be one photo heavy post! If one is going to go all out with photos, a first birthday is a great excuse to do so. Chris and I took the day off to spend with Forest for his first birthday. One thing I’ve hated in this last year is how little time we really get to spend with him during the week and I think prioritizing moments like this is important if it is accesible to us. We woke up about our usual time this morning, 6:45 am, and took some time to wake up and get moving around the house. Forest…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Forest at 1 Year

    I can’t even…a year? A YEAR? I’ve gone through 52 weeks of weekly photos, writing weekly and then monthly about this growing child of mine. If the first six months of his life felt eternally long, the last six months have breezed by me. Here’s the final installment of Forest’s first year of life. While I won’t be documenting his life like this in this space after this post, I will be keeping things for myself behind the scenes. He’ll still make appearances here in other forms but I’ll be tailoring it differently. Food: The kid has finally figured out solid food! We’re still feeding him some jarred food but…