Too Cute

Almost every week I get a new picture via email to see the progress of my little nephew. He will be 4 months old next week. Since they live in San Diego, we don't get to see each other as much as we would like. Both my brother and sister-in-law are in the medical field (she is a RN in the Navy and he is a civilian nurse), so they rarely get time off together. I hope they get to come home this year so I can see this little guy in person. From the pictures, he is beginning to look more and more like my brother - red hair and all!

Austin Pets Alive

Austin Pets Alive is a pet adoption group here is Austin that takes animals that are scheduled to be euthanized and puts them up for adoption. This is how we got our lovely Riley. This group has been fantastic to work with and even did a follow up to make sure she was fitting in to our household. I have purchased and adopted several pets before but none of them have ever bothered to follow up.

If you are looking for a pet to add to your home or just looking for a great organization to donate to, I highly recommend Austin Pets Alive.

Texan Cafe

The community we have moved in to, Hutto, has a small town feel that we really like. It has a population of 17,250; well, actually 17,252 now that we have moved here. We want to learn about the community and get involved so today we decided to have lunch at one of the local eating spots called the Texan Cafe. It is located in downtown Hutto and reminded me of Peacocks or Jake and Dorothy's in Stephenville. One of the owners was seating customers, they have a daily blue plate special, and a fantastic homemade pie selection. In the spirit of trying new things, I had sweet potato fries (I have never tried sweet potatoes before) and found that I really liked them. The food was down home cooking and we left feeling like we needed to go home and take a nap. The cafe felt really comfortable and was the type of place you could go regularly and get to know everyone. Since it was a Saturday, they were extremely busy, but we really enjoyed ourselves.

We also visited a store a couple of doors down called Everything Hippo. They sell concrete Hippo statues and just about anything else you could want in a hippo motif. The store had changed owners and the new owner was there cleaning out the store. She let us come in and look around anyway and promised to give me a call once she found the pricing of the concrete hippo statues.

I can't wait to get a hippo statue and decorate it for all of the various holidays.

UFO in Stephenville

Stephenville has made the Popular Mechanics magazine because of their UFO sitings. First, I have to say that I do believe there are other beings in the universe. However, I don't believe they are seeing them in Stephenville. Having grown up in that town, I believe they are seeing some kind of airplane or meteor that is creating the lights. I do get a kick out of all of the attention this has received because it has put the sleepy little town in the spotlight, I just wish they were getting attention for something else. Why not get attention because it has a great school, Tarleton State University, in the town? How about getting attention because Ty Murray and Jewel live there? I can think of a number of things I would rather hear on the news than they have had yet another UFO siting.

The Princess Cake

One of my team members grew up in California and moved to Texas a few years ago. When she was a child, her mother worked at Disney. She was also infatuated by the characters at Disney and decided she wanted to play one of them when she became old enough. She always had her eye on the princess, Belle. Unfortunately, a move to Texas ended that chance. She told us this story several months ago, so we all patiently waited until it was her birthday, so we could surprise her. Her birthday was Friday, so my hubby baked her favorite cake, Red Velvet, and we threw her a princess themed birthday party. There was a castle shaped candle with little princess figures on her cake, princess plates, princess birthday card, and it goes on. Amazingly she never caught on to our plans and was totally surprised. Now I have to figure out what to do for the team members birthday that comes next month.

Princess Cake

Tomorrow is the birthday of one of the girls on my team. Today hubby baked her favorite cake, Red Velvet, so I can take it to her tomorrow. She moved to Texas from California a few years ago. When she was in California she always wanted to play a Princess at Disneyland. So, tomorrow she will have a Princess themed birthday. The cake topper is a castle shaped candle with Princess figures to go around the castle; the plates have various Disney princesses, and her card is princess themed as well.

I can't wait to see the look on her face when she sees the cake.

I'm Back

I was out of commission for a while during the move to our new home, but I am back now. We are not all settled in yet, and probably won't be for a while; but at least all of our belongings are finally in one place.

The first couple of nights were too quiet for me to sleep; I had grown used to the noises of an apartment community. Now, after sleeping in our house for almost a week, I am sleeping better than ever.

The dog are having a blast in their back yard and we are slowly making the place our own.