Flooding Near our Home

We had some very heavy rains in the middle of April, and our street flooded! Fortunately our home is built up several feet, so we did not have any flooding in our house!

Here is the view from our yard. This is our sago palm that is in our front yard flowerbed.

Here is where we turn onto our street! There were some cars trying to make it through, but only trucks and large SUV's were able to pass by.

Here are a couple of videos Jason took...he's a natural news commentator!!

A Little Sabbath Afternoon Fun

International Festival in Downtown Houston

This year's theme country was Ireland! An entire section with a small "castle" was set up for visitors to stop by and learn about the history, culture, food, and music of the Irish. Since it was the international festival, other countries were represented. We especially enjoyed the Mariachi band "Los Arrieros"!


We also sipped on some tropical pineapple slurpies--thanks to the Carribean island influences. We had some good-old American roasted corn, and strawberry and Butter Pecan ice cream. We stopped by booths with information about Ethiopia, South Africa, and Germany.

We enjoyed music from Scottish bagpipers, Celtic harpists, Louisiana zydeco, and African drums. Dance groups showed their culture from Ireland, India, and Africa!
Here are a few photos to catch a little flavor of Houston's world-cultures extravaganza!

Flower Power!

Last weekend, I cut flowers from our front and backyard to create this arrangement! It was very cheery sitting on my bookshelf!

Cosmos in our backyard garden, then are as tall as we are! They have almost finished blooming and growing for the Spring season, but they have been very beautiful!

Orangey-Yellow poppies in our garden! The stems and leaves on these are a lovely shade of slate blue! They do not last very long if you cut them... So, we've been enjoying them outside mostly!

These are my california poppies in the back flowerbeds! They have been fantastic! Huge plants with every color of bloom and even various styles of bloom!

The amazing red roses and white tulips Jason arranged and gave me for our 3rd Wedding Anniversary! They stayed fresh almost three weeks!

More of my backyard poppies! Aren't tye beautiful, sunny, and cheery!!?

Nasturtiums that have grown into beautiful huge pushy plants! The circular leaves on thes are about the size of a large appel! The blooms are various colors and peek out from behind the giant leaves!

One of our peach roses about to bloom! This year the roses are doing very well--probably the best blooms we've had so far!

I love poppies! Jason bought the first round of seeds, because he knew I loved them so much when we saw them at the botanical gardens! Now, yesterday I have just bought some more seeds for planting over the summer!

Easter Weekend FUN!

We had a lovely time visiting Jason's side of the family during Easter Weekend! Here are a few snapshots from our long weekend with them!
View looking down the bayou from grandma and grandpa's house.

Jason and his grandpa on the bayou! The weather was perfect and we enjoyed viewing the flowers around their property and their garden.

Grandma grows callah lilies, and they are very beautiful! They grow below some vining roses, which make a lovely composition of color and texture!

I'm standing along the driveway of grandma and grandpa's house with some gorgeous pink azaleas behind me! They were really bursting with color!

Gigi and Grampi gave Brady a wonderful car-themed Easter basket, and he LOVED it! He was so excited that he was quivering!

Heather served up a delicious dinner! The good homecooking was wonderful! Grandma and Gigi also contributed their culinary expertise! Everything was soooo good!

Aunt (and/or Uncle) Debbie helped Brady open up some of the very cool cars that were part of his Easter basket!

Look at those grins! Those cars were sooo fun, and Brady could hardly wait to get all of them out of their packaging and vrrrrrmmmming around the floor!

When Brady found an egg in his toy tracktor, he used the "dumper" on the front of it to carefully unload the egg into his basket! It was really a hilarious moment!

Early Spring in our Neighborhood

Our new birdfeeder has become the free neighborhood restaurant for many types of birds and our own family of squirrels! We even have three baby squirrels who we have been enjoying watching. Here you see our familiar flock of mourning doves, enjoying an afternoon feast.

Our cats enjoy watching the birds and squirrels through the window! On this particular afternoon, the weather was cool and beautiful, so we let the screen on our backdoor down, and enjoyed some fresh air. The cats decided to catch a whiff of the birds and watch them from their sneaky perch on our "cat" chair--the one we let them scratch on so that they won't scratch the couch.

Bluebonnets & Wildflowers Along a Country Drive

We took off after potluck at church and headed out to Brenham, Texas. A beautiful town with rich history and gorgeous countryside! I heard on the news that it would be the best weekend yet to view bluebonnets and other wildflowers! They were right. It was absolutely beautiful! We didn't take the "official" bluebonnet trail, however what we found was far better! --an amazing country road with gorgeous views and fields saturated with wildflowers in deep blues and fiery oranges and yellows!

A shadowy silhouette cast by an old, historic Lutheran church.

We thought the old church was a great photo opportunity!

This white barn was planted in the midst of thick Bluebonnets and orange Indian Paintbrushes.

This was our favorite spot! We found the flowers were so closely packed together that we could hardly wade through them! They were vibrant and glorious!

Great photo, Jason! You have a creative eye for photography!! I think this one might be submitted to a photo contest... we'll see! This photo was taken at sunset, so the sky is a little washed out...My camera would not capture the pink and blue streaks of the sunset. The dim light cast on the field caused the flowers to seem iridescent!