Brrr

 It's cold-at least for us down here in Texas. Mid-day and still in the teens. We even have a little snow. But that's ok, we all know that Fool's Spring is right around the corner!

 

Rest and Recovery Day

We got back from our trip to New Mexico last night and we're ready for a day of relaxing at home. It was a good trip and one we needed to take, but like trips to the old hometown, a little bittersweet. We moved away from southern New Mexico back in 1976 and have lived primarily in Texas since then, with a break of 7 years when we moved to northern New Mexico. We love Texas and really consider it to be home now.

It was good to visit with my husband's family-we ate lots of good New Mexican food (a whole different thing from Tex-Mex), spent time with siblings and cousins and played 42 (a domino game) for the first time in years. We also visited cousins that are the oldest left in the family. We don't know if we'll get to see them again this side of Heaven, so it was definitely a visit we wanted to make-they are all close to 90. We laughed a lot at their stories-they got up to some shenanigans when they were at New Mexico State University together in the early 1960's! My husband graduated from NMSU in 1976 and we spent one morning just going to the buildings where he went to classes, driving around our old neighborhood in married student housing and reminiscing. It was strange to think that we now have a grandchild at university here in Texas! Guess that's why all of the students looked like "little kids"! 😄 We drove by our old schools and we drove by our old houses where we grew up-a little depressing for me to see how run down the house and neighborhood are-and made a trip to the cemetery where our parents and many of my husband's family are buried. We did a lot of just driving down old roads and revisiting familiar places. Southern New Mexico is a beautiful place of desert, mountains, and miles of pecan orchards.  (These are photos from the internet-they are in the middle of a bad drought and it's all brown and dry, plus it's winter.)

It was a busy week but we're glad we went. Now to get back to "normal"! Getting the inside of our house painted is next on our list, but not just yet!

Happy Groundhog Day!