Dog Dog Turns 7 !

Hey all! Well I seem to be perfecting the 'update your blog once a month thing' and to all my loyal followers, sorry! I will try to be better. Anyway, my favorite dog in the whole world turned seven years old today and I wanted to do a little tribute to him. Here are some of my favorite pictures of Brass throughout the years and some new ones of his birthday this year, so enjoy!

Baby Brass



Snow Nose


Spring Chicken


My Favorite Nap Place


I will NOT sit


Oh HI!


I know now not to run in the street


Birthday 2009


Birthday 2010




Here's to another decade, I love you sweet boy!

Flashback Friday

Just like her Auntie . . . she has loved chocolate from the begining!


I have a picture of myself exactly like this, but since it's from two weeks ago, I will not be sharing it here

Dog VS TP

Meeting Meat Patti

Have you ever had a really great weekend that could have gone rotten? I had an all day business meeting in Houston last weekend for the American Society of Landscape Architects. See I am the State Secretary for the Texas section and we had an in person meeting. So instead of dreading this, I thought to myself what is there in Houston that I can do to make this better? I have a friend named Patti Russo, who, when it comes to vocals, is Meat Loaf’s main lady. I did a bit of research and found that Meat was playing at the House of Blues in Houston, the very night of my meeting. What could be a better way to turn the weekend a whole 180 then to get to see a Meat Loaf concert and Patti? Buuuuut lets back up a bit to Friday.

I have been having the worst time with Brass and ticks lately. So after getting the carpets cleaned, and yard sprayed he got some new clothes!


Hopefully this will help him feel better and get rid of the problem.

Friday night, I ran over to Sugar Brown’s to see my friend Toby Ryan perform some tunes.


I ran into an old friend and we hooked up which was great!

I wore my new shoes.


Saturday I got up extra early to catch my flight out to Houston. I had no trouble at the airport, which was a major relief. The meeting went very well and I was ‘sworn’ into my new position of Secretary. We walked thru downtown (which was very hot and humid) to lunch. It was great to see a new park that had just opened that day and I got to see the largest live oak that I have ever seen!

These are most of the officers.


And this is the tree. It was right outside the architectural center and it seemed to take up a full block! This is as much as I could get in one picture.



After the meeting was finally over – it was time for fun! Jenna came over from San Marcos to go to the concert with me and it was great to see her! We had dinner at Papasitto’s and then headed over to the House of Blues. Now let me tell you, House of Blues is a very cool place and I was SO excited to be there!




Before the show


The concert was more then I could have ever asked for and the best thing about the whole day was getting to see Patti after the show. We got to stand and visit for a little and it was just so nice. Meat did all of the old favorites and even three songs from his new cd, Hang Cool Teddy Bear. Patti rocked the whole time and it was fab to see her in her element.


Patti signed my cd for me


After the show we fell into bed at 1:30am, with the best kind of deaf ears and on an amazing high that you can only get from a rock concert!

The next morning after sleeping till 10, jenna and I ran to grab breakfast at Starbucks and to visit the water wall. The water wall is one of my favorite stops in Houston and I am so glad that I got to share it with Jenn. It is a man made waterfall that is 63 feet tall, it mirrors the skyscraper in the connecting park that is 63 stories tall.




Tired and Happy girls


It was a weekend that I will always remember!

{Embrace} the camera

hello all my blog world friends. I have a super fun post coming up about my last weekend in Houston - BUT so that I will not have two posts back to back about various trips to Houston I have a new post today. My sister was not with her kids this Thursday so she ask me to {embrace} the camera with them this week. Head on over to Bethany's blog - find her in my side column - to find the source of {embrace}. Ok so all I thought that I needed to do was to grab the kids and shoot. NOT as easy as I thought. This is what I came out with.





here is a hint for next post - come back soon!

Distant Worlds

Last weekend we had a great couple of days in Houston. Back in June my sister called and had this great idea of us meeting there for the symphony. Of course I was excited, because I love the symphony, but I was also intrigued because the music was going to be from Final Fantasy. Now the only thing I knew about Final Fantasy was that it was a video game I had watched my brother in law play over the years. Who knew that it had any kind of music, especially symphony material?


Anyway we flew down and met the family for Saturday and Sunday. We stayed near the Galleria and were able to walk there a couple of times. Saturday evening sister, brother and I went to a nice dinner at Maggiano’s then off to the show. And let me tell you, the show was AMAZING! It was a fantastic night of music, comedy, singing and game videos.

The composer and conductor even came out at the end for questions! We bought tee shirts and cds and then got Starbucks! We then had a great time re-living the evening with mom when we got back.


Composer Nobuo Uematsu
The next day we saw the most photographed spot in Houston, the water wall. The kids had a great time playing around the waterfall and the park was beautiful.