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?

This is not an outfit post.

Sorry for the lack of outfit posting lately.  The above photo (well, maybe before I cropped out my arse) should give you a general idea of the types of clothes I’ve been wearing.  Cool cotton dresses or shorts with a tank top have been the primary staples of my closet this past month (when I’m not inside my abode in a t-shirt and no pants, that is).

People, it is HOT.  Stifling so. Last month was the hottest July we’ve had here since the 1800’s or something. Today Matthew and I had to run downtown for an errand midday, and I swear I felt as though I’d stepped into an actual, flaming furnace of death and despair.

I may not leave my house or get dressed in real clothes again until mid-September, at which point fun, fashionable outfits will commence.

My apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

In other news, while downtown errand running, we ducked into the Driskill Hotel just to check it out and escape the heat.  I pretended to be a tourist who belonged there and took some pictures.  It’s a really beautiful hotel! 

 

 

    

Oh, Texas.  I have such a love-hate relationship with you.  But really, what is THIS?  WHAT IS THIS?!  Not cool, that’s what.  In both senses of the term.

 

Uggh.  That is all.

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!!!