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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

What can I say, my niece is a little ham! She loves, loves, loves playing outside but the heat here in Texas is unbearable during the day. A quick jaunt in the mornings or evenings in the backyard has to suffice. She’s almost three and has boundless energy! Most of the time she’s great for the camera but sometimes she says enough’s enough and I put it away. But I love capturing these moments when she’s having so much fun, giggling at my mom (Mimi) standing on the swing and being goofy. Sometimes I look back at photos I took four days after her birth and wonder where the time…