I hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving! We certainly did.
We went to Austin to have Thanksgiving dinner with Nathan's family at his Uncle Steve and Aunt Jennifer's new house. Their home and accompanying property is wonderful; in fact, I told Nathan, "I want this house." Our dream is to buy five or ten acres and build a house on it one of these days, and this little visit helped confirm some ideas we have about what we'd like.
Besides the lovely setting, we really enjoyed being with family and felt thankful for some restful time to play pool, crochet, sleep, watch TV, enjoy the outdoors, and play. Oh, and eat!
The first thing we did when we arrived was feed the chickens. They are docile enough to eat out of your hand, which Noah enjoyed.
Eggs! Different colors from different varieties of chicken.
Noah was fascinated by these "eggs," as he called them. They were on the back of many leaves. Anybody know what they are? Perhaps some kind of insect produces them?
Climbing up into an old tree house.
One thing I really liked about Uncle Steve and Aunt Jennifer's property was the rock wall that surrounds their yard.
It is made of rocks that were cleared from the yard, and, evidently, it was even photographed for Southern Living magazine.
And if you're thinking, "There's no way the yard had enough rocks to
build that," let me just give you a peek into the neighbor's property,
which is typical of this area in the Texas Hill Country.
Nathan and his dad, tightening the zip line.
The zip line starts about 20 feet off the ground but dips pretty low before the end.
Go Nathan!
I love Austin's face here. Hold on tight!
Meanwhile, Clara was loving her pillow throne.
The food was delicious. And I think we had about as many desserts as we did dinner items!
Aunt Jennifer, Emily, and Aunt Traci.
It's nice to have some cheerful conversation while you wash up!
And, bless them, Uncle Steve and Aunt Jennifer had gotten out lots of their boys' old toys for my children. All three kids loved the old Fisher Price goodies, as you can tell by the magnificent mess they made on the living room floor.
That night, we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows in their fire pit, and Noah and Jane went to bed nicely worn out and happy.
The next morning, I stepped out of the sleeping house and took some photos of the foggy morning.
Sometime along my little jaunt, I realized that one of the pleasures photography can bring me is solitude.
And another is the space to simply observe and find the beauty in the mundane. Like fog amidst the trees.
Later that day, we headed to Waco to stay at Nathan's parents' house for the rest of the weekend. I must have been pretty relaxed, because I didn't even bother to get the camera out for the rest of the holiday! Ha! Mostly, what we did in Waco was watch football, crochet, eat, watch movies, clean up Jane's forts, eat, and hunt feral hogs (Nathan).
Our family has had a particularly busy fall, and it was lovely that Nathan had the whole week off of work and we were able to really enjoy each other for several days. Even though we still kept busy, it definitely felt like a holiday. And now we are really looking forward to Christmas!
I hope you had as lovely a Thanksgiving as we did!
