It’s been a busy few weekends and before that I was in PA so I really haven’t had a weekend to decompress in awhile. This weekend I had absolutely nothing planned.

My poor cats have been sick the last two weeks. First Samson came down with a cold, sneezing and all, and then I took him to the vet. I told the vet that Leo was fine. The next day Leo proved me wrong by sneezing.

He was promptly fed the same medicine Samson was getting. Though he appeared to be worse off than Sam ever was. I went to the field for work for a few days and when I returned he was all stuffy and his eyes were watering. It made my eyes want to water, I felt bad for the poor boy.

Soft treats are the way to go for tricking pets into eating their medicine. Shoving it down their throat—not so much a good idea.

Spending this weekend with them has been nice, cuddling up with them. Chris is returning from PA on Tuesday so I’m sure they will be happy to spend some time with them. My cats are more like dogs and really enjoy attention. Of course they have their moments of solitude but for the most part they like being around us.

I had to pop into the dollar store to get treats for them and found my favorite Christmas candy. It reminds me of my grandmother, my mom’s mom, and they are just plain delicious. I prefer them over regular candy canes, plus they make coffee taste so good!

I also popped into a Starbucks for my first peppermint mocha of the year. I had a love affair with it many years ago but then I kept getting poorly made ones so I switched to regular lattes and caramel macchiatos. This one turned out to be great and I’m so glad I got it. The nearest S’bucks is 20 minutes away so they are not a regular habit of mine. Probably a good idea for my waist line!

The chrysanthemums are blooming! (Just had an Anne of Green Gables moment spelling that out).

The community garden is looking beautiful with the mums out!

And the 4-o’clocks provide a heady aroma in the evenings. They have perked up from their leggy looking status this summer.

A very good weekend. Looking forward to seeing my husband this Tuesday after a month away! Having gone from living with each other day in and day out for a year and a half to not seeing each other much for six weeks—kind of strange!

Hope your weekend was relaxing!

Over the last weekend my brother and sister in law came down with my niece and nephew to visit as was seen in Monday’s post on meeting Cleetus, the neighborhood donkey.

Before they came I Googled some places to check out. Despite having lived in the Houston area during college, I was mostly in Galveston and familiar with areas around Galveston county. Now I am on the north side of Houston and everything is new to me again. I came up with Dewbery Farm since my niece loves animals and outdoor activities. It turned out to be a great experience—expect to spend some dough if you have several kids! There’s an entrance fee and while some of the activities are free there are several that require tokens, meaning dropping some more cash.

First Zoe had to hang out with Samson for awhile. Apparently he is “My best old friend” to her. I think he probably thinks otherwise, but he definitely tolerates her a lot more than Leo does. Leo gets spastic around her and doesn’t like it when she moves fast and the consequences are sharp claws being flung at her. It stinks because she really wants to get close to him but he just doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.

And then of course there was Little Brother, Grayson, who is now almost three months old. Ohhh, he is so sweet! And smells so good. I might have to use Baby Magic all the time to keep the smell around. He definitely makes one want to have babies, especially since he is a pretty mellow kid.

Every time I see a different photo of Grayson his resemblance changes. Sometimes he looks like my great-grandfather, my mom’s mother’s father (follow that?), then at times he looks like one of my parents or his own dad.

Part of the ‘free’ at Dewberry Farms is that you get a hay ride. Hay is on short order this year with the drought so we had to sit on benches, but it was still neat since we toured the Christmas tree farm area and then visited the pumpkins patch. Pumpkins were heavily discounted, it being a week after Halloween.

Zoe loved going up ‘Fort Dew Hickey’, though it was crawling with 5-12 year olds and she gets spooked by lots of kids so her dad had to take her around the fort.

The air pillows were loads of fun until one bounce resulted in a bit lip that sprouted a bit of blood.

Stephanie was trying to hide behind Grayson as I took a photo! Sneaky, sneaky!!

Me taking a photo of my brother…

And his photo of me!

The best part was Zoe riding on two ponies! She *LOVES* horses and got one of those ‘life sized’ mechanical, stuffed ponies you can ride for her birthday. His name is Butterscotch. I think these ponies topped the day off!

Our local garden center put out a bale of hay and made it into a turkey so I thought it was perfect to stop and get a photo of Zoe in front of it. She’d about had it by then, though!

I can’t wait until they come again! Next time hopefully Uncle Chris isn’t in PA working and can enjoy hanging out with everyone.

Living in the country, we have a donkey and a few horses in our neighborhood. I’ve been talking up this donkey, Cleetus, to my niece Zoe for awhile. He’s a friendly fella and loves carrots!

My brother and sister in law came down to visit this last weekend and so Zoe kept waiting to be able to go see Cleetus. He happened to be in his barn most of the time until yesterday. Then we ventured around the block to go see him.

He sniffed out the bag of carrots pretty quickly and I know he would have scarfed them all down if we’d let him.

Zoe loves animals and especially loves to get near them, though Cleetus freaked her out a bit when she fed him a carrot because his lips touched her hand causing her to think he might eat her hand too.

But I think she was glad to meet him finally, despite her throwing a few tantrums saying she didn’t want to see him and then changing her mind minutes later. Crazy kid!

He had one little tear in his eyes—maybe he has the allergies I have!

As we walked away he let out a big “eeeee aww” and got a bit upset that we were leaving him! Now that it will be light out in the mornings, I will have to go for my morning run’s again and see him!

I’ll have more photos from the weekend in a few days. It was definitely adventurous, especially for Zoe who got ride to her first ponies!

Went to DFW on Sunday and Monday to finish getting the rest of our stuff and to see the family. Here’s a small snapshot..

Zoe showing off her purse sent from Elizabeth’s mom.

Really excited about the animal inside the purse, too!

Goofing off with my dad, PawPaw, during his lunch break.

Grayson tucked away in his sleeper, cozied up in the blanket I made him.

He smells so good!

Pumpkin vines are taking over the side yard at my parent’s house!

Grayson and my brother scoping the pumpkins out.

Oh, we found a little pumpkin! He definitely didn’t like that and was swooped out quickly.

There’s the real pumpkin!

I finally got around to finishing the processing of the rest of the photos from our trip to DFW to see our new nephew.

“What is going on here?”

Chris with my parent’s dogs, Isabelle on the left and Daisy on the right giving that goofy face.

Zoe looks like she’s got a brand new dolly to take care of!

Blissed out with her new charge…

Love the one eye open thing he’s got going!

Zoe was enjoying a pear with caramel sauce and gave me a great face!

Everyone had been trying to determine which chin Grayson had so that did a side by side comparison with my brother.

Father and son….

Can’t wait to see how big he is when I get up there in a few weeks!

My nephew was born on Thursday making me an aunt for the third time. Chris and I drove back to DFW for the weekend to spend time with the family and meet the latest member of the clan. He is *so* sweet! I was glad that Chris got to see him as an infant since he did not meet Zoe, our niece, until she was a year and a half. I took a zillion photos but I pulled these out quickly to post. I’ll be going through more of them this week.

Low light conditions for the most part kept me at ISO 800 or 1600, though I was able to utilize my faster 50mm lens for some good shots. Hoping I can get some more photos of everyone in better light before we head back home.

Curt, Grayson’s dad, giving him a bottle.

Uncle Chris with Grayson

Chris with Grayson

Dad and son (*love* this one)

Pulling a Whitlock self portrait…(Whitlock is my maiden name)

Mimi (my mom) and Uncle Chris loving over the kid in the bassinet. Chris had just said “He’s so cute!” and my mom had a fit about it! heheh!

Chris took this one for me…he got a bunch of shots on his camera but will process this later this week. Excited to see what he got with the macro lens.

Big sis talking about stinky diapers

Zoe having a fit with PawPaw, my dad. I wanted to get a photo of them together but she wasn’t having it.

I took a bunch of these two together but didn’t look closely at the best ones, just wanted to show a few of them together.

Was trying to capture Zoe making her face and get the whole thing in shot but I ended up focusing on the hands instead—that’s what happens when kids are moving so fast! I’ll have to pick through and see if any other came out, but I liked the set up of this one.

Poppy, my sister in law’s dad, and Zoe.

Dressed for home—his pants are too big for him and they are preemie sized! He’s an itty bitty thing!

*love* this little kid! I can’t wait to get to know him and see how Zoe interacts with him. Glad I live only four hours away instead of an airplane ride away so I can see him grow up more often!

This week I’m going to look for some of the photos I took of Zoe four days after she was born and compare them to Grayson and see how much they look alike! He also looks like his other sister Ashleigh. It would’ve been fun to have two sisters in the room today with their brother…

I was digging through some old photo albums the other day looking for photos for the front of some houses (another blog series I’m contemplating) and found a few old photos of my parents that I loved.

On their wedding day. Mom recently went through her clothes and was going to get rid of her wedding dress. At the last minute I pulled it out of the donation pile, though I ended up leaving dad’s leisure suit in. I should’ve gotten it too. I need to get rid of my wedding dress before I have a kid who wants to take it out of the donation pile.

I love this photo because they look like hippies! Mom would say that what she is wearing is a “Misti outfit” but it turns out it would be a mom outfit, too!

And more recently at a wedding of a family friend a few weeks ago. Now, their 1977 selves came out on the dance floor that night, boogieing it up to some 70s music! I have photos of that, too!

*love* y’all!

I tried to find a photo of me holding a four day old Zoe but I think it is tucked away on a hard drive somewhere. I wanted to recreate it but Zoe was a bit fussy this morning so I opted out of that. Maybe on Saturday for her birthday party. Instead I took these after I’d painted some butterflies on her face. She was painting with my mom this afternoon and I convinced her to let me paint a couple butterflies while she kept telling me the paintbrush tickled on her cheeks.

I love my little niece…she says some funny things! She’s in love with coins right now (my brother said she doesn’t like the greenbacks—-yet.) and will come into the room and ask Uncle Chris for some money. So he stuffed a bunch of coins into her birthday card today which she was excited about. She then said she had to pay bills. Not sure what kind of bills 3 year olds have to pay!

*heart* her!

Craig at Ellis Hollow always has beautiful flower scans and I’ve been wanting to try it for years. I finally got around to it. After scanning twice and realizing I needed to clean the glass on the scanner, I finally got one! This could be a new addiction!

It’s my mom’s birthday and the flowers are from her garden. There’s a mini-rose in there, yellow milkweed, and mom says the other yellow ones are yellow echinacea/coneflower.

Happy Birthday Moosie!

9 years ago when we got married I became interested in genealogy. I posted to a lot of boards and asked questions, searching for relatives and I got some answers. I put together two gigantic binders and organized it all.

Then it fell by the wayside. Other hobbies took over and on occasion I’d get a new message from someone since the boards are still searchable and waiting for others to add to.

So, two years ago when I got a message saying that someone had replied I jumped over to that board and I got really excited. The person who was replying basically said she was my second cousin on my grandfather’s side—her mom and my mom were first cousins! Her name was Elizabeth.

It became a flurry of emails, doing Google searches for each other and realizing that we had a lot in common though we were several years apart, I was about four years older. I called my mom and told her what I’d found out and she was shocked. She hadn’t seen her cousin in nearly 30 years!

Chris and I were living in Florida at the time, then our AT hike came up and we just had too many different problems trying to meet up. My immediate family was in the DFW area while hers was in OKC, not a far drive but far enough to require some planning.

So, nearly two years after that first contact I got things together and my mom and I made the trip up to OKC for a mini-family reunion. I am so glad we went up there! It’s too bad that time and distance had to come between family, but I’m sure we’re not the only family who is the way. The first day was spent sitting in Elizabeth’s living room looking at old photos and hearing old stories about grandparents and other relatives. Our great-grandmother, our mom’s grandmother, was apparently into dipping snuff and watching wrestling. Not quite the image one gets when thinking of a grandmother—and of course this was only a tiny perspective of her. What I got out of who she was is a person who cared and did what she could for her grandchildren. I have a very vague memory of her in a wheelchair at the nursing home she lived in before she died. I was maybe two or three. It’s one of those memories that appear and sometimes you wonder where they came from and if they are real, but my mom verified some of the scenes so I’m certain my brain wasn’t making things up.

Some of the other things they talked about were items from their grandmother’s house. And I’m very big this way, attaching sentiment and memories to items and having a strong attachment to them. It doesn’t have to be something big, I have old Folgers coffee jars (I mean like 50s and 60s old) that were my grandmothers’ that I kept when we cleaned out her house after a move to a seniors apartment. She used to keep flour and sugar and such in those jars but I always remembered them from my visits to her house and now they hold craft supplies. But hearing them talk about those items just tied some of that sentimentality to the family and helped me understand it some.

The second day we were there we went about OKC a bit. Mom didn’t want to see the OKC bombing memorial so we stayed away from downtown and instead went to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. I loved this museum! I only wish we’d had more time to see the rest of it but seeing some of the beautiful art work made me want to paint and get crafty! A few excellent portrait artists made me wish I was better at faces—there’s a good reason I draw plants and animals.

The grounds around the museum are beautiful. The heatwave in the south had broke a bit that morning due to cloud cover, but didn’t last long.

Elizabeth’s mom on the left and mine on the right.

We left the museum early because we were going to the News 9 studio to watch the noon news report! Sweet! Elizabeth and her husband Kevin went to college with one of the weather team members Matt Mahler so they’ve gone to shows before. I have to say this was an interesting experience! I was expecting a much more bustling studio but it was only the news anchor and Matt with two crew guys on the set! Apparently the noon show is a little more quiet than the others!

Watching the show…I took photos during commercials. Matt liked putting on his makeup!

Before we left to head back south of the Red River we had lunch and stopped back at Elizabeth’s house for goodbyes.

I’m so glad we went up there! I’d love to plan something else in the future—maybe camping near Turner Falls! Plus, Elizabeth has two brothers that I’d like to meet and once my brothers and sister in law have their son and get settled into a two kid household I know they’d like to go up too.

Elizabeth is scheduled for this Monday’s interview series so peek back then to see what she has to say!