Seasons. (our weekend at the ranch + serious “big life stuff”)

The state of Texas has its downfalls, but one thing I’ll always love about it here are the wildflowers in spring.  It’s not that we have particularly harsh winters, but after a season of drab and dead and (sometimes) cold, spring here is such a refreshing turn.  Except for all the Texas sized bugs.  Those are not refreshing.

Matthew and I rounded out his spring break with a nice long weekend at the ranch, and since the last time I’ve been there, things have changed tremendously.  The trees that were once skeletal and bare are now budding and green, and wildflowers literally fill the fields and blanket the ground in most areas.  It was really breathtaking, and I found myself seeing everything through the frame of my camera—imagining how it would look in a picture.  Funny how perspectives change with our passions. 

To be honest with you, my heart has been really heavy lately.  Edd is slipping away.  Last night my mom needed help getting him from the living room to his bed, and he was confused and frightened and just… gone.  It broke my heart to see him that way. He’s not the man we knew anymore.  The cancer has taken the part of him that made him him.  The decline has been so rapid in the past couple weeks…   I haven’t been able to write about it.  No words seem to do this justice—what I’ve seen the cancer do to him and people I care about.  I’ve been feeling disingenuous on this blog lately, because I feel the need to carry on and continue posting (which I really do enjoy), but to not tell you about this other huge thing… the loss I sense is so near and, really, has already occurred… I can’t gloss over it, even though I never have the right words.  It’s real.  It hurts like nothing I’ve ever experienced, and I have trouble not focusing on it, not feeling it all throughout the day, because I know he’s suffering, and I know my mom is suffering in a whole other way.  Even our family dachshund, Nicky, is sick and old and needs to be put to sleep. When it rains it pours, right?

I’ve never lost anyone I really love before, but I guess now begins that time of life when you have to learn to face death and somehow come to terms with it.  I was thinking out at the ranch this weekend about how hopeless this life would be if we weren’t given the promise of spring.  Change.  Good things to come.  Because there are such good things to come!  Even when it feels like the season you’re in might never end. It will.  It will be good again.

Anyway, sorry to be so heavy.  Why are my heaviest posts always on Monday? Forgive me. :)  And thanks for reading! Here are a few more fun pictures from our weekend at the ranch…

 Can we talk about how incredibly adorable my mother in law is for a minute?

Do you get away?

This weekend we went out to the ranch to spend some time with family and to just “get away”… something that’s become increasingly important to Matthew since he started law school.  We had a nice time, and I’ve been feeling lucky that we have a place like that to go to, even though it’s not particularly fancy or luxurious.  Fancy or not, it’s a place to go to see things and do things that break up some up that monotony of every day life, and to make you feel a little less like you’re sinking in the sludge. Cause we all have sludge, you know.  Such is life.

I don’t know about you, but personally I’m a bit (ok A LOT) of a homebody and sometimes it doesn’t feel like my natural tendency to get out and DO things and be around people.  Sometimes that’s something I have to force myself to do because I know that once I get there I’ll enjoy it and it’ll be good for me. 

But lately I’ve been realizing how incredibly important it is for an artist of any kind to simply get out or get away.  Whether that means visiting a different country or a different town or just making time to meet new people or go new places in your own city.  Our minds are funny things, and they’re most stimulated by new sights and sounds and smells and experiences.  Of course that’s not really rocket science, and yet so many of us resist change and getting out of our comfort zone.  Or in my case, my comfort RUT. And then we wonder why our art suffers.

I guess the main thing I wanted to say was that if you’re feeling uninspired, try going somewhere you never (or rarely) go or doing something you never do. Lately I’ve been having the strongest urges to do just that—even if it only means turning down a street I’ve never turned or going into a store I’ve never shopped in. I really find that it seems to jumpstart my creativity every time, and it also helps me to appreciate what I have more.  Sometimes it even makes me happy to get back to the sludge.  Imagine that.

Happy Monday!

sunset at the ranch

attire

an “Elk shed.” somewhere there’s a really lopsided Elk!

exploring

by the fire

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  Howard Thurman

Weekend Retreat

Matthew and I made the last minute decision to head to the ranch for a little New Year’s weekend retreat, and it wound up being just what we needed.  I don’t consider myself a country girl by any stretch of the imagination, but I really enjoy going down there and just getting away from it all for a bit—spending a little more time with nature and a little less time with technology. (though, who are we really kidding… I had my iphone with me the entire time, hence the following photos courtesy of Instagram.)

On New Year’s Eve Matthew, Gracie, Cooper and I sat by a big fire and ate s’mores cookies and talked a little about our goals for 2012, then the fire died prematuraly, and we were cold and went inside and fell asleep at 10:30.  My kinda party. 

Anyway, hope you’ve all had an excellent start to your week and, really, your whole year. :)

1. Such a good girl in the car                                        
2. Cooper giving sister kisses

3. Hello there Mr. Red Stag
4. Windmill at the ranch

5. A really friendly goat… thing.
6. With my little loves

7. A nest among thorns
8. Morning sky

 
9. Cows loose on the road
10. Couldn’t shake the feeling I was being watched…

 
11. About to head back home
12. Aaand sexy husband on a 4-wheeler thrown in for good measure.

Happy Tuesday everyone! Make it a great day!

And the winner of last week’s Poshlocket giveaway is…

 

Congrats to the other Jenni with an “i!”  We’ll be in touch! :)

Ten *notable* things I did this weekend.

This weekend we packed up our little family and headed to the ranch, where several **notable things happened.

**the term notable above is used loosely, at best.

1) Took some pics of Gracie and Cooper in the car, just before Cooper vomited the entire contents of his stomach onto the seat. 

2) Saw a couple grass fires on the way there. It’s dry and hot as hell here in Texas—so much so that things and people are starting to spontaneously combust. 

Ok, not people (and not really things, either).  But stepping out-of-doors DOES kind of make you feel like you might actually burst into flames.

(poor guy in machine thingee frantically dumping dirt on fire)

3) Saw pigs. Took pictures.

4) Saw these things.  Took more pictures.

    

5) Saw a bunny and immediately named him Benjamin (original, I know).

 

6) Watched Gracie swim her little heart out in the pool

     FIL and Gracie

 MIL and Gracie

Me and Gracie biting at the water (ok, so I’m only pretending to)

7) Watched Cooper WATCH Gracie play in the water

(he is the laziest dog maybe EVER)

(Matthew took Cooper out on a floatie once, but the poor little guy hated it)

8) Learned how to make hot dog Octopi

 

9) Looked for more rocks for my collection (what?).

 

10) Took ranch-inspired outfit pics, coming tomorrow!

 

How was YOUR weekend?  Spend some time with your daddies?

Have a nice Monday!!!