Wings Over Houston

This past Saturday, we went to the Wings Over Houston airshow at Ellington Field. This was Celeste's first airshow ever, and she was totally pumped about seeing all of those huge airplanes.

We woke up early, got ready and made a pit stop at Shipley's donuts. We arrived at the airshow at 9:00am and began touring the static display. Celeste absolutely loved the planes that were painted like "sharks," and had to pose by them for the camera. It was so cute!

One of the best parts about the show was the Heavy Metal Jet Team. Wow. They were incredible. I didn't get too many shots of them because there was hardly time to pick my jaw up off the ground! They were awesome!

Of course, like any kid, Celeste just had to have her own airplane toy from the airshow booths. So of course, like any normal parent wrapped around their kid's fingers, we bought her one (while I'm sure she thought, "Ha ha, Suckers!!") And she has been pretending she's flying it ever since.

We had a blast at the airshow! Can't wait for next year's!

One Little Indian

This evening, as I was walking up to Ms. Linda's house to pick up Celeste, she came running towards me with this cute little hat she'd made flopping behind her. My little indian. She kept singing that she was a girl indian and she had made her little indian feather hat.

I had this huge craving for soup (it's one of those cravings that I can't seem to satisfy, so we made a pit stop at the awesome HEB in Friendswood. Everyone we passed smiled at Celeste and her indian feathers.

The soup ended up being delicious. I threw a lot of things together, and it was packed full of chicken. SO YUM! Okay, time to go to bed. Night all.

Blooms of Fall

Fall has arrived to southern Texas, bringing it's cool evenings and mid 80s afternoon highs. The bees have been busily working and the blooms are becoming abundant in my backyard. I love opening the blinds and gazing at all of the beautiful colors in the backyard when I'm home.

One of the drawbacks of being in school full-time through the spring, summer and fall is that I haven't been able to devote the amount of time needed to my back beds. By the time I got around to getting rid of the weeds brought on by last winter, and removing the plants that were killed by the winter frosts and chilling breezes that we were blessed with last year, my Coral Vine had gone wild and was sporting full flushes of blooms. This isn't a bad thing, however it hosts hundreds of bees every day, working dilligently around the whole vine. (Yes, I have TONS of seeds and will have many more seedlings this next spring.) While pouring mulch in a nearby flowerbed, I made several bees angry and did get chased a few times. So that flowerbed is off limits to my gardening hands until the vine dies back in the winter.

The Coral Vine was a gift from my sweet Aunt Cyndi. I'd received it as a seedling from her one year, and it took off and makes the bakyard absolutely gorgeous every year from Spring through Fall. Because I haven't been able to keep it trimmed back this year however, it has grown into 3 of my neighbor's backyards, including one's very tall tree. Yikes. I hope they don't mind!

The long yellow and orange flowers that are hanging in these photos are from some of my Angel Trumpet plants (Brugmansia). These grow pretty tall like trees, and have beautiful blooms. They respond very well to lots of general fertilizer, but I haven't been doing that this year. They still look stunning to me!

One of my evergreen favorites is this Tangerine Beauty Crossvine. It's full of dark green leaves year-round, and has massive flushes of blooms in the Spring. It also helps hide some of the car wash next door from our view in the backyard. One of these days, I may have to cut this one back significantly (if we ever need to get a new fence); but for now, this one is quite stunning and really does the job.

And I can't leave out one of Celeste's favorites, the Ruellia brittoniana (aka. Katie Blue). This one grows in small clusters and was also a gift from my sweet Aunt Cyndi.

Here's to each of you and your families; I hope you have a wonderful Fall!

Cupcake Madness

I don't know why, but I get this incredible urge to fill the house with the savory smells of baking around this time of the year. Well, it started again this past Saturday. And I had a little helper this time.


By the time it was all said and done, we'd made over 50 cupcakes; half were strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese icing and the other half were chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese icing.


Afterwards, I had a LOT of icing left and to much chagrin, I tossed the remains out. It was so hard to do!!! And of course, I've given away about half of them so far.

Then this morning, while getting Celeste ready for church, she couldn't resist licking the icing (after being told not to because she hadn't had anything healthy yet and was refusing to eat anything healthy). So I came in and found those dancing blue eyes staring up at me with the "deer in headlights" look. When I asked her what happened to those two cupcakes, she immediately began searching for a plausible explanation. After many "Uuuuumm's" and "Uhhhhhh's," I finally got the following:

"Mommy, I think my finger must have done it. Yeah, and I think it was an accident, so it's okay."

There are certain moments in a mother's life when you just can't keep a straight face.

Amazing Fall

So in an attempt to succumb to the "soccer mom" enigma with which I've been labeled (thanks, Alicia), this is my attempt to join the craze of blogging moms.

While going through some old photos today, I came across one of Celeste when she was just about a year old, perhaps a few months past. As you can see, she has her hands in the dirt with those wispy blond curls wrapping around her porcelain cheeks and her long eyelashes cover her piercing blue eyes as she intensely focuses all of her efforts on helping me "pull weeds" (aka Liriope). I remember this day very well. It was a beautiful afternoon, one of those perfect ones that just screams at you to throw your hands in the dirt. As I was on my way out the back door, Celeste saw me and hurriedly grabbed her Dora clogs and rushed outside to be with me. How I miss those days!

This morning was another one of those amazing mornings that we've been having. The kind where it's chilly enough to need a light coat for the ride to work, but full of bright sunshine and the smell of Fall. I must say, Fall and Spring are my favorite seasons of the year. There's something about them that just screams, "Amazing!" I can't wait to get back out in the yard with my Little Gardener.