Whirlwind weekend

As if things weren't hectic enough, we took off for the weekend to head out to Kerrville to attend a graduation ceremony for my nephew.  At 28, this has been a long time coming.  He hasn't had the easiest time getting to this point and there have been a lot of challenges along the way and, quite frankly, we weren't certain this was going to happen, but Andrew finally earned his sheepskin this weekend.  So the entire family (sans brother #2 in Seattle) made the trek out to west Texas to attend the ceremony.  Even my kid drove out from Austin to make it just under the wire to watch Andrew walk across.  Small university with about 250 graduating seniors.  This is the last child of 4 for my oldest brother, so they can finally claim they have no kids in school after a very long time.  We are grateful for our only one.  My parents made it out for the gig.  At 88+, they are not sure how many more they will be able to attend, but we have one more to go (for the grand kids).  My son is on target to graduate next spring in Austin.  Already making tentative plans for next spring.  In the meantime, I will have to go back to Austin later this month to help extract him out of his apartment.  He and his buddy are renting a house up in Austin this summer and he has landed another internship in Austin this year, so he will  much closer to home and momma.  Not sure where he will be staying, but he has a plan (just would be nice to know what it is).  

Was a good, but long road trip.  The parents, the older brother and us took our trailers out to Kerrville Friday to camp out before the ceremony.  Kerrville is a long haul from here without a rig to tow.  At least 1.5 hours west of San Antonio, it took us 5 hours to make the trek out and 6 coming back.  Traffic was OK, just slow at spots.  The country out past San Antonio is very beautiful (IMHO).  Start of the Texas Hill Country with lots of small hills and scrub oaks.  The blue bonnets were all gone, but a lot of flowers still remained.  Weather was iffy, so no good photo ops.  The dogs travelled very well for the first long road trip.  They were well behaved and the darling of everyone at the campground.  Goldens are typical magnets and love any attention they get.  Biggest problem I had was with the grass burrs.  Since Kerrville is a very dry country, most of the grass was dried up with lots of weeks and burrs.  Every time I walked the dogs, even for a short walk around the RV park, I wound up picking burrs out of their feet/coats for 20 minutes afterwards.  Both were very patient, but Claire has developed a tendency/preference to walk in the road rather than the grass.  One woman had a pair of huge, white Great Pyrenees that dwarfed Grayson & Claire.  Gorgeous dogs, very gentle & calm.  They were happy to see our Goldens as that us the only dog they are allowed to play with (due to their size & stature).  These were trained herding dogs and could typically herd sheep in an open field.  At 150+ lbs each, Grayson was somewhat intimidated by their size.  With the grass burr problem, when I ran into this woman, both dogs look like they had been rolling in a field of burrs.  Probably took half the day to dethatch them.

And momma & I had a great, quiet anniversary last week.  Dinner out at The Cheesecake Factory and, as like last year, the son ordered us a Cheesecake (Godiva Chocolate).  One slice has enough calories to sustain a person for weeks.  A funny corollary to our anniversary was with the cards.  While shopping for an anniversary card (I prefer the funny ones), I spotted a card with two Golden Retrievers sitting side by side.  The inside comment was "Another Year Closer to Looking like Each Other".  I liked the card, but thought it was more of a card to give to another couple, so I bought it to give to my brother and his wife next month.  Brought the card home and momma spotted it on the desk and noted that she has bought the same card before realizing it was more of a "give to someone else card".  Funny.  What makes this ironic is that, our darling son who is miles away in Austin, sent us a card for our anniversary and take a guess as what card he sent us.  Freaky.  Que the twilight zone music...