So we spent the last week in Denver, thanks to some wonderful family and friends. You know how you get the free vaca if you just sit through the sales schpiel for the rental property or time share? This was a reconnaissance mission, for sure. Except the salespeople were my husband, my Dad and my friends and the vacation WAS the sales job. I went in totally skeptical because I LOVE Houston. LOVE! I think I’ve written enough to make at least a few of you barf over how much I love Houston. And my boys love our neighborhood and their friends. And even Tony who CLAIMS he was not in it for the sales job and left SAYING his heart was in Houston took approximately 2.5 days to relocate that heart for good. To be fair, Denver was always the place we would retire but I’m 33. This was not imminent. I was a tougher sell for a few reasons. First, I am absolutely phobic of heights and driving along the side of the Rockies = my worst nightmare. Plus also I’m a nervous driver anyway. And then there’s the snow. But dammit if the Rockies stole my heart too. And more shockingly, they stole the hearts of my kids who by the end of the trip were ready to pack their bags and move in for good.

But lets back up a minute to right about the place where we get off the plane. This is what we saw:

Keep in mind, this is MID-MAY!!! Talk about your warm welcome. not. I was less than thrilled. Actually I was wishing I had drank heavily on the airplane. Plus we absolutely do not even own clothing appropriate for this kind of weather. Luckily it was pretty warm despite the snow and the kids made due with borrowed gloves and I packed extra shoes for everyone.

Of the five days we spent in Denver, three were snowy. Two were in the upper 70’s, low 80’s. Seriously. Whacked OUT!

The kids had fun having massive snowball fights…..

{you have to enlarge these pictures to really appreciate}

And building a giant snowman with Grandpa….

And combining the two….

And eating snow….

And falling in the snow….

And climbing rocky snowy icy boulders that threatened their very lives….

Occasionally some elk, deer or fox wandered through the yard….

And eventually it stopped snowing….

And eventually that snow started to melt….

And we got out a bit. We went to red rocks….

We also went on a gold mine tour, visited a dinosaur nature center, toured the Coors factory (all you can drink beer! Woot!) ate buffalo, visited Dinosaur Ridge….

Let me interject here to say that we are HUGE dinosaur geeks, particularly Dalton & Teegan who both have literal encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs. Talk about your living history!

When we weren’t seeing the sites, we hung out back at my Dad’s house, what I fondly refer to as The Cabin even though their REAL cabin is in Michigan. When you are at 8000 ft, though, with bear and mountain lion outside your back door it sorta feels like a cabin.

Addy played with Grandpa….

Noah read to Grandma….

Teegan cooked and had painting lessons….

And we all just sort of hung out and enjoyed the lack of oxygen

Rough life, huh?!

When it was less slippery, Addy & Noah played outside in the snow

and collected dandelions to blow (quite the juxtaposition!)….

If we had made the travel plans after the job loss we would have stayed much longer - we definitely were not in a hurry to return home. Unfortunately our tickets weren’t changeable so we had to limit our stay to a short 5 days. We all fell in love. Dalton & Teegan said they’d readily move if they could move their friends with them. You know, as much as I love where we live now and as beautiful as I thought it was, you really can’t fairly compare beauty when one half of the equation is the Rockies. Everything else looks so…well….flat. Blah. Boring. While its nice to be home with our comfy familiar environs, my morning walk just wasn’t the same.

My Mother’s Day Recap:

I woke up in a good mood despite it being before 8am. Kids made cards and crafts while waiting for Dalton to wake up and then presented me with stepping stones they made, each unique and special its own way.

We packed the kids and stuff into the car and headed out to visit a beach on the boulivar pennisula near Galveston. We had a hot tip that it was THE place to spend the day beaching, shelling, etc. The weather? PERFECTION it was like 70’s and breezy - a far cry from the mid-90s from the previous week.

We took a ferry to get to the beach and it was really fun! We saw dolphins playing in the water. And by playing I mean mating. A small fact I did not realize until I went home and examined some of the photos I took and now I am traumatized!!! It was super cool to see them splashing and jumping and flipping in the water. None of us had ever seen dolphins in the wild so it definitely made our day.

The beach is one of the few drive-on beaches left in the US which meant we just drove the coast until we found a great place to park and stay. The water was typical golf coast ugly but the beach was really nice, clean, full of shells. The kids filled a bucket with live hermit crabs and Dalton even nabbed himself a baby speckled crab.  We found a dead jellyfish which was super cool since we’d never seen a jellyfish in the wild - dead or alive. And frankly, I’d rather see them dead.

The kids had a blast in the water. Even Addy, who I knew would be totally freaked out by the water this summer, eventually was willing to dip her toes in and run along the edge. The water is always warm in the coast so that makes it really fun to play in. Noah got to go out alone and body surf the waves for the first time. He is getting to be a major swimmer this summer! Amazing what a difference a year makes!

And best of all, I got to take tons and tons of pictures. 350 to be exact. I’ve felt guilty for disconnecting a bit from our family experiences because I’m so busy taking pictures so I’ve tried to balance it more and leave the camera at home but I really wanted to get some great beach pictures so it was definitely a great Mother’s Day treat! I got to take all kinds of pictures I had really wanted to take including some cool gull shots, pelican shots, the dolphins of course and I got to really experiment with direct sunlight and shadows which is perfect for this week’s Theme Thursday over at Land of KA.

We had some awesome seafood for dinner, of course, and then headed home late into the night. I just love going out to Galveston but our new favorite spot will be Crystal Beach, for sure.

Check out my photo blog today and this week. I’ll be posting a few pictures every day from our great Mother’s Day adventure. I promise I won’t post all 350! haha.

Happy Mother’s Day to my Mother, my Step-Mother and all my dear friends whose mothering inspires me on a daily basis!

I’m challenging each of you readers to post a photo on your blog of the place in your home or world that most reflects peace and serenity to you. Don’t feel like it has to be master photography. It just has to be a photo taken by you of somewhere that you feel grounded and at peace.

My place is my hammock.

Back when Tony and I first moved in together we shared a tiny home in a lovely neighborhood that was covered in mature trees. I loved it there. I loved our huge yard most of all, even though the trees were so huge that we couldn’t even grow grass back there. I loved the wildlife that our personal forest attracted. Most of all I loved my hammock where I spent MUCH time every day, winding down, meditating, relaxing and learning to cope with our crazy chaotic life. We outgrew the house really really fast and when our landlord decided to sell it, he offered us the option to buy it first. We were sort of cornered into buying it but once we got the mortgage preapproval, we wizened up and decided to shop around and found a place that was much larger and would better accommodate our growing family. The problem was, our new house had no trees. None. We had the same huge yard but not a single shade was cast. Part of my deal for buying the house was that we had to also buy a hammock stand and hammock but it was never used, it was just never the same. Even though Michigan doesn’t get all that hot, there is something truly centering about laying UNDER the trees on a beautiful day. Minus the trees, it had no appeal to me at all. Eventually we moved to yet another treeless home and we toted our hammock with us where it stayed in the garage until we moved, yet again, to Texas.

Finally I feel like I’ve come full circle and I’m back somewhere that feels like home to me: earthy and full of nature and shade and birds singing. It took us a year but we finally got our hammock up this spring and there is simply no better way than to spend an afternoon or 10 minutes than relaxing under the trees with a good book in my hammock. The smells, the warmth of the filtered sun, the breeze, the dragonflies flitting about, the sounds of the squirrels and birds vying for territory, the sight of the gigantic Texas sky speckled through the bright green of our ancient trees, my dog lounging nearby sharing the occasional kiss or snuggle, it is my idea of heaven. Peace on Earth.

So what’s your special place?