Texas Lou

Archive for the ‘Winter’ Category

Hi friends! Here’s my weekly dose of gratitude:

1. I’m thankful that my boys are currently healthy.
2. I’m thankful for great friends who I can enjoy things like Galentines Day and the Wine is for Lovers 5K with.
3. I’m grateful that my children like vegetables and aren’t picky eaters most of the time.
4. I’m thankful for challenging projects to work on and smart, helpful, fun coworkers at work.
5. I’m grateful for the warmer winter we’ve had and the lack of snow.

Love you all!

Hola!  I’m keeping that spirit of gratitude alive!  Here are just a few of the things I’m grateful for today:

1. I’m grateful that my nephew was born safe and healthy and that my sister is recovering well after giving birth on Thursday!  I’m so excited to welcome a sweet new baby into our family!
2. I’m thankful for great mama friends who help me make it through the long days of motherhood!  On Friday, we had lunch with Amy and Roland and on Monday, we spent the day at Lindsey’s!  I’m happy I have good friends who have sweet children that my kiddos are becoming buddies with!
3. I’m thankful for a little warmth after a lot of cold!  We had temperatures in the 60s on Friday and it was a really nice break in between cold snaps!
4. I’m grateful for a husband who is a great handyman!  He’s always doing his best to fix things around the house so we don’t have to pay someone to do it!
5. I’m grateful for coffee!  I wake up every morning looking forward to the smell and taste of it and the caffeine definitely helps with the lack of sleep I’m getting due to middle-of-the-night feedings!

Have a happy day!

Hey friends!  I hope everyone is staying warm!  Here’s my thankful 5 for today:

1. I’m so grateful we didn’t lose power during the blizzard this weekend.
2. I’m thankful for my father-in-law who brought his tractor over to help dig out my van yesterday so we didn’t have to spend hours upon hours shoveling.
3. I’m thankful that we didn’t get as much snow as they were predicting.  30 inches is way too much for this Texas girl!
4. I’m grateful for Ben and his hard work making sure my car was cleaned up, unstuck, and ready to go this morning.  I had zero delays this morning getting the van on the road.
5. I’m grateful to get out of the house after being stuck inside for 4 days straight with the exception of some driveway shoveling!

Have a great day!

Hey there and welcome to this week’s post of gratitude!  Here’s what I’m especially thankful for today:

1. I’m grateful for my health and the health of my family members.
2. I’m thankful for the fact that we’ve already passed the shortest day of the season and are headed toward longer and sunnier days.
3. I’m grateful for winter.  I’m not a fan of short days and cold temperatures but those two things keep my husband indoors more which means he gets to spend more time with the boys and I instead of working on our house and yard.
4. I’m grateful for the opportunity to watch 2 little boys grow and learn.  Watching them experience new things and learn new concepts is fascinating and I’m sad thinking about the day when they will no longer approach everything with such wonder.
5. I’m thankful for coffee!  I LOVE coffee and I drink a lot of it!  Without it, I’d probably have a much harder time making it through most days without a nap so I’m very grateful for it!

Happy day friends!

Good morning and welcome to my Monday morning Thankful Monday post!

I feel like everyone is especially thankful this week because Thanksgiving is on Thursday.  Here’s my thankful list for today:’

1. I am thankful for my husband Ben.  He made me french toast for breakfast yesterday, and even though he has this week off of work and didn’t have to get up early, he got up at 6:30 AM and offered to make me breakfast before work.  He made me french toast again (DELICIOUS) and it’s the first time in a long time I can remember eating my breakfast at home and not taking it with me to work!  He is also coming to meet me for lunch today since he has the day off!  I love him and I’m so lucky to have him!
2. I’m thankful for having a working heater and for modern heating systems.  It was 17 degree this morning when I left the house and yesterday the high was only 35 degrees.  I am definitely not a fan of winter and cold weather so to be able to stay nice and warm inside is something I appreciate greatly!
3. I’m thankful for a healthier mind, body, and outlook on life this year.  This time last year, I was very depressed and anxious.  I knew I was going to have to spend the holidays (both Thanksgiving, my birthday, AND Christmas) without my family for the first time ever and I wasn’t adjusting well to having to leave my old job and everyone that I loved working with as well as my wedding being over.  Thanks to a great deal of hard work, research, soul searching, and mindfulness techniques that I learned (including these Thankful Monday blog posts), I am learning how to be happy and find happiness from within.  I still have a long way to go and recognize that this is a lifetime process that I can’t just stop once I think I’ve mastered it.  I’m just so happy to be in a much better place than I was a year ago.
4. I’m thankful for wonderful friends who brighten up my life.  Tuesday, I enjoyed girls night with two good friends and their lovely daughters.  It’s always fun to see their babies growing up and to catch up with them.  Then Friday, I had frozen yogurt (YUM) with Sarah, Meghan, and Meghan’s cut little baby at Bloop, followed by dinner with lots of friends at Miller’s to bid farewell to my awesome friend Wilson before she moves to the west coast.  Then I got my Bodo’s fix (I hadn’t had Bodo’s in way tooo long) while visiting with Ian, Sarah, and Cris.  My life is full of wonderful friends!
5. Lastly, I’m thankful for a family to spend the holidays with.  I know that alot of people don’t have anyone close to them to spend Thanksgiving with or can’t afford to travel home to be with the ones they love, so I am thankful that I married a man whose family loves me and lives nearby.  I always remember a man that I worked with at VGT named Charles.  Every year, he and his wife would invite everyone in the company (there were at least 250 of us) to his home for Thanksgiving dinner.  Alot of people at VGT relocated for the job so I think this gesture was especially generous because so many people were living far from their families.  Sadly, Charles died not too long ago, but I will always remember his generosity, especially around Thanksgiving time.

Happy Thanksgiving and have a wonderful week!

I love dark beers, particularly porters and stouts, however in the summer, its usually just too damn hot to imbibe in them.  If I happen to catch myself out on a relatively cool summer night or come across a rare dark brew that I have been dying to try, I’ll drink it, but I usually stick to lighter beers when the weather’s hot.

I’m not a huge fan of winter as I’ve written before, mostly because I loathe the dark, short days and can’t stand the cold weather.  However, one great thing the cold weather ushers in is my taste for darker beers which also seem to be more widely available in the winter months.

One of my favorite breweries, Terrapin Beer Company, out of Athens, Georgia was recently featured in an episode of one of my favorite shows, The Walking Dead (also filmed in Georgia) and makes one of my favorite dark beers, the seasonal Moo-Hoo Chocolate Milk Stout.  My guess is that Moo-Hoo takes its name from the chocolaty milk beverage called Yoo-hoo due to its smooth, creamy texture and chocolate flavor that comes from the use of cocoa nibs, cocoa shells, and lactose in the brewing process.  In my opinion, Moo-Hoo is a thousand times better than Yoo-hoo ever was, but I am a bit biased seeing as I’ve become quite the beer snob.

Terrapin makes some really amazing beers including Pumpkin Fest, Hopsecutioner IPA, and a number of rare Side Project beers like the Liquid Bliss I wrote about last year.  In addition, they have some of the most creative and entertaining artwork bringing their labels alive!

Terrapin Moo-Hoo Chocolate Milk Stout

I recently picked up a 4 pack of Moo-Hoo at the weekly free beer tasting we go to at Market Street Wine Shop.  I’m really looking forward to enjoying this thick, dark beer now that the days are getting colder.  If you are a fan of beer in just the tiniest amount, I highly recommend checking this brew out while its in season!

And by “Winter Is Coming”, I’m not just referring to one of my favorite shows, Game of Thrones, which I am really excited to see the third season of beginning in March.

Today is the last full day of summer and tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox, or official beginning of fall.  And as fall leads to winter, I started thinking about my first winter here in Virginia.  It was my first real winter and my first real snow storm I had experienced.  We received 6 inches of snow in Charlottesville in early 2006 and the next day, I was like a kid on Christmas.  I headed outside with my camera to view the landscape covered in white powdery snow.  I think it was pretty obvious to others that I’d grown up someplace far away that never experiences such phenomenon.

I wanted to showcase one of my favorite photos from that day.  I lived in an apartment complex that had a lake, really a large pond, that often provided a sanctuary to local ducks, geese, and swans.  The reflection coming from the sun on the water as the geese basked in the sunlight after a long night of cold and cloudy snow really lets you feel the calm after the storm.

I’m hoping we get some snow this winter, especially after the uneventful winter we had last season.  I’m not a huge fan of winter time, but if it’s going to be cold and dark and dreary, I’d rather had some beautiful snow to go with it.  After all, when everything’s white, the world looks a little bit brighter!