I don’t have many photos of Little Me around as most of those photos are at my parent’s house, but I do have a scan of this photo on hand. It may have even appeared on this blog at some point in the last 20 years, too, so apologies if you’ve seen it before! For years I thought I caught this fish. Years. I was three and we’d gone down to Rockport for a vacation, I feel like it might have been over Labor Day weekend. My parents can probably clarify that part. I remember the condo we stayed at and can conjure up some vague memories and feelings about…

Traveling to New Mexico this summer for our 20th anniversary was the best decision of the year, I think. Forest was at my parents house for two weeks and Chris and I had solo time in New Mexico. It wasn’t quite the trip we were planning because of the wildfires going on in the mountains around Pecos but we made the best of it. This tiny cabin along the Pecos River was an utter delight and I cannot wait to go back there again in the future. The trip helped round out the last state in the Four Corners that I needed to visit and now all I’m missing in…

This kid, always bringing me joy. He lights up the room and has so much curiosity and love!

Back in early October we went to Martin Dies Jr. State Park for our first camping trip of the season. On Saturday morning we headed out for a hike on the Wildlife Trail in the Walnut Ridge Unit and found the trail fairly busy. In fact, it was bustling not just with hikers but folks heading out for paddling trips as a canoe launch is right there, too. Honestly, I was surprised how busy the whole area was considering it is typically pretty quiet in that area when we hike. We crossed the big bridge over the pond inlet and weren’t too far down the main trail when suddenly Chris…

Let’s consider this a “Wordless Wednesday” for Thursday! I’m not sure what to write about with this prompt except more music so I’ll spare you that! Here’s a post that this topic reminded me of: Gold Dust Sunset—can’t help you with the now defunct embedded YouTube but the link to Gov’t Mule feat. Grace Potter still works and is worth listening to.

via GIPHY via GIPHY I am a HUGE Florence + The Machine and Stevie Nicks fan! I grew up listening to Fleetwood Mac and of course loved Stevie’s solo work, too. I have a lot of memories tied up in Stevie Nicks! I came to hear about Florence + The Machine back in late 2010 before we left for our Florida Trail hike and listened to the Lungs album at night in the tent. And I’ve been hooked ever since! Both of them had tours this year and I was thisclose to getting tickets to see F + M in Austin or Dallas but in the end didn’t go for…

I often think about how different Rusty and Dusty are from each other but also from how Samson and Leo were to us. Samson and Leo were very much dog-like cats. They came when called and were often our shadows around the house. Rusty and Dusty are very much cat-like cats but have slowly begun adopting dog-like strategies. I am guessing a lot of it has to do with the fact that they lived on a screened in porch during their days and in a crate in a laundry room at night for their first 10 months of life. But, who knows? Leo was very much a cuddly cat and…

I almost thought about making this a different prompt because I’m not particularly fond of the prompt, but let’s venture outside the comfort zone and go with the flow. Ideally, I wouldn’t be a different animal. I am already an animal, a human animal, and frankly we’re both the worst and the best animals there are. Do I want to have to hunt for my food in the wild like every other animal that isn’t kept in a zoo or as a pet? Not really. Agriculture has a lot of pros going for it! So does indoor sanitation services! Truly cannot believe we only modernized indoor sanitation within the last…

It’s been a rather lackluster reading year for me, this despite reading almost 55 books. Many of the books have been fine but very few have stood out to me as being so enjoyable I’d rave about them. I have plans to fix that next year by reading A LOT more fiction and some paper books on my shelves. I use NetGalley and Edelweiss to read and review Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) digitally and have been slogging through some of those non-fiction ones. They are good, just slow reading. I need some fast paced, enticing reads for next year. Anyway, the one book that I have really enjoyed was Saving…