Bluebonnets 2011

 

Aw – me and my sweetie!

This one of Jacob is my favorite of the bunch.

This was the best of all the family shots. Bella isn’t quite smiling but her dress was down and everyone’s eyes are open and looking at the camera. 

Spring Break part 2

When we returned from our hill country travels we picked up the kids and then spent a dew days getting the yard fixed up for Spring.

We went to the nursery and the hardware store. Will put new mulch in all the flower beds.  Bella planted these, I think they are daisies?

 

Top View: Into my horse water trough garden I planted two heirloom tomato plants, basil and Italian flat leaf parsley. Over on the left is my rosemary, which is all that survived the cold winter we had.

Same trough, from the side. I take these for comparison’s sake. It amazes me how fast things grow!

Here is Miss Bella, into whom I have planted the word of God.  She amazes me too! 

She is in that stage where she doesn’t really want me to take pictures.  I have to tell her that I am not taking a picture of her, but of something behind her or beside her. Hence she is not looking at the camera in any pictures lately.

I will try to get a better Bella & the garden picture. It is my intention to do a few each year when the garden goes in and put them all into a book together someday.

Here she is in April of 2009

Here she is last year, in March

On the left - Chives (These are seeds, I don’t know if they will sprout or not???)

On the right – thyme.

Left: Cilantro, Right: Sage

Up in the front yard around the tree, new flowers and fresh new layer of mulch.

Behind Jacob you can see the Azaleas are blooming.

Will worked really hard that weekend, I pretty much just wrangled kids, unpacked and planted my herbs.  I’m not sure how much of a “break” this part of the week was for Will! 

Spring Break, part 1

Over Spring Break Will and I were able to take off for a few days on our own in Fredericksburg.  We have been to Fredericksburg several times before so here are a few pictures from past visits:

March 2003 (short hair and braces ha ha!)

March 2005 with Baby Jacob

Notice the back ground in both of these – we are at our favorite Texas winery, Becker’s Vineyard.  On the property of the vineyard is a neat little cabin which can be rented out, it was the original settler’s cabin for the property settled by German immigrants.  In previous visits we always though how sweet it would be to stay in the little cabin.  You can just barely see it in the far left corner of this picture.

We were so pleased to find that the little cabin was available for our trip, even the reservation desk lady on the phone said to me, “This is highly unusual, this cabin is nearly constantly rented for months and months in advance!’

Will and I love Texas history and antiques and wine – so this was altogether the perfect get away.  Isn’t it just precious????

Living Room and Kitchen

Pot belly stove and the wooden plank stair case to the loft.

Loft Bedroom

View from the side

Here are pictures of the vineyard property surrounding the cabin

These are lavender fields – they weren’t blooming yet

Artsy shot through the red bed tree (I think???)

Front View of the winery – it’s so Texas-y, I love it!

There is a “barn” on the property that you can rent out for weddings and such, it was modeled to look like a real settlers barn in Johnson City (which was neat because later in trip we went to see the original)  At night after the winery closed it was so  quiet, all you heard was bugs and the stars were amazing.

Very quiet, very peaceful. No phone, no TV nothing.

During the days we did lots of fun things, like shopping and listening to live music in town.

And of course visiting the surrounding wineries

In California most of the wineries have dogs, we didn’t see that as much in Texas, just this one friendly guy who shared a plate of cheese and crackers with us.

On our way back home we stopped in Johnson City and toured the Johnson family settlement, it was really neat. We are excited to go back with the kids and let them run around there.

This is the home where Johnson grew up, he launched his campaign right on this front porch. We didn’t get to tour the inside.

From here you can walk down a trail to see the old original settler’s properties that belonged to his grandparents.

Here is the cabin.  We lucked out that volunteers were conducting an inventory right when we were there, so we actually got to go inside the cabin – normally you just look through Plexiglas.

The old oak trees surrounding the property were amazing.

Can you see the gorgeous red bird in the tree?

Me in the “kitchen”…

The barn I talked about earlier in this post is a replica of the actual barn below.

There was a horse and lots of cattle on the property. I thought this sign was neat.

It was a really romantic, fun, peaceful getaway. I feel so lucky to have married someone that shares my love of the hill country and the beauty of this great state.  I feel like there’s always so much to do and explore, I never tire of poking around in little country places, sitting on front porches, making new friends and wondering what’s around the next bend.