School chums

My friend Tammie came to Texas for a visit, and we had the pleasure of hosting her for part of her stay in the Lone Star State. A resident of Holland for the past 25 years, she's always up for sweet tea, chips and salsa when she's back home.

While she was local, I had the opportunity to take her up to our lake house on LBJ for the day. We also made a detour through Fredericksburg because it's the quintessential Texas hill country town with all the cute shops and good eats. I showed her around the lake in our runabout deck boat, too. It's always nice to get up there and relax a little. Our girls were happy to visit with her, as well as my mother. And so it's my turn next to hop the pond for a visit, and the younger daughter wants to go next summer. It would be wonderful to see Holland again, and get over into the Black Forest/Munich region - love it there. That quaint area on the Germany and Austria border where they filmed The Sound of Music definitely requires another look-see!

 

 

Chorkie catching some zzzzz's

OK, so we didn't want a third dog and the hassle of having one more in the pack. And yet our older daughter's chorkie can be really sweet even though he looks like a demented gremlin. That canine tooth of his that's always poking out of his mouth because he needs some doggie orthodontic work just cracks me up. It really adds to his scruffy muppet look. He has lounging on humans down to an art, and I couldn't resist snapping some pics recently of the little beast.

UT class of 2023's newest member

It's hard to believe, considering their acceptance rate is around 22% for transfers and she beat the odds, but our younger daughter has decided to leave Clemson University to finish her last two years at the University of Texas at Austin. We're thrilled she put in the time and effort to accrue a 3.85 gpa at Clemson and cranked out some stellar essays to get accepted at this premiere Texas university. Then there's the added bonus that her older sister is a CPA in downtown Austin, so the dynamic duo will enjoy getting to spend time together once again. I tell ya, it makes this momma so very humbled that the Lord has blessed both our girls with an excellent work ethic and perseverance to put in the elbow grease to achieve their academic goals. 

The new UT Longhorn cried, then laughed when she got the good news. A bit later, once she calmed down and accepted her spot, she announced that she guesses she has to hate OU now instead of 'Bama.

Celebrating 66 years of wedded bliss

My in-laws celebrated 66 years of marriage on June 3. Last year I had started arranging a party for family and friends to honor their 65 years of marriage, but then the pandemic hit hard and everything shut down. We were all put in masks and mired down in fear and frustration about such a highly contagious strain of flu. This was particularly true for the retired folks on the guest list because that age range was hit really hard. Fast forward to this past Saturday, when we had immediate family gather to honor their 66th wedding anniversary. 

 

 

I hope our daughters realize what an accomplishment this is, to be a happily married couple for over half a century. Through the ups and downs of jobs, kids, and all of the everyday things that can take your focus off each other, things that will pull you apart instead of allow you to grow together, they weathered it all and made it look easy. And they raised two amazing sons along the way!

We gathered at a private dining room in a local restaurant in New Braunfels to let them whip up some Cajun specialties for us, and do the dishes afterwards. The setting was unique since it's housed in the old post office, and the food didn't disappoint.

In addition to the sons, wives and grandkids, we also included the two mother-in-laws. My mother was really happy to be able to attend to celebrate this lovely couple. 

 

Dessert was equally delicious. I had never tasted a strawberry lemonade cake, but this one was super moist and really flavorful. The icing was just sweet enough to offset the tart lemon curd. And the cookies were a lovely takeaway for everyone.

Cheers to the tree pros

A recent severe thunderstorm with straight line winds gusting over 70 mph brought down part of an elm tree in our front yard. We knew it was looking a bit rotted in spots, but this proved it needed to be removed. We hired the guy who trimmed up the remodel house's trees back in '17 when we bought the place. He and his two workers climbed all over it to get it down and hauled away in about nine hours over the course of Thursday and Friday. 

 

Overall, the yard is looking really good right now. However, everyone's yard seems to be beautifully green with all of the rain we got in the past month. We received so much water lately that our two scraggly magnolias even produced a few blooms. And the crepe myrtles all over the hill country are producing profusions of colorful flowers for us to enjoy.

It was lovely while it lasted. In anticipation of us entering the annual summer drought, I turned our sprinkler system on this weekend. I got a bit teary eyed over my last water bill that arrived Friday when I saw it was less than $100. That bill will skyrocket and undoubtedly be pushing 1K by Labor Day, if prior summer bills are any indication, unless we get some unusual rains that settle over Texas. Come August, I'm usually wishing for just a small tropical storm to roll over the hill country and bring us some much needed rain.

Bachelorette bash

Our older daughter hosted a bachelorette party at the lake house last weekend - Jessica's Getting Maui'd! I went up early Friday morning to grocery shop and prep for it since our daughter was in the midst of the run-up to a filing with her auditing gig's new client. Plus I also wanted to look around and assess/document any damage done by a wind storm that blew through there a couple days before. Our new next door neighbors, a lovely family of super sweet Texas A&M grads, sent me several pics like the one below, where one of our chairs on the dock got blown into the water behind our boat.

It snapped our A&M-UT house divided flagpole in half and tossed it into their yard. I soon discovered that it picked up the table on the back porch and moved it a couple feet. Plus it blew a few red tiles off our roof. So now I'll be needing to find a local roofing company to crawl atop the house and see what might need to be repaired.

When I zipped by the local bakery to pick up the cookies I ordered as edible party favors for the guests, I got a kick out of the shark cookies they had in the display case. I also bought some of my favorite toffee from a local chocolate shop in Marble Falls. World's best is a pretty big boast, but it truly is that good.

Friday I took the bachelorette party on an early evening cruise of our favorite places on the lake. I left the boat cover in an area that was open to the sky, and then sure enough we had a pop up downpour while I was grilling supper that night that filled it full of rainwater. So I had to wrestle the heavy cover full of water to get it emptied Saturday once they left on the party bus for their hill country vineyards tour, and leave it out in the sun to dry. At that point, I was just thankful for some clear skies.

Saturday afternoon, an old bleached towable floated into our canal. It drifted around a bit until the wind shifted and it got pushed back out into the main body of the lake.

I helped blow up balloons for the picture arch they put out on the backporch as their backdrop for group pics before they went out to dinner Saturday night. It was a lot of work, but a nice weekend celebrating the soon-to-be bride Jessica's impending nuptials in Maui.

Timberrrrrr!

Weekend before last, we had a serious thunderstorm blow through the city while we were up at the lake. We returned home to this scene in our front yard.

Our next door neighbor, a retired weatherman for a local TV station, has a little weather station set up in his backyard. Old habits and all that. He told us that the winds gusted up to 72 mph. And I assume that's what made this section of the ash tree snap off like a matchstick near the base. Praise God that it fell the way it did, rather than in the opposite direction that would have landed it on the master bedroom wing of our house. 

I was intrigued by the randomness of the straight line winds, that it didn't move the lightweight wicker settee on the front porch, or even the pillow sitting atop it.