You know you're in Texas when...

Mistletoe hangs thick in the oak trees all year long.

You have an endless supply of pecans to snack on just outside your door.
There's always a tank to drop a line in.
Folks put up massive gates, but do without an actual fence.
And the neighbors always take time out of their busy schedule to come say hello.

And let me tell you, this handsome guy had one very busy schedule as the resident stallion. Had I known his prowess, I probably wouldn't have ventured so close! Below are 2 pictures of ONE of the TWO mares that gave birth to his babies overnight while we were in Winnsboro.


The colts were too far away for to get a picture, but one was blond, and the other looked identical to the stallion. "Mini-me" right out of the chute, so to speak, immediately stood shoulder high to his mother who is pictured above!

Match the Man to the Moment

Some of you are aware that Roger and I did the Grand Family Tour in February. It was a great trip covering almost 800 miles. I'll post more pictures later. In the interim, I thought I'd pass along some moments that were shared with us featuring the men above. Clockwise from upper left, Roger's dad "Don", my step-dad "Ray", my dad "Tommy" and of course, Roger.

Please feel free to match the moments below to the man above.

a) This fella has 2 similar moments and I'll share them both. Who decided the rooftop of his house was a good place to lay back and rest - UNTIL the vultures started circling. Then, who decided when repairing a sprinkler head that since he was on the ground anyway, that the middle of the yard was a good place to take a nap, only to be awoken by the neighbor and EMTs who thought, well, lets just say he got a free ride to the local Emergency Room.

b) This fella has decided that should he ever experience a pharmaceutically induced erection that lasts longer than 4 hours, rather than call the doctor as recommended by the pharmaceutical company, would instead call his neighbor into action.

c) This fella, alone on a Saturday night, as his wife was out with a girlfriend, invited a door-to-door Kirby Vacuum cleaner salesman into his house. While the salesman demonstrated/steam-cleaned the entire living room, this particular fella sat in his easy chair eating pizza, watching TV and lifting his feet when necessary so as not to impede the demonstration.

d) This fella, said to his beautiful, loving wife of 17 years, "please, don't ever let me get old." :~)

Happy Birthday, Momma!

Roger and I had the chance to get to Fort Worth to celebrate Momma's 70th birthday. Doesn't she look great!?! She's living proof that like her birthday card says, "70 isn't what it used it to be!"

We descended upon the Outback Steakhouse in Burleson for her birthday dinner, which was also shared with Melissa (the 19th), Me (the 16th) and Loretta, also on the 19th. It was a great time and I'm almost sure the management of the Outback will not allow us all back under their roof at the same time ever again. There may have been, but I'm not completely sure, some crawling under tables a time or two, or three, during the evening.
The boys above are Marty (in-law to Dave), Dave (my big brother), Roger and Bryan (my little brother).Ray was brave enough to foot the bill for the entire crew. Of course, had I known that, I would have ordered a better brand of tequila and a bigger and better cut of steak!
Seven-year-old Aubrey, who managed to keep herself entertained amongst the crazy adults, gave everyone drawings of hearts. Mine had a snowflake in the middle!
In the end, everyone had a grand time, with lots of laughter and lots of getting to know each other again. Like with so many families that scatter from here and there, the opportunities to all gather together become more rare, but this makes each holiday or birthday even more special!

New England Speak

The Letter "R", or the letter "R-uh"
No photo to share this time, just a quick lesson on how to speak like a New Englander. Please note, this only applies to those who live east of the Connecticut River, south of Lake Winnepesauke and, I hate to say this, but those who most likely have not gone to college. Nothing personal, but it's very true.

You can also pretty much exclude most Mainers, as they have a whole 'nother issue going on up there. Or, as they call it "Down East". What in the world does that even mean? Seriously! But I digress.

There are actually 2 simple rules.

Rule #1: this rule is the worst kept secret in the entire world. If a word has the letter "R" anywhere near the end, do not, under any circumstance, pronounce the "r".

Example: hah-bu: where you take your boat
bah: where you take your beer
pahk: where you take your Boston Terrier
bee-yuh: what you get at the "bah"
stai-yuhs: what you go down to enter the original Bull&Finch, aka "Cheers"

As you can see, sometimes it's quite necessary to turn a one syllable word into two syllables to follow this rule.

Rule #2: this rule is rather simple, and seems to be the New Englander's way of making up for all those lost "r"s. If a word ends with a vowel, or a silent consonant, add an "r" to the end. Simple enough!

Example: I hate wearing a brawr but I'll put one on anyway.
You've reached the lawr firm of Diddle and Doodle.

I once told a waitress, as a joke I might add between Roger and myself, "thank you for the "strawr". This got me into all kinds of trouble with that woman! You see, she had gone to college and was quite offended that perhaps I was insinuating that she was mispronouncing her words. Geewhilakers - it was only a joke that she wasn't even supposed to hea-yuh!

Rule #2a: Here's where it gets complicated. If a syllable ends in a vowel or silent consonant, throw in an "r".

Example: drawer = drahr-yu

Okay, I know, drawer is only pronounced with one syllable, but again, sometimes you just have to make it into two so you can follow the rule.

I'll provide more examples later as I have to make note of them when I hea-yuh them. In the meantime, class is ovah.

What to do?? What to do???

The wind is blowing up to 25mph, a muted sun is trying to peak through, the temperature is only in the mid-30's. So, what is there to do on a Saturday such as this? Go to the movies, head to the shopping mall, or head off to a cozy bar? Of course not! Do as the seals do and go to the beach! These seals are hanging out on Badger Rocks where the Merrimac River (more on the Merrimac in a later post) feeds into the Atlantic Ocean. With water temperatures at 39 degrees, that's actually warmer than the air.

Roger and I weren't the only ones to head to the beach. Take a look! My favorite picture is of the little boy toddling on the beach. Later he was trying to get back to his parents who were looking for treasures around the lobsta' traps, but the wind kept blowing him backwards. She finally noticed and ran over and rescued him! By the way, he was never in peril.

After taking these photos, Roger and I headed up the coastline to Portsmouth, New Hampshire where we noticed the Coast Guard patrolling the shores.

After doing a bit of shopping in historic downtown Portsmouth, we did indeed head to a cozy bar to warm our cockles!

And to all.....a good night

As winter has wrapped her long, gray arms around us, we settle in for our winter hibernation. How long will the winter endure, until the forsythia forces the onset of spring? Until then, we'll remain snuggled beneath blankets, whiling away the days, counting the minutes gained each day as the sun sets a little later with each passing week.

Just kidding!!! There's tons to do up here all year long. We hope to spend the next few months taking you all on a scenic tour with a bit of history dropped in whenever possible. Alright, so most everything up here is rooted in history, so we'll keep it to whatever is nearest to us and to what rings our bell.

The picture above is a great example of this. The Kingston 1686 House located in East Kingston, New Hampshire, just a few minutes from our house. I hope to take you inside and show you around. That is, as soon as I can convince Roger to take me back there for dinner!

But in the meantime, enjoy the photo below of the sun setting over the salt marshes of Plum Island.

Merry Christmas Y'all!

It's so hard to believe that this year will be our 8th Christmas here in New England. The time really has flown by! As you can see, we are pretty much guaranteed a White Christmas this year. Christmas is always a great time, but it feels so much different surrounded by 2 feet of snow. Very different from one of our last Christmas' in Texas when we threw on shorts and t-shirts and sat outside playing chess.

What Roger and I are most surprised about, is this will be our 18th Christmas together. Not that we thought we wouldn't last as a couple, as we truly are bestest friends, but that so much time has passed. Our first Christmas is still very vivid.

We were in a very small apartment and I really wanted a Christmas tree. One day I returned home to find a short, but very fat, tree squeezed into our living room. Roger was so proud, but very amazed at how much smaller the tree looked at the Christmas tree lot.

That 1st Christmas we drove to Lawrence, Kansas to see his family - this was my first trip to Kansas and I was so very nervous. The trip takes about 8 hours and we found ourselves rather late at night on Christmas Eve traveling through the state of rolling hills. Radio reception was spotty at best, but we finally a found a station we could hear. It was a lone DJ, no ads, just him, the Christmas music he was tasked with playing, and apparently a bottle booze by his turntable. The longer we listened, the slurrier his words became. We laughed so hard, which really eased my anxiety!

Other memories are of "Pa" Davis and his magical basket of nuts. When Nicole was little he would tease her into cracking open the nuts, knowing that several walnuts had been previously opened, carefully scooped out, and a dollar bill tightly folded and placed into the nut. He would then carefully glue the walnut back together. Of course, in later years, Nicole went straight for the mightly walnuts and got rather good at spotting the nuts that had been manipulated.

Most times Christmas seems to focus on the Christmas tree. The year we had moved into our 1st house in Richardson, we had a room where eventually a pool table would go, but this year we plopped our HUGE Christmas tree right smack dab in the middle of the room. It was fabulous!

Other years we've had to accomodate pets, with our latest trees being no taller than 4 feet, which we place on a perch built into, and beside, our rather massive fireplace. We did this after we got Guinness, knowing what damage his tail could do!

This is actually the first year we've gone without, as we've moved into a warmer part of the house and couldn't quite figure out where it would go. I'm sure we'll have this resolved by next year!

An explanation of the pictures. We decided to take a self-portrait last weekend by setting the timer on the camera. The top picture was taken when I heard the camera just about to go off before I made it to my spot. Running down 5 steps of slippery steps of one deck, through 10" of snow, and across another deck. The picture below was when I finally scampered across all obstacles - throwing caution to the snow banks!

The Best Season of All

It's really no surprise that Autumn in New England ranges from gorgeous,at the very least, to absolutely stunning. "Foliage Season" is always tricky and unpredictable. Last year the season was endless, starting in late August and lasting well into early November. This year, the season sputtered and stalled, but eventually came through. Still, we come across pockets of color that completely take your breath away as you round a corner or look into a field of brilliant gold.


Overall what we found most surprising is that it's not so much a season, as an event that lasts for weeks and weeks. Small communities all across the region hold fairs and festivals, most, if not all based on agriculture. These fairs have been an annual event in many towns for more than 150 years. I was rather naive and believed that only folks in the south raise vegetables (the above photo shows our attempt at growing corn!) and have cattle ranches, so it was a great delight to discover that New England is mostly rural. While the ocean is what drew us up here, its actually the stunning beauty that keeps us up here - for now anyway!

Unfortunately we had a computer crash a couple of months back, and I lost all images from previous seasons, so I hope you enjoy these from the Sandwich Fair in Sandwich, New Hampshire. I hope to post more at a later date - if I can find them that is!