• Friday Five,  Memes

    Friday Five | 3

    Another fast week! Childless Man Gets a C-Section: a podcast via The Longest Shortest Time. While the title suggests it is all about a man understanding a c-section, really the episode is about c-sections in general. I may have cried while listening. Monica Lewinsky: The Price of Shame: I was in college when the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal was going on and while I had an ear slightly turned to it all, I didn’t pay that much attention. However, I did really find her talk eloquent and very appropriate for today’s internet society. I’ve definitely found that internet shaming has seeped into real life with people finding it easier to lose empathy…

  • Creative,  Reading

    January 2016 Book Report

    In my effort to read all the books this year, I made some progress with reading this month. Here’s the lowdown: Completed The Care and Management of Lies by Jaqueline Winspear. I’m a huge fan of historical fiction and as I was trolling through the Overdrive app for our library this one piqued my interest. I rated it 3/5 stars because of some character development issues and some weird language/writing at the beginning. The book is set in WWI England and we see the beginning of the war from three different vantage points. Because of this I believe it easily could have been split into two books. Also, there was…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors

    Evening Trail Explorations | SFA State Park

    After we returned to the campsite and Forest played around for awhile, I decided to take him for a walk while Chris tried to get a campfire going. The wood was wet from the rain and it was proving to be a slow going feat. Chasing a toddler around was fun for awhile but was definitely on the exhausting end, so a walk was definitely in order. I hadn’t meant to dive off onto a trail, intending to just walk the large loop in the campground, but we eventually found ourselves at the Brazos River. The trail was a little muddy and puddled here and there, but that didn’t stop…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family,  Outdoors

    Campsite Shenanigans! | SFA State Park

    We haven’t been camping since early October at Martin Dies Jr State Park. The three other reservations we’ve had since then were all thrwarted due to weather. In all reality this one should have probably been cancelled, too. We spent about three hours in nearby Katy dodging thunderstorms that appeared earlier than predicted once we arrived, and temperatures overnight were pretty cold—the three of us tried our best to snuggle in the tent overnight but we all slept rather poorly. I’ll have more write-ups and photos soon, but for today I’m just sharing some of the fun photos of Forest around the campsite when we arrived back from our excursion…

  • Friday Five,  Memes

    Friday Five | 2

    Oof! We went camping last weekend and mid-week I was thinking, man, I never remember it always takes me a week to adjust to my usual schedule and feel back in the swing of things after a bit of time away. And then, of course, late Tuesday I started feeling iffy with a sore throat that turned into feeling like someone had roughed up my throat with a Brillo pad on Wednesday. Wednesday evening I was not feeling like doing anything and debated if this was going to be the flu, strep throat, or tonsillitis. When I woke up yesterday I knew better than to go into work and decided…

  • Gardening

    Wildlife Cam | Beavers, Pileated Woodpeckers, and the Feral Cats

    The beavers have been trying to demolish a few of our trees down by the pond. Chris put up some mesh to prevent that but left one tree that was already doing poorly so that the beavers could chow down on it. Then, he ordered a new wildlife cam and this is the result! I sped the videos up 4x but you can still hear some of the sounds of the beaver munching away on the tree. Enjoy!

  • Friday Five,  Memes

    Friday Five | 1

    I’m starting to slip back into sporadic posting again and would love to make a twice a week habit of writing so I don’t get lazy about writing. So, hey, a new weekly themed post, my spin on the popular Five Things Friday! I was not a fan of Shakespeare’s poetry in highschool, I was much more into his plays, but if I had Alan Rickman reciting it to me it might have been much more interesting. Goodbye, Colonel Brandon. Science is a hostage in the Oregon standoff. I’ve been watching all of the science and wildlife folks on social media in regards to the asinine takeover of the Malheur…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Life With A Younger Toddler

    My brother with Forest over New Year’s weekend. They were being silly and I thought it was funny I caught my brother sticking his tongue out! Life with a 16 month old, versus this time last year, with a four month old, is as you guessed, very different. As insane dealing with a toddler can be, it is becoming more fun by the day! Of course I miss many of those wonderful baby stage days but on many aspects I really don’t miss that stage at all! When Forest turned a year old I didn’t anticipate doing many updates after, but I feel the need to write a few things…

  • Florida Trail

    5 Years Ago | Starting the Florida Trail

    It probably helps that Chris and I went to Florida two years ago, when I was just transitioning from my first trimester to the second, but it certainly doesn’t feel as if it has been five years since we left Loop Road and hiked through Florida. It doesn’t seem like nearly six years ago since we moved out of the state. You know those bumper stickers that you see in Texas sometimes that say, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could”? Well, that would be me for Florida. And if it weren’t for family we’d probably still be there. The Florida Trail is…

  • Family,  Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    2nd Day Hike at Eagle Mountain Park

    First Day Hikes have become more popular in the last several years, which is very good thing, however we weren’t able to get out and enjoy a hike on the first day of 2016. Chris and I had opted to go up to visit our families in DFW during the latter part of our winter break and that encompassed the New Years holiday. After being cooped up for several days due to various visits with family and cold weather, Chris was itching to go for a hike somewhere on the second day of the year. It was a rather lazy start to that Saturday, enjoying bacon cooked by my mom…