Settling Back In...

First I have to give a little shout out for my favorite holiday...Fourth of July. I did not get a chance to blog about it, so if you will indulge me for a moment I would like to reflect. Fourth of July is my favorite holiday, because it does not have all of the stigma of other holidays nor has it lost its true purpose like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I love that it is meant to celebrate freedom and all that it means. I love that it usually means friends and family gather for no preconceived ideas of getting gifts. And I love that it is usually picnic food that can be easily put together. And most of all I love the fireworks. This year we went to a Fourth of July party at the SIL's and at dark we headed out to the small beach on the bay and watched all of the fireworks along the coast, probably about 20 different cities. I just love that we have a country where we can get together and celebrate the freedom we are provided and work to remember the freedom we hope to continue to keep. Now on to the actual post...

Well I am now officially off of vacation. I returned to work today and it was a hectic re-introduction. I find that it is very hard to get motivated to go to work off a 10 day break. I had off the Friday before July 4th and then did not go back until today.

The husband and I took a trip to the Lake house, for just some quiet time away. The Lake house is in a small Pennsylvania town about 2 hours north east of Pittsburgh. We did visit a little with family, but mostly it was just the two of us. We had a great time, we hiked a little, rode bikes, played on the water, and golfed. The weather was incredible. The temperatures ranged below the mid 50's and the mid 80's with almost no humidity. It was a strange and wonderful change from the 100+ weather in Houston! The fun thing is listening to all the locals talk about how hot and humid it is...and we just giggle. In fact, it was actually hotter in Houston when we landed at 10:30pm then it was the entire time we were in Pennsylvania.

We went to a beautiful place in upstate New York called Watkins Glen State Park. If you are ever up there I highly suggest you go. I used to live near there and it is even more beautiful than I remember.

We also caught a couple of movies...Gran Torino, Ice Age 3, Public Enemies, New In Town, and Bedtime Stories. It was nice to catch up on movies and most of them were really good.

Well like I said the vacation is over, but it sure was fun. Hopefully you are all having a great summer. Here is to surviving the hottest summer in Houston and for a few more mini-cations still to come.

New blog pieces

If you look to your left you will notice a new part has been added to the blog. I have added a "Wildlife Watch Report" to log all of the wildlife that have decided to visit our home.

So the husband and I moved back to our home in March and since then it has been a crazy menagerie of animals visiting the front and back yards. It started with a pair of nesting Green Backed Heron, and then a set of three babies that made it to adulthood.

We have had a wide variety of birds in the back yard, but the most exciting are the woodpeckers...they are just too cool. This is a picture I borrowed of the Red Bellied Woodpecker and a Downy Woodpecker.

And then the piece de resistance of the last few weeks are the mammals. One night we had up to five of the raccoons in the yard and a few days later a opossum joined them. Now I apologize for the pictures but here is my raccoon.

So as you can see it is never dull in the yard. So I decided to include a list that will be updated as we find new friends of the animal persuasion!

How you enjoy the list and the pictures!

Mixed Emotions

This has been an interesting week when it comes to emotions. We (the husband and I) have several friends that are expecting babies. The first one had a healthy baby boy earlier this week. We are very excited for them and wish them lots of luck with the brave new world of having both a toddler and a newborn...hope they are not expecting sleep anytime soon!

Today was just the opposite, we have a friend that was pregnant with twins, and this morning she lost one of the babies. Luckily she and the other baby are still doing well, but our hearts are breaking for them. They moved away and so we can't even stop by and try to comfort them through this incredibly difficult time or offer any real help, just . I can't even fathom how you begin to deal with the emotional side of that kind of loss. I just want them both to know that we love them and will do anything we can to help during the extremely difficult time. Here is hoping that this in the last difficulty they will have with the pregnancy. They are in our thoughts and prayers.

Check back early next week for an update of the weekend trip to Corpus and Port A...