The tides are in our veins...

I've been back from my annual women's retreat to Port Aransas, Texas for a few weeks now... 

...and I'm already counting the days until next year.

Photos will have to do for now. 

Somehow, I managed to keep my photography under control - 

I can post my favorite shots in one post.

Granted, it's going to be a long post. 

But it's still one post. 

I hope it gives you a sense of our weekend retreat.

The tides are in our veins. 

~ Robinson Jeffers

The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea. 

~ Isak Dinesen

Horizons...

Every year, soon after school starts, I travel to the coast with a group of women. 

It started as a "mom retreat"... a chance to take a deep breath so the craziness of a new school year didn't drive us all...well, crazy.

My kids are all grown, but I find I need that deep breath of salty air just as much now as I did then.

It will be here in just a few weeks.

The only problem with the weekend is my addiction...to photography.

Everywhere I look, I see something I want to capture, and I'm never satisfied taking just one shot.  

It's intimidating when I get back home to the real world, where there's no time for editing a billion photos. 

And that's why it took until now to edit them, when I'm feeling like that weekend can't get here soon enough.

Here's the first batch...

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; 

only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.

Dag Hammarskjold

A dream is the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope.

Howard Thurman

The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, 

and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, 

for each day to have a new and different sun.

Christopher McCandless

You must learn day by day, year by year to broaden your horizon. 

The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about,

 the more you have left when anything happens.

Ethel Barrymore

We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction

 that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.

 We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you grow up by the sea, you spend a good deal of time looking at the horizon. 

You wonder what on Earth the waves might bring - and where the sea might deposit you - 

until one day you know you have lived between two places, 

the scene of arrival and the point of departure.

Andrew O'Hagan

The cloud never comes from the quarter of the horizon from which we watch for it.

Elizabeth Gaskell

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

Thomas Paine

Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? 

Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.

William Makepeace Thackeray

I remember you, June...

Can you believe it's almost August? 

Can you believe I haven't posted anything here since early summer?

Poor neglected blog.

I'm going to slow things down and mosey back in time, via some of my favorite shots from June.

Most are from our morning walks, which start pretty early. We haven't had many 100 degree days, 

but even the 90's are too hot for Max these days.

June is when the Mountain Pinks decorate the roadsides. 

But they aren't the only wildflowers in the Hollow.

We were blessed with rain this summer. 

See the raindrops left on these yucca petals?

 Rain spills down the hills around us, 

creating huge ruts on our dirt roads, 

so Tom and Daniel spent a morning digging and stacking rocks 

to divert the water down to the culvert below. 

Yay!

In June my nephew brought us a treat - my great-niece. 

She is truly a little doll, inside and out.

We didn't notice until I took the photo and zoomed in close that there's a tiny "pearl" in the middle of this star-shaped plant. 

Anyone know what this is called?

Would you believe Belle is 4 years old now? 

She still acts like a puppy, though, and has the energy of two.

It's funny to me that we say everything in Texas is bigger, yet we call this Lake Austin.

Would you believe a friend's sister lives with this view every day?
I felt blessed just getting to visit and see it once!

More from our early morning walks. 

My friend Leslie turned 55 this month. 

When you've been friends with someone for 40 years, 

you better hang on to them, because they really do know too much about you!

I'd hang on to her anyway. She's a sweetheart.

Speaking of hanging on, this little guy kept me company one day when I was working at home.

I ate my first Torchy's Taco in June. 

I'm ready for another one!

Visits to my house are an adventure for my mom...and impossible without my sons to help maneuver her wheelchair up and down our inclined rock path. 

(Don't take your legs and lungs for granted!)

I gave blood for the first time in more than thirty years in June. 

Then wondered why I hadn't done it sooner. 

No big deal!

I'm glad I chose to be part of Keller Williams Realty for many reasons, 

but one of them is their attitude that we're family. 

Our market center plans fun things for us to do together, 

including a happy hour at the Oasis restaurant on Lake Travis, 

where we watched the sun set.

I told him I just had to take his picture. 

He was cool with it.

I spotted this in a new home I was touring. 

I hope I can find one in a store.

(I'd say I'd make one, but I know better.)