CHRISTMAS IN JULY & A TRIP TO GRUENE

Guess who came to town yesterday, in a shiny red conveyance full of toys? Noooo, not Santa. Even better. The Sanfords!

This is what their truck looked like when they pulled into the parking lot at Hays City, where we were meeting up with old friends from Bahrain, who now live in Driftwood.
 

Nurse Nellie and the Sanfords

This is at least the third load of baby/toddler stuff they have brought us, now that their grandson has outgrown it all, and I bet you their garage still isn't empty!

Later that afternoon we drove over to Gruene (pronounced Green), a little historic village on the outskirts of New Braunfels, and home to the oldest continuously operating dance hall in Texas, Gruene Hall. Paula and I headed off to the fabulous children's book/toy store called The Purple Chair, while the men headed off to a nearby cigar store.

Story Time

I bought this amazing book for Little Goober because I fell in love with illustrations by artist Thom Ricks.

When I went to check out, they said "He's a local guy, you know. Sells his artwork in that cooperative gallery across the street. If he happens to be in, he'd probably sign this for you." So of course, we went straight over there! Alas, he was not in, but Paula and I both fell in love with his color-mad paintings of sites around Gruene. The originals are waaaaay out of my budget, but one of his giclee prints would look mighty swank hanging above my mantle!

After exploring all the little boutiques there in Gruene Lake Village, we went lookin' for the men folk. They were planning to find a nice bench in the shade where they could smoke a cigar, but since it started pouring rain as soon as they got to the cigar store, we weren't sure where they ended up.

Turns out, the cigar store has a smoking room, which is supposed to be "members only", but which they were kindly invited to use when it started raining. So this is where we found them...

Talk about two happy boys!

Next we went for a drink at the wine bar across the road, which also had a large selection of craft beers on tap.

Last, but certainly not least, was a scrumptious dinner at The Gruene Door, also in that same little shopping area.

In fact, the only sad part of the whole day was finding out that those nasty antibiotics had given Little Goober a serious case of the runs and his poor little mama was feeling tad stressed, since she had only recently switched him into cloth diapers and was still trying to get the hang of it all. We advised her to check with her pediatrician about infant probiotics, and her sweet hubby left work early to bring her a big box of disposable diapers. Hopefully, they're both feeling a bit better now.