A Birthday Blog In Pictures

This weekend found me celebrating 31 years of AWESOME!  in Gruene, Texas with my beloved JS. 

Gruene is located just beside (in) New Braunfels, Texas and boasts good eatin', dancing and some good 'ol German history.  It's nestled right up on the banks of the Guadalupe River and draws an eclectic crowd of kids and adults alike.

Friday night we started off here at the Gristmill. 

If you've never eaten here friends, stop what you're doing and immediately drive straight over. Trust me.  You'll be glad that you did.  A piece of sage advice, dance first, eat second. 

If you're looking to scoot a boot at Gruene Hall, Texas' oldest dance hall, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT eat at the Gristmill first.  It is absolutely impossible to enjoy oneself on the dance floor after you bust a gut filling up on all the excellent eats here at this fine restaurant.  IMPOSSIBLE.  Even if you only ordered the salad.  Which would just be plain stupid anyway.  Leave yourself at least 3 to 4 hours post Gristmill eatin' to do anything that requires cardiovascular type activity.  And wear your stretchy pants.  Amen.

See?  Chicken wire on the windows.  Awesome.

Because we arrived in Gruene around 7 pm on Friday ravenous and in desperate need of fabulous eats, we immediately dined at the Gristmill and thus ruined ourselves for dancing.  Which suited JS just fine.  Reckless Kelly was playing Gruene Hall (again known as Texas' oldest dance hall, which is not to be confused with Texas' largest Chicken Coop) and my dear JS is not a huge fan of country music.  Instead of scooting our boots (flip flops in my case) we waddled our fat, swollen sausage-like toes over to Oma Gruene's Secret Garden for some outdoor Jazz.  Charlie And The Cool Catz were righteous with their ear splitting amperage so we quickly ambled on over to The Stone Coffee Bar. 

The manager of The Stone created this gorgeous mural on one entire wall in less than 6 weeks.  It's creativity requires everyone that enters to take a few pictures and to touch its beauty.  Incredible.

The call of a bubble bath in our giant jacuzzi tub and the need for a little sleep quickly had us shuffling toward "home." 

We stayed the weekend at the Gruene River Inn, a family owned and operated Bed and Breakfast towering on the banks of the Guadalupe.  Magical!  I could have stayed here happily for weeks.

 

Our balcony provided us with these spectacular views:

Saturday morning found me awake bright and early and thus I got to enjoy the glow from our beautiful stained glass window...

 With nothing but time and 31 years of age on my hands, I decided to take the old hip flexors for a spin...  Verdict says:  They're still a little sad but not completely debilitating.  After roughly 3 miles of hills and broken pavement I was limping only a little...   And some might even mistake it for swagger ;)  When I got back to the Inn JS and I shared breakfast tacos and weak coffee in the common room with some Sooner fans before we began my birthday day.

Birthday day went as follows:

Woke up WAY too early.
Went out for a jog.
Ate yummy breakfast tacos.
Enjoyed another bubble bath.
Left the Inn and walked over to the Gruene Grind Coffee Company for the "good stuff."
Relaxed into our caffeine buzz and puzzled at a high rate of speed.

I was only able to complete the border of the puzzle before
 my wing flapping demanded that we mooooove on.

Then we:
Toured the vendors at Gruene's Market Days.
Ate lunch at Adobe Verde to avoid the downpour.
Drank a marvelous birthday beverage.

Mango Margarita, yum!

Which made Momma a little cranky and then made for a really loooong and rejuvinating birthday nap!

Princess Cotton Top sleeps off her crankiness.
Note to self:  Although that new hair color is super fun...
Bleach applied directly to your forehead will in fact leave small chemical burns.  That itching she was talking about...  Is your forehead dying.  Boo Radley.

After my nap we entertained ourselves by watching from our balcony the floaters below screaming and cursing the only (and apparently chilly) rain that our hill country has seen in 5 long months.  When we were finally able to tear ourselves away from the irony on the river we got cleaned up and watched the Horns put the smack down on UCLA.  Unfortunately our Ags were only available on PPV and none of the local bars picked up the game...

...So we were forced once again to stuff ourselves (this time at Mozie's) and then we toured the town on foot.



Mozie's on the left.  Antique-was on the right.



I got to pose with George Straight at Gruene Hall. 
You should definitely be jealous ;)  Another engaging little piece of history:  John Travolta filmed part of the movie  "Michael"  here.

 
We found some great t-shirts at Cotton Eyed Joe's...

And then we arm wrestled over shared a root beer float here at The General Store and ate a huge chunk of the most incredible pumpkin walnut fudge ever made...

With blood sugar hovering in the thousands we sped between the live music playing at Gruene Hall and Oma Gruene's before we landed at the Vineyard.




A rose, a little wine and a bit of fudge:
A beautiful evening they do make!

 After which the following took place:

And sadly

We'll just blame it on the birthday fudge ;)

Annnnnd many more!!!!!!!

    

Summer Time and River Trippin'

I recently was the benefactor of a lovely visit from 3/4 of the Galvatraz Gang and as usual, much hilarity and moderate law breaking ensued.  (Since Tiny and her 1/4 were unable to make the trip, there was some talk of abducting my patient educator and office skeleton ' Leonard Skinnered ' and taking him along as her replacement.  Lucky for Leonard, however, we forgot this ingenuous plan until we were much too far to turn back for him.)

The English Adjunct, Screaming Eagle and Kid showed up early on a stormy Thursday and we set sail for the tiny town of Gruene.  Is was dreary as a mother effer a sunless 70 degrees upon our arrival so we filled our bellies at the Gristmill and shopped for Texas T's, thus allowing the Screaming Eagle a nice wardrobe representing all things Texas for her upcoming deployment to Afghanistan.  After shopping and a lazy paced stroll we were still extremely reluctant to endanger our nether regions by submerging anything of value in the freezing ass river, took a group vote and postponed our float.

 We skedaddled on back to ATX and made a visit to see Master Gardner Gardner Supernova, whom much to our amusement has recently taken up residence on The High Road.  The High Road affords an absolutely breathtaking view of Barton Creek Wilderness Preserve, or maybe it was just some wealthy guy's backyard, hard to tell...  But the company was grand, the view impressive and the GD mosquitoes were off the hook.

 Screaming Eagle took the wheel home because after surviving the ascent up The High Road I had flung myself from the car, kissed the ground and demanded a drink, something strong enough to calm my nerves…  Okay, Okay!  I ADMIT IT!  I am a horrible driver.  Any who...  We ended the evening chilin’ on my front porch, lounging, cackling loudly and mostly making small talk.

 Kid and Screaming Eagle

Day Two saw us bright eyed, bushy tailed and once again on the road.  We made a drive by, grabbed MGG Supernova and headed back toward the river.  Supernova was tricked into riding shotgun and alternated between shocked horror and insulting comments for much of the trip, but alas we all arrived unscathed.  We tubed up, took a dusty ride on a school bus driven by a man hunk of a child nice looking fellow and dropped into the San Marcos River for a marvelous day of leisure and lemonade.

 Our trip ended much too quickly so we soaked our buns a bit longer watching some beautiful people play football and listening to some stellar Texas Country music playing from the tube shack.

After I made a quick porta-potty stop (with moderate assistance as the climb up the bank was treacherous and riddled with a steep set of stairs) again the Screaming Eagle took the helm and guided us safely home.

Even though Supernova was very generous and shared a family sized bag of Cheese Nips for our car ride home, we ordered about $50.00 worth of Chinese food and a valiant effort (at least on my part) was made to eat it all.  The Galvatraz Gang packed up and headed off into the sunset leaving me and Sweet Baby Bella to my horrendous hangover our peaceful napping…  Our at least until JS got home from his hard day at the office.

Until the next time!  Stay thirsty my Frens! 



Epilogue:



JS: Hi, honey. I’m home!

Gator: Ah, Geez. You woke me. Bring a trash can stat.




JS: Holy (Sweet Baby) Jesus! I've never seen so much Chinese food in one place in all my life! What happened?

Gator: We taped an episode of skinny bitches verses food. I won the eatin’ contest.




JS: Did you feed Prada?

Gator: Nah, I forgot. She didn't point at her food bowl like usual.

JS: Hmmm… She's probably recovering slowly after Charlie's Angels Reunion weekend extravaganza.

Gator: Ah, Geez. You woke me again.