it's early on Sunday morning and i'm sitting in bed next to my sleeping honey. we've had overnight guests. our friends Mike and Kristi and their five kids made a bit of a detour on their spring break trip to come visit us on their way back to east Texas. we grilled fajitas last night and fed the whole clan, 13 of us in all. the whole house is quiet right now, at least for a bit, before we get up and head to church.

we got home from our vacation on Friday night. all the talk was about what Lucy was gonna do when we got there, but we couldn't find her for the first thirty or forty-five minutes. the kids were really getting concerned. but here she came out of the darkness, mewing like crazy to let us know how upset she'd been at us being away. our across the street neighbors had taken good care of her, feeding her and checking on her three times a day. it was good to see our fuzzy family member again!

we had a lazy saturday morning. the kids didn't even bother with eating breakfast and immediately pulled out dress up clothes and started playing elaborate games out back. i went over to Mueller for a 4 mile walk. around lunch time we loaded up the car and drove out to Blanco to my aunt Lucy and uncle Neil's little place on the river for a cookout/birthday party for my grandmother and her brother who have birthdays a month apart. the land is out in the country, just across the street from my grandmother's house. Lucy and Neil are sort of crunchy naturalists. they love to spend time outdoors, love the minimalist lifestyle, and love drinking. they have a little 60's era trailer parked on the land overlooking the river, a self composting toilet and outdoor shower, and big deck surrounded by a string of cactus lights, among other things. Neil's sister, Rita, and her husband, Phil, have also set up and old rv at the land and the two couples spend weekends out there getting away from it all. Lucy has invited us to bring our trailer out and camp anytime, but we've yet to take her up on it. it's totally cool hippie life at it's best.

when we got home, Mike and Kristi and kids arrived, and we all had a great time catching up on with each other. friends are such a nice thing to have.

while we were gone we had a cool corrugated metal fence installed across our backyard. right now it's just 6 ft. metal panels, but we'll have a wire panel put at the top and hopefully i can get something viney to grow and weave in the wire panel, adding even more privacy.

my garden is coming along nicely. i was hoping the plants would be a little taller, but i guess we didn't get any rain while we were gone. the front flowerbeds are looking beautiful. back in February i bought some plants on clearance at Lowes, ones that had been touched by the hard freeze. i was able to rescucitate them and they look so good!

our spring break was great, but i'm ready to get back to routine. SXSW was going on for the past, what 11 days, and the city has felt packed to the gills. we even had a few concerts in the neighborhood. the festival ended last night, so hopefully things will start clearing out today, making it a bit easier to get around town. for several years we've talked about renting our house out during SXSW since we're almost always gone for the week, or part of the week for spring break anyways. next year we're doing it for sure. it would be a great way to pay for whatever we do for spring break. several other people in our neighborhood rented out their places, as we're close to downtown and right on the bus line. we're also hoping to rent out our place for the weekend of ACL fest, which is the weekend we go away for our anniversary in October. hopefully we can get our act together this year to make it a reality.

i need to go rouse the household so we can start getting ready for church.