Hometown visit

A few weeks ago, Tom and I made a super quick trip to my hometown to visit my parents and grandparents. In between chats with the grands and scarfing down all the hometown-specific Tex-Mex we could stomach, we drove around and took pictures of the place from whence I came. 

So this is the Hotel Settles. Without going into the history of the building (a historian I am not...) I can tell you that's it's been around for a super long time. It was long past its heyday and very much closed by the time I was born. As the only building over 3 stories tall in town (this might not be true...but probably) I basically stared at its broken, boarded up windows and just WONDERED about it for my entire childhood. Flash forward to today, it was purchased by an investor and has been bought back to its former glory. Here are 87 views of it from all over town:

 

Majestic, no?

Here's the inside:

The lobby - and don't look now, it's my pa! Just kidding, I just call him Dad.

 

 

There are these really nifty old timey phone booths in the lobby, I fancy that the black and white makes them look even more nifty.

And the ballroom - painted the most lovely mint green:

It's amazing the things you notice with a camera in your hand that you may have missed/not fully appreciated in 18 years of  residence. This town is full of charming hand painted signs, old quirky buildings and alley ways.

 

 

So one of the cutest things to do in town is to drive around the old air park and scope out the prairie dogs. How adorable are these little guys?

And while we're talking about west Texas cliches - here's a horse. Just hanging out, more or less in town.

So here is the view from Scenic Mountain - basically the last bit of elevation before Texas goes completely flat.

One of the quirkiest places in town is my Mimi and Pappy's front yard. Pappy is an avid wood carver and he's taken to decorating the trees in his front yard with some of his carvings. Who does that? Amazing.

Crawfish Massacre 2013

A few years ago Tom decided that he wanted to have a craw fish boil for his birthday. It was a good time, so we decided to make it a tradition. This was the 3rd annual Crawfish Massacre, and the first in which we actually took pictures (or rather, pictures with other than just a camera phone).

This was the extent to which I decorated. I think I used my party planning steam up on my tea party (also, Tom likes nothing better than a low-key affair) so about 20 minutes before people started showing up, Angie helped me create this crepe paper runner on top of a Target tablecloth. So fancy, right?

The one craft we did prepare ahead of time were the t-shirts. This was our second year making shirts for our party guests and we were really happy with how they came together. Tom created the artwork and then helped me screen print them, fun couple project!

CRAWFISH!

Ezra, sitting in his precious Ezra-sized chair, wearing his sweet Ezra-sized craw fish boil t-shirt.

Family pic in matching shirts! Not sure who Ezra is fist bumping...

Colin and Angie being fantastic, as usual.

Tele, happy puggin'. Hanging out in the backyard with tons of people who are likely to drop food is one of her favorite things.

 First round of crawfish hitting the table.

Melissa made Mark and Ezra matching bibs - contrary to the picture above, they both loved them.

And for the sake of time, here are a whole bunch of other pics from the party - I'll let them tell the story. First though, thanks to Meredith for grabbing my camera for a good long while. It's nice to actually be in a few pictures, and really nice to have a good amount of pictures from someone else's perspective. Yay, Mere!