A little of this and a little of that kind of weekend

Happy Monday all!  I hope everyone's Monday is going well, and at least going better than mine.  I've had a pretty rough day, due to some less than stellar sun choices this weekend.  But more on that later.  As I mentioned on Friday, J and I had a jam packed weekend.  We had such a blast, and I thought I'd share a couple of photos with you.

I took this picture on our drive in.  It's so nice being in the middle of nowhere sometimes.

Jason's mom lives on a ranch in Central Texas.  I love being out there.  The only lights you see at night are stars and the only sounds you hear are crickets...and the occasional coyote(!).  The other fun thing about his mom's house are all of the animals.  They have several cats and dogs, goats, horses, and my favorite- a donkey named Rocket.  They're also planning on adding chickens and a cow sometime in the not-so-distant future.

Clearly that's Rocket in the front.  Did you know that donkeys guard goats?  They protect them from coyotes and anything else that could attack a goat.  When I first walked up to their pin (don't worry it's a gigantic area) the goats waited until Rocket determined I was safe before they came to see me.  It was pretty cute.

This picture cracks me up.  The goats and Rocket were so fascinated by little Dolce.  Rocket kept sniffing him and every time Dolce would growl he'd jump back by 4 feet.

Seriously.  He makes me heart melt.

We were also fortunate enough to spend a day in Fredericksburg.  Fredericksburg is the home of the Texas Wine Trail.  Texas wines are the 2nd fastest growing wine destination in the county, succeeded only by Napa Valley.  The NY Times called the Texas Hill Country as a whole the best place to visit for the summer.  Personally, I think a Texas trip could easily rival Napa Valley.  I tried to plan a trip there once, but we could have gone to Europe for the same price!  Fredericksburg is a lot easier on the wallet and Texas people truly are welcoming.

And, in case you're wondering, no that was not a paid advertisement.  :)

We didn't tour any vineyards last weekend, but we did several wine tastings on Main Street.  Jason and I purchased a bottle and actually had it signed by the winemaker.  That's pretty neat.

I was also Jones-ing to go to an olive oil store, but they'd "stepped out" when we tried to go in!  Boo!  All the more reason to go back.  We went to the Rock Box Theatre for an afternoon performance.  If you're ever in the area- GO- they are an incredibly talented group of performers.  This was my second time and they've never disappointed.

We wrapped up the weekend with a visit to Jason's dad's house for Father's Day.  We spent a glorious afternoon floating around in the water and enjoying the sun.  Which brings me to my less than stellar decision...

This weekend was crazy hot.  And I mean crazy hot.  It was 104 degrees on Saturday and a densely shaded thermometer read 106 degrees at 6:30pm on Sunday! I'm usually very fastidious about sunscreen.  I realized a while ago that golden tanned skin was just not happening with my fair complexion and that trying was only going to result in burns and wrinkles.

Well, sometimes bad habits come back with a vengeance:

A red, hot vengeance.  Needless to say I will be returning to my smart sun protection plan.  That is, once I can go into the sun again without my skin feeling like it's going to burn off.  

Morale of the story: WEAR SUNSCREEN.  AND LOTS OF IT.  PARTICULARLY WHEN IT'S OVER 105 DEGREES OUTSIDE.  :)

And if you're looking for natural sunscreen or information on sunscreen in general, I highly recommend you check out the Natural Vixen.  She posts all kinds of great information on what is and is not in the beauty products we slather all over our bodies.

And now, I'm going to crawl my burnt to a crisp body into bed.