Renovation Downtown

Last week we were treated to a tour of what's above our all time favorite shop down on the square - what a great space! I wish I had the money to renovate and live and work in that gorgeous space! Thanks for showing us around, Mary!

The Biggest Pecans Ever!

Recently my wonderful friend, and roommate of several years during college, came to visit. It was so awesome! We talked non-stop and Mark couldn't even interrupt our flow at some points, poor man. LOL. We also got to show her the bees. AND we took her to see the big pecan on the square. I sat in the back so she could have a good view of the sights of Seguin and I watched as we neared the square to see if she'd do the same thing I did when I was first introduced to the World's Largest Pecan. She did. She looked up, into the sky. She was looking for the World's Largest Pecan the same way I did fifteen years ago. I laughed so hard! And then I told her to look down! I love that. And she loved the pecan. And then we had to take her to see the new World's Largest Pecan (For Real). :-) We had a lovely weekend together.

 

Dublin Dr. Pepper for Friends

This special Dublin Dr. P is just for my special friend Down Under - hope you are well, friend! :-) Thanks for continuing to check on me.

And another special shout out to my other special friend Little Jess - thanks for bringing us some special Dr. P! Love you.

Intro to Beekeeping - Explore the Hive Video

This is part of our beekeeping class we did in our backyard last Saturday. I just realized it was posted on the KWED YouTube channel. Cool!

Team USA Rocks!

Today Team USA was welcomed home when they arrived at San Antonio International Airport, which is about a 40 minute drive from Seguin. It's either here or Austin. I pick SA every time. :-) Very manageable traffic and airport. This is the softball gold medal team that beat Russia in the championship round of the Special Olympics World Games in Athens! I work with one of the team coaches and his son is a team member as well. We are so extremely proud of everyone. I just had to share!

Peaches, Kitty & a Friend

Finally getting to enjoy a couple of the peaches from our tree. Nothing like last year but still adds a nice sweet and slightly tart flavor to our fruit salads. Doubt we'll get enough for any peach preserves this year, sadly.

I would like to send a shout-out to Donna P. who is still reading my blog AND following our Gretchen Bee Ranch blog as well. I ran into Donna at the vet's office when I went to pick up Smokey at the end of the day. It was his annual visit for shots and he got a nice little flea dip. Anyway, I want to say hi and thank you to Donna for her encouragement about the blogs. We met when I taught some computer classes here at the Seguin Library many years ago and it ALWAYS warms my heart to see students again. Especially when they remember me and let me know how we met. So, thank you, Donna. You made my whole week last week and I really appreciate your kind words and your continued support of the blogs! Hope you and your family have a great week!

Seguin Trade Day Fun

Today was tiring but a LOT of fun - thank you to those who stopped by to visit with us. :-) Always great to see friends (like you fellow blogger, Hope!) and meet some blog followers (hi Lisa T. - sorry we didn't make it over to visit your booth before you left! Next time.) We sold a good amount of honey but what was even better was getting to give customers some face-to-face times with the bees thanks to the observation hive. Very nice and everyone seem amazed by their activities. Pretty neat that we can watch the queen lay eggs about six inches from us. Cool stuff for sure.

Below is one of my favorites during the day's event - this is Dino, is he cool or what? Loved it and had to get a shot. :) Hope you all have a great Sunday! I'm going to crash now. Talk about tired.

A Friendly Friday Face

Happy Friday everyone!! :-) I was a bit under earlier this week but thankfully it was just a 24 hour bug and not that yucky stomach virus going around (knock on virtual wood). Yikes. That one sounds bad though a friend of mine said he lost six pounds and used it as a launching pad for his purge and the beginning of hardcore dieting. What a great way to look at a stomach virus, right? lol

Here's a sweet new friend I made while I was photographing Mark out at the bee yard at My Father's Farm. I've seen this horse from afar but last week he actually came over and let me say hi and pet him a bit. He seems very calm and peaceful and he comes over to check us out now and then when we are looking at the bees.

This is one of the wonderful things about living in a small town like Seguin and being very near "the country." You can drive a few minutes and see some great landscape and all sorts of farm animals. And wild ones here and there. It's very peaceful and I enjoy it despite missing San Antonio and other cities of my past. But I only miss them occasionally. :-)

Spurs Fans

Guess what time it is, Spurs fans?? Basketball season! Last night we went to the first game of the season against the Hornets. We beat them and we looked great though defense was not so great in the second half. The guys looked energized, Manu looked great and Timmy only had to play like 22 minutes. Unfortunately, we lost to the Bulls tonight. And we looked pretty awful. Still, I love my Spurs.

Here are a couple of shots of great friends at work who are also big Spurs fans like me. :-)

Wedding Festivities

This weekend was a fun one with plenty going on around town and for us as well. Before I prep for the work week, I thought I'd post about some of the fun I had. I shot this while sitting at the reception for our friends, Jessica and Tim -- congratulations, you two!

Mark and I met up with Sonia and we had a lot of fun in New Braunfels at the Conservation Plaza. I'd never been there so it was neat to check out the old buildings and decorations. It was a pleasant enough evening though a touch on the humid side. We are suppose to get rain over night so I'm glad it held off for the wedding though a few sprinkles did come down after the outdoor ceremony was done.

Mark and I also drove around the countryside a bit to spot a new bee yard and a potential new bee yard. It's so exciting to think we're going to get more bees and that we'll have a good spot where there's plenty of food sources for them. When it's all worked out, I'll let you see a shot. And of course, you can always check out the Gretchen Bee Ranch blog for more information on the bees. It's always interesting to me and I seem to learn something new every time I visit them with Mark. Today I saw them acting in a way I had not seen before and Mark told me they were robbing a hive. More than likely that hive won't make it but he still has four good ones out in the country.

Friend-ly Bikers

The past several days have been wonderfully cool and low in humidity around here and I love it. If my allergies didn't get all crazy, I would spend even more time outdoors! LOL. This past Saturday, because I knew we were going to check on the country bees, I geared up by doing not one but two nasal rinses and took Zyrtec AND an Aleve-D. Still managed to get a bit of a headache but it was worth it to enjoy the great outdoors a bit with Mark and the bees.

On our way back from the bee yard, we have to travel on some country roads and as we pulled up to a stop sign along the way, we noticed two bikers. It was a friend of ours from our San Antonio Library days! She and her husband were scoping out the route for an upcoming ride and there they were. We pulled over and had a great visit -- it really is amazing to me that I look out the truck window and there's a friend I just would not have expected to see riding a bike out in the country near Seguin (she lives in SA). Hi Letty & Gilbert! It was GREAT to see you guys. :-)

Sunday Evening Thoughts

Since some of you liked yesterday's shot, I thought I might share a follow up of the flower. The top shot is the lotus in full bloom. I am intrigued by it and love looking at the bloom -- look at all that's going on inside the bloom! It's multi-layered inside amazes me. Each part like it's own flower really. I just think it's neat.

Below is my favorite shot for many reasons. I love pink and green together because it always reminds me of one of my favorite memories from childhood. It was when my dad colored with us kids once. I remember he used this green and pink combination and at the time, I had never seen that put together in such a way that it just really drew my attention. I don't know why that stayed with me but it does. More than likely, I just really liked that he colored with us and then he showed his creative side, which we rarely got to see. I'm all mushy for a Sunday night. I should call them tomorrow. :)

Hope everyone has a great week. No Dallas for me this week so I am very psyched about it! :) Nothing like being home.

All-Star Dave Stewart

Last night we got in toooooo late to post about the 10th annual "Smokey" Joe Williams Scholarship Banquet but I wanted to let you all know what a fantastic time I had!!! How can I even put all the things I learned and felt here. :-( I don't even know where to begin so I'll just start out by listing a few things I recall that made an impact on me yesterday. And these are things other than what you may already know about the man, like the fact that he won the World Series THREE times.

1. I felt privileged to have had a chance to meet up with Mark and Stew for lunch and that after calling him Mr. Stewart about 4 times, he said I had to call him either Dave or Stew. I liked Stew. That's pretty cool.
2. He is so down to earth, easy to be with and talk with, funny as all get out and just really neat to hang with and get to know. I felt like we had known him for ages instead of a couple of days (well, really just one day for me).
3. He and Mark had me in stitches the entire time I was with them and they made me feel so special. I mean, really....two wonderfully dashing men teasing me constantly about ditching them for a Spurs game....what girl wouldn't feel all warm and fuzzy? lol
4. He has a GREAT sense of humor and his speech was engaging, inspiring, fascinating and just filled with fantastic stories and if you weren't there, I'm sorry for you. If you were there, remember these: players staring up at the moon (same moon as the one at home or not?) and his teammate carrying a 24-inch TV with him during winter-ball so that he can watch "American shows" while in the Spanish-speaking country in which they were playing.
5. He has met the Queen of England.
6. He likes the Three Stooges a lot (Curly was MY favorite) and he's a big prankster. These two things combined actually got him an invitation to sit in the box with the Queen. Again, long story so I wish you were there to hear it at the banquet.
7. When asked what was his proudest moment, he told us a story not about his baseball accomplishments but rather, he shared his experiences of the Bay area earthquake in '89 or '90 and what he did to try and help. This man is just too awesome!
8. He was intrigued by the fact that Mark keeps bees and he had some really great questions about what he now calls Beeology. And then he shared his new knowledge with other people! He was hilarious. He calls Mark the Beemeister. :)
9. He's a caring man to his family and checked on them often. It was nice to see how family-oriented he is.
10. He was so engaging that he made our daughter, Melissa, laugh out loud many times --- I know she had a great time b/c you don't hear that carefree, natural, sweet sound often enough. AND a woman who has shown little interest in the speakers in the past actually had very nice things to say about Stew. Wow. Two hard sells and he nailed them both. We told him we were pretty impressed.

This photo was snapped while San Antonio's KABB sports reporter, Hector Ledesma, interviewed Stew for a news story. I was happy to see them there because for some unfathomable reason, SA media rarely visits our banquet despite speakers like Fergie Jenkins, Monte Irvin, Buck O'Neal and the list goes on...who wouldn't want to hear from these men (even if you weren't a huge baseball fan, these are sports icons!)? Anyway, thank you KABB for sending someone to cover the banquet.

Thanks, honey, for finding yet another wonderful person for us to meet! Let's go to Claremont and make him miss a Lakers game! :)

Knitting Again

One of the things I promised myself was that I would start knitting again. That means two things to me:

1. I want teach someone to knit.
2. I want to put a knitting project in my purse so that I can knit whenever I have five minutes or when I need a little stress relief.

I'm excited to say I have done both now. Last week, while in Dallas, I taught two workers -- one how to bind off, or complete a scarf, and another how to knit (her first time). They both did great! And we had a wonderful time and it did wonders to relax me. I get so focused on it that I let go of all the thousands of to-dos floating around my head.

Tonight, I am proofing different writings. Some from work but most importantly, I'm also proofing two chapters from Mark's book! It's so exciting that it's almost done. He's working on the index as I blog. :-) I'm proud of you, love!!

Maybe after my proofing and some work, I will knit a bit while watching some of the Spurs/Nuggets game. Go Spurs!

I'm a lucky girl

Thanks for the picture Laurie! Now I know how you guys must feel with me pointing a camera at you all the time! :)

There I am with a flat at work. These very nice CMC men came by to provide assistance by putting air in my tire so I could drive it to a shop, though my good buddy Tod did offer to change it for me and Mark even said he'd come to the mill to change it. Gosh, so many options! It all made me really appreciate my husband and my friends. Thank you for makiing me laugh about it all! It was the most stress-free flat I've ever had. Mark even headed over to Lippe Tires to make sure they knew I was swinging by there so they stayed opened and fixed me up in about ten minutes!

By the way, if you have never been to Lippe, I highly recommend them. Their staff and service have been great over the years for us and the pricing on tires are pretty good also.

Making a new friend

One of the nicest things about this blog is that I have gotten to meet some really wonderful, friendly people in town. This is my newest friend, Jessica. She works for our local daily, KWED's Seguin Daily News, and she told me she loves to check out my blog. I was so, so flattered and happy to know she likes it so much. We met at the archeology dig a couple of weekends ago, where Jessica also snapped some photos of the grounds and activities.

It was wonderful to meet you Jessica! Remember to email me if you want to go photographing together. :-p