El Rey (The King of Country)

For Kenan's birthday, I took him to the George Strait concert this past Saturday. It was a wonderful show, and we were so glad that Brad and Erin were able to come with us. Here are a few pictures:

On the way to the concert

I wouldn't mess with those tough girls ;)

At the Alamodome

The birthday boy!

Garden Progress

Wow, are we ever impressed with our garden. While we were on vacation, our plants were hard at work. It has definitely helped that it's rained the last ten days out of ten or something like that - couldn't be better timing.

Such progress!

Look how tall the tomatoes are already! (the plants closest to me in the picture)

OK, so we were a little overzealous in our planting because we weren't sure what to expect in terms of what percentage of the seeds we planted would actually grow - looks like we'll have to thin these carrots out a tad :)

Look at our baby tomatoes! We also have the beginnings of bell peppers and blueberries

Look how well our Iowa potatoes are doing!

Hot Tub Time Machine

Couldn't resist it...

Vacation

Kenan and I went on vacation to the U.S. Virgin Islands (St. John, to be specific). Here are some pictures from our wonderful getaway:

This is the view from our hotel room - it's right on the beach

A view of Great Cruz bay

At the beach-side cafe enjoying our first day in the sun

Kenan enjoying the beach - as you can see, it was white sand and blue water that you could see down at least 20 feet, as we discovered on our snorkeling cruise

So here's the deal with the native wildlife: there are wild iguanas, cats, and chickens all over the island, but the local government requests that you not feed them because there are centers specifically designed to do this and keep the population under control. There are lots of iguanas in particular on the Westin property because there's so much vegetation. Hotel employees feed them every day at 3 and invite guests to come watch because so many show up. I'd say we saw about 30 at once when it was chow time. 

Feeding frenzy

Kenan wanted a picture of me with them but this was as close as I would get

Relaxing - notice the Kindle. I brought it and never touched a paper book the entire time. I really love it.

On the boat headed out to snorkel (both above and below)

Relaxing on the beach some more :)

So a funny thing happened - we went on a fishing trip that was tons of fun, but the way that you find the fish is to follow the water birds, so we did - and once we hooked one. It ate the bait fish attached to one of the poles and we had to reel it in to free it. Our guide (Jay) did a great job and was totally casual about it - happens all the time

He flew away and was fine, but he didn't learn much because he kept coming back

A 25-pound snapper

A "hound fish" - the Caribbean version of a gar

The biggest fish I've ever caught - a jack. I just want to point out that the gloves are NOT because I wouldn't touch the fish - they were because he has sharp fins, thank you very much

A couple of lucky nurse sharks got the leftover bait fish after our fishing trip was finished. What was funny is that they showed up out of nowhere right where the boat was docked - about fifty yards from where we had been swimming all week :)

With Jay, our hilarious fishing guide

It was a great vacation! Monday means work again but I'm trying not to think about it...

Birthday and Garden Stuff

Kenan bought me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, a beautiful necklace and took me out to dinner for my birthday. Here is what the flowers looked like:

I also got another great birthday present - a new pair of shoes arrived! I used my gift card to Zappos (thank you Mom and Dad!) and they arrived, all gorgeous and everything, on my birthday. Here's what they look like:

Also, the garden is coming along very nicely. Kenan installed an automated drip line watering system and we've already got a couple of seedlings poking their heads up:

Here are the drip lines

Valve system

Our potatoes are taking off!!

First corn plant - I'm officially a corn farmer!

Squash came up first - we have several of those plants

And last but most certainly not least, we are very happy that our ducks came back this year! They seem to like the fence that wasn't there last year :)

Turkeys!!

You would expect that we would see the Easter bunny this weekend, but not so. We had wild turkeys instead! They showed up in the backyard around 4 PM Saturday making a huge racket and didn't seem to care that there were plenty of people around. We saw four; here is a picture of the two Kenan was able to zoom in on:

Happy Birthday, Madison!

Today my little girl is eleven years old. She is the best dog any human being could ever possibly ask for and we love her very, very much. Here's a Madison montage from over the years:

2003 - right after I first became her Mommy

2006 - playing in the Guadalupe River

World's best nap-taker