Category: Celebrations

  •     There was roast pig and birthday cake. Wine and dancing.   A gorgeous sunset over the hills.    A warm fire. Familiar faces. Laughter and hugs.   50th birthdays are the best! I love helping friends celebrate them, especially when it means I get to spend time with my son and daughter-in-law…    …

  • I've been driving in, around, and through Austin for almost 20 years now, but for the most part, I have traveled the same routes over and over and over. Lately, I've been venturing out into unknown territory so that I'm better acquainted this wonderful city and its neighborhoods, and that's how I discovered this vintage…

  • When it rains, you grow. ~ On a local church sign   I woke to the sound of rain Sunday morning. Such a sweet sound when you live near a lake that now resembles a creek after months…well, years…of too much sunshine and too little precipitation. Tonight the frogs living near our pond are singing…

  • "A good laugh is sunshine in a house." ~William Makepeace Thackeray   We were already running late to church this morning when we spotted him, a little dirty-white fluff of a dog at the top of our dirt road near the highway. I knew before he asked that Daniel would want to get out and…

  • My middle son and I were headed west on I-10 out of Houston tonight after a weekend visit with my mom when this glorious sunset appeared before us. We were ooh-ing and ah-ing and I itched to grab my camera, but I played it safe and ordered delegated the picture-taking to Daniel. He was a…

  • Usually the Monday following four incredible days full of sunshine in Port Aransas with twenty friends is a Monday in every sense of the word. But today hasn't been bad at all…except that it's too short. With everything going on in my life right now, I really didn't have time to slip away and lounge…

  • I leaned on a railing, watching couples swirl past on the dance floor below, feeling very alone because my boyfriend of five years wasn't with me. I can't remember where he was. Probably with his buddies. Maybe with another girl. I worked most weekends, so I was fuming – and hurt – that he didn't…

  •       I spotted it when I stepped out onto the front porch one morning this past week, in between trips to Houston. I noticed the fossil first, thinking it had fallen from its spot on the windowsill above the bench where it now rested. Then I realized it had been placed there to…

  •   Back then it was slumber parties…scary stories…dancing…eating junk food…wrapping houses…riding bikes…prank calls…boys… Back then Rae was the life of the party…always on the move…full of ideas…as playful and mischievous as a puppy… Fast forward forty-four years and things haven't changed very much, thank goodness! We're still having slumber parties where we tell scary stories about…

  • They were waiting for me in the mailbox yesterday evening. Ah, Mark and Debbie…you haven't aged a bit since I last saw you forty-one years ago!     I don't remember when the book first appeared in our home, but I know I had discovered it by the time I was in 4th grade and…