The Weekend Joyride
The Weekend Joyride is a 30-ish minute weekly podcast with Mac and Rhoni—real conversations about faith, life, music, and the everyday moments that make you stop and think.
Each episode blends honest conversation, spiritual insight, Christian music (mostly), local color from around Central Texas, and stories that feel close to home.
It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about noticing God’s goodness, growing through real life, and enjoying the ride along the way.
The Weekend Joyride
Cut Back, Brought Back
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
A few days away leave Mac and Rhoni thinking about what needs care, what needs cutting back, and what deserves to be carried forward.
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A few days away left us with more than souvenirs.
A traditional Hot Springs experience, a dramatic change back home, and an unexpected family gift opened one larger conversation: How do we recognize what needs to be released—and what deserves to be preserved?
This Weekend Joyride moves from laughter to spiritual reflection to a deeply personal reminder that the past cannot tell its own story. Along the way, we consider healthy pruning, renewed thinking, and the small act that can reconnect a family with someone they loved.
This week’s challenge: Cut back one thing that is crowding your life. Then restore, identify, and share one meaningful photograph or memory.
Links for this episode:
Hot Springs National Park: Buckstaff Bathhouse — https://www.nps.gov/hosp/learn/historyculture/buckstaff-bathhouse.htm
Curtis-C Tree & Lawn Services — https://curtisctreeandlawn.com/
Smokin’ Joe’s Rib Ranch, Davis, Oklahoma — https://www.chickasawcountry.com/restaurants/smokin-joes-rib-ranch-davis
Shutterfly Photo Books — https://www.shutterfly.com/
New episodes always coming. Follow so you don’t miss the next one.
Email us at hello@weekendjoyride.com
Welcome to The Weekend Joyride.
MacWe just got back from a trip. We went to Hot Springs, Arkansas and had some fun times. Of course, we were expecting good times, but we're also expecting some good food and a few days away and an experience. Uh-huh. Some great scenery. We love going to Arkansas. We really do. We'd never been to Hot Springs before. But during the trip and even after we got home, we kept encountering the same idea in very, I don't know, different ways. And that is sometimes renewal means allowing yourself to be cared for. Sometimes it means cutting away something that's become too heavy or overgrown.
RhoniAnd sometimes it just means finding something that either faded or was nearly forgotten, or restoring what you can and sharing it before more of the story disappears.
MacWe recorded part of this episode of The Joyride in a coffee shop in Hot Springs not long after we came out of the bathhouse experience.
RhoniSo pull up a chair and uh just know you may hear a few cups and conversations in the background around us, but that's just part of our trip.
MacThat's right. Welcome to the weekend joyride. Ronnie's here with me. What's your first impression? Not of what we did this morning, because we'll talk about that in a minute, but of hot springs.
RhoniWell, all I can think about is Hot Springs is hot. I'm still hot. I'm waiting for my insides to uh come down to room temperature right now.
MacOkay, so Hot Springs is famous, of course, for hot springs. And neither of us, I mean, I've seen the geysers in Yellowstone and things like that, but we've not been to a place where there really are hot springs, I don't think. So we decided we're gonna come up here, we're gonna see it. We've heard it's beautiful and fun, and we'll come up here and we'll see. And you know, we need to just go to one of these, what they call bathhouses and get the whole hot springs thermal treatment. Did wasn't that our thinking to begin with?
RhoniYeah, if you know us, you know that we like to explore the culture and the history of a place. So when I was looking at hot springs, the first place it led us was that it's the its reputation is for the mineral springs. You used to be able to maybe soak in these hot springs out in the parks, maybe or something like that. But now you have to go to a bathhouse. I don't know if I should say this, but when I started looking at bathhouses, I was like, oh no. Yeah, no way, we're not doing any of that.
MacIt's like the history of the word bathhouse, I think, is a lot different in urban areas, I think, than it is in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
RhoniThat's why you should always keep reading. You shouldn't, you shouldn't just stop at the first thing you read because I had that wrong. That's a whole other arena that we won't talk about on the weekend toy ride. Right. But the bathhouses are where you can go and you can soak in the whirlpool and it's the hot springs mineral water, and they give you treatments and that sort of thing. And so then we began exploring which bathhouse to go to.
MacYeah.
RhoniWell, we landed on the Buckstaff, and the Buckstaff is like one of the most historical, it's this old building that uh originally was the bathhouse for this area. So we thought, yeah, we'll do that one. We'll do that one.
MacYeah, and and we read reviews and talked to our our handy um travel advisor on the computer, and uh uh it said that the Buckstaff was the one that's the most original the way it used to be. It's built in 1912. Yeah. So we thought, well, that's what by gum, that's what what we're gonna do. We're gonna go do the original thing. And so, you know, we did.
RhoniThere are no reservations, you had to come and really I'm the one who usually likes the spa day.
MacSo I thought she's pausing because I just made a face. We just we're in a coffee shop in in Hot Springs, and I got a drink that's in it's they called it an orange something, but it's an orange dreamsicle, but it's melted dreamsicle or something. It's got two shots of espresso and this orange juice, and then cream, and I don't know what else. And she said, you know, a lot of people like it, some people hate it. So I just took my first sip of it, and I'm sure I had a funny look on my face because it is an odd different taste. But I'm gonna drink the thing. So it's fun. Okay. So back to where you were, back to you.
RhoniI'm the one who likes the spa day. So I really thought I was gonna have to twist his arm to go to this place. And it's beautiful on the outside, it's this old architecture and pretty bright blue canvas canopies. I was all excited walking in.
MacYeah.
RhoniThen you walk in, it's like, well, yeah, it's an old place.
MacAnd they told you, they told you at the beginning, or we knew at the beginning, that this was not fluffy. They have not just made it all fluffy for the, you know, for the 90s or the 26s or whatever we're in. And um we we knew that, but we didn't know to what extent it was not going to be fluffy.
RhoniRight. And so I sat down and I started looking at the pictures, and I thought, huh, it kind of looks like an old asylum, really. Like that's probably not the right vibe that they want you to have. And then I look at the pictures on the wall and it shows 1900s, and it shows rows of, it's a big picture showing rows of men who were out on the tables in their bath sheets. And it's a snapshot of what it looked like back in 1912. But all I could think about was, well, those guys look like they're in strait jackets out on the table. Huh. You know, and just sitting there going, huh. And then there's uh an elevator that comes up to get you. First of all, we had to be separated, so the men go one way and the women go the other. I didn't like that because I thought, oh, kind of want us to be together in this. But we get separated, and then this cage comes down like an elevator, and it's this it's a cage you get in, and I'm like, oh Lord, like where are we going? It was nothing fluffy. So talk about your experience.
MacAbsolutely nothing fluffy, and you're covered with a sheet at all times. Well, most all times, except when the guy says, Okay, get out of that and walk over here, you know. Uh, but you it's like you're in a big locker room, you know, it's it's not anything weird at all. But I went through the whole thing and I I kind of made a mental note in my head as to each each um activity or whatever, each part of the each service you go through, because I wanted to remember this because it was very interesting. It was hot, it was a little uncomfortable, but I wanted to just let let it be and let my body sweat and let it do what these mineral things are supposed to do.
RhoniWhich is 100% the attitude and demeanor that you would expect me to have in one of these places. But I went in there and I liked the whirlpool. That was okay, except you know, this is not fluffy. This was a an old big tub with this old whirlpool jet sticking there, and I kept stick I kept I kept accidentally getting my toe too close to it, and it would it would make me jump, you know. So I had to get adjusted in there. And then uh I was fully swimsuited. I was not going in that place without a swimsuit. And the whirlpool was great, but the next station was the hot towels. Well, I was already hot. It's July, it's 97 degrees in Texas, it's 100 with the heat index, and here we are in Arkansas. So I was already hot. I really didn't feel like I needed hot towels, but we paid for this experience, so I I did the hot towels and I thought one of two things will happen here. I am either going to explode from the inside or I'm gonna melt into this table. And then she did come and give me this ice cold towel to put on my face, and that helped. But after about 10 minutes of that, I was looking for La Toya. I was like, where's La Toya? I need out of this, I need to go to the next station. And then the next station was the steam bath.
MacCall it the steam cabinet, wouldn't it?
RhoniYes, you tell your experience first.
MacWell, it's like this metal thing that you they open up and it's got two doors on top and two doors on the s on the front, and you walk in and you sit down in it, and they close the doors around you, and only your head is sticking out of this thing. And meanwhile, there's steam or vapors or something. It wasn't visible steam, but it was hot in there. And with your head sticking out, it's it almost felt like something you'd see in an old Three Stooges movie or something like that. And then not only that, but then they wrap towels around it to where none of that steam can get out. Um, so it's just your head out. So that is the one thing that got hot for me that I was thinking, okay, I'm about ready to come out. But then I waited and I I sweated as much as I could out.
RhoniAnd you again, it was not the lovely little log cabin steam spa house set or nestled in the woods, no. It was a cubicle that when I sat down in there, I thought, oh my gosh, this is I could be claustrophobic in here. But I sat down, I was trying to roll with it, and they lock you in with a metal bar, metal tray, and I'm like, oh no, we're not doing this. But I I had to breathe a little bit. I'm like, okay, okay, I'll try it. Um, and then they put the sheet, the sheet that you're wearing around you. So I have my swimsuit and my bath sheet, but they tuck that in all around me, so like Max said, so there's no steam getting out. Well, I wanted air, I wanted an AC on blast in there, but I couldn't get that. So I felt the steam rising, but I couldn't help but sit there and think, This is that kind of place that if she wanted to slam that door and walk away, I could die in here. Like I could literally die in this place. So I sat there and she said, I I did ask her, how long do I have to be in here? I have to be in here. Catchphrase. Yeah. And she said, Oh, you know, three or four minutes. I said, Can we make it two? Yes, two. So I'm like, okay, surely I can endure this for two minutes. After two minutes, I think she left me in there five. I thought, I'm breaking out. Like I'm I'm breaking out. I pulled my sheet away. I waited for Latoya, she didn't come. And I gave it another minute or so, and then I threw that steel thing.
MacI thought, I'm you actually opened the doors.
RhoniI didn't open the door, but I pulled that metal bar off of me. I thought, I'm getting out of here. Like I'm I'm getting out of here if she doesn't come back. And finally, I was just about to open the door and walk out, and she came over. So yeah, it was like I I really felt like my dad. I felt like that was a Billy Don moment because he would have busted out of that place. Oh no, he he would have busted out of that place in a hot minute. Yeah.
MacI don't know. Well, I it was so funny because we got finished. Let's see, what else was there to it? I think that was that those were the high points or the low points or whatever you want to call them. The massage was good, yeah. And the the the gentleman that massaged me, uh, he said something about having been a masseuse for 40 years. And I said, Wow, how long have you been working here? And he said, They hired me right out of massage school. And uh, so he's been there for 40 years. He said, Yeah, I thought about going on a cruise ship, but yeah, I've heard too many stories about that, so decided not to. So the massage was wonderful. And then I got a um a paraffin treatment on my hands. Ronnie wanted me to get a paraffin treatment on my hands, because my hands are generally rough and you know, guy-like hands. So I did that, and the young gentleman that was helping me there was really sweet. We sat and talked, and as as he finished, that was my last step, and as he finished, he uh he took the my hands out of those gloves and gave me a towel and everything. And you could tell he was getting ready to go on a break because he turned around and reached over on his desk and grabbed a cigarette. And I said, Oh man, when are you gonna quit smoking? And he said, What? I said, When are you gonna quit smoking? And we talked about that for a few minutes. I said, Yeah, I was a smoker a long time ago, and I did quit. And uh we turned around to walk out, and he turned around and he grabbed my hand, he shook my hand, and he hugged me. He said, Thank you, man. You know, thank you, have a good day, you know, and sent me out the door. I thought that was really sweet. I said to my under my breath as I pushed the door open, I said, Well, that was really sweet. So I went out on the front porch and sat in a rocking chair and waited for Ronnie, and it was glorious. I just thought having the best time. And then Ronnie comes out about 20 minutes later.
RhoniI do massage. It I like massage. I'm just telling you that it was no Saint Avita, okay? It was not. Finally, the girl comes in. Well, when I got I waited in the massage area, it was finally cool, and I thought, okay, now this is gonna be the good part. And so she comes to get me, but we have to walk around, and again, you're just walking in this place that looks like an asylum. You know, I was wanting, I was wanting lovely music, I was wanting, you know, lilac rose scented candles around, you know. Innocents burning, yes, none of that. We go up to this rickety area, and I do get on the table, and then she gets her lotion out, and I I have to look at lotion because I have an allergy to one ingredient. And I look at her bottle and it's called Polysonic Ultrasound Lotion. It does not sound like it doesn't sound frilly. It doesn't sound prilly. So there was that, but the massage was good, and I don't know. I don't I don't have to do that again. If I come back, I'm going over to Quapah, which is next door.
MacIs it frilly?
RhoniIt's the fluffy place. I'm sure they smell nice over there. I'm sure that they have candles burning, they have lovely whirlpools. Yes, that's where we'll go next time.
MacAnd the whole thing is hilarious because, as I said, I was sitting out on the porch in a rocking chair, like leaning way back, stuck in the rocking chair, just really enjoyed it because it was cool on the porch. It was cooler actually outdoors on the porch than it was inside the inside the building. And uh Ronnie comes around the corner and she has this look on her face and she's like, Are you okay? Because of first you don't have your phone with you the whole time. And I said, Am I okay? Are you kidding? I'm melted into this thing. She goes, Oh, God, she said, I've been praying the whole time that you I knew you would hate this because I just I I hated it. I didn't like it. I just knew you. I was like, oh honey, uh-uh. I just decided to go with it and get it, you know. And so it's really funny that we just had an opposite reaction to it. She's the frilly girl that loves the spa day. And I I'll I'll go sit in the car while she does that. But today, I just decided, eh, I'm just gonna let them do their services. And it was it, I think it was worth every minute. I think every pore in my body is clear right now. I I feel like I could sweat anywhere, and uh and it would be now I need a shower. That's true. You don't come out of there smelling fresh, that's for sure. But it was fun. But I thought that was really funny, your reaction.
RhoniI know. If if they had used some sort of fragrant lotion on me, I might not feel so dirty right now. But as soon as we finish this coffee, I'm going to the shower.
MacIt's funny, it's one of those things where you think, well, should we do it late in the afternoon? But then you want to make sure that you can get in there because they do have crowds and they don't take reservations. So we decided to go early, like before they were open, we were in the door, and so now as a result, we need to go freshen up a little bit before before we continue with our uh our day in Hot Springs. But yeah, it was good, honey. Thank you. I enjoyed it. To me, it was money well spent.
RhoniI was afraid you thought I was trying to kill you. I was afraid the whole time.
MacSo the bathhouse was about stopping and receiving some care and allowing somebody else to do the work for a little while, even if even if some of us didn't like it so much.
RhoniYeah, I didn't like it that much. But back home also, we watched another kind of restoration taking place. Um, but this one involved chainsaws, ropes, heavy equipment, some large branches coming down as we live in a heavily wooded neighborhood.
MacYeah. So we had our trees professionally trimmed. We've been waiting uh to do this. It wasn't somebody showing up with a ladder and clipping a few twigs, it was quite an operation.
RhoniAnd so I actually want to give a big shout out to our tree company.
MacYeah, let's do it.
RhoniCurtis C. Trees. They're actually based out of Kingsland, but they service all of the surrounding areas. I would say maybe as far as 100 miles.
MacYeah.
RhoniBut you know, again, we live in a wooded, really heavily wooded neighborhood, and we see tree companies and trucks cutting lots of trees in our neighborhood. And I have to say, our guys not only looked professional, right? They had a very professional demeanor about them.
MacLike, we're here to get this done.
RhoniBut they but they also I remember Benjamin. Yeah, Benjamin was one of the tree climbers, and he seemed to know really exactly which branches needed to come out. Reminds me of your dad who knew how to look at a tree or a wooded area and take certain trees out. But this guy knew exactly which branches needed to come out. I have to say that they didn't just trim a tree. We have approximately five big trees, a couple of elms, some pecans, and a couple of oaks on the one side of our house. And then we have two hundred-year oaks in our backyard, as well as a couple of dead trees that didn't make the freeze that they took out, but they were completely professional, they were completely easy to work with. I found Tanner, the the owner's son, to be delightful. And they just did a fabulous job.
MacAnd I think one of the best parts about it is they stuck to their estimate that they gave us several months ago. That's the price that we we were we were charged for. And that you know, that's always a nice thing, even though an estimate you're supposed to do that, but sometimes, oh well, we had to do this and that. No, they came through with that estimate, and that's what they charged, and that's what we expected, and that was good.
RhoniIt was really good. And you know, this is a good transition into what I think was maybe being ministered to us a little bit spiritually. When I was watching those limbs come down, you know, these are these are hundred-year oak trees, it was a little bit unsettling because they cut some limbs off that weren't necessarily dead, but they still look like they're part of this healthy tree. And I have to say, when it's all said and done, we just look at those oaks and we just go, Wow, they just look so much better. But watching a tree go through pruning is a little bit unsettling, but they knew what was overcrowded, they knew what was creating a strain on the tree, and they also knew which limbs could become dangerous later.
MacWe used to walk around the yard underneath the trees going, Well, is that one gonna come down? Is that and we had some that were actually dead limbs that were gonna come down sooner or later. And it's nice that they went up and got them at our choice of time instead of nature's choice of time, I guess.
RhoniSo now it also when I look at the word of God, I'm reminded that Psalm 1 says that the righteous are compared to a tree planted by the water. And I just begin to minister to my spirit a little bit. That a tree planted by the rivers of water has some characteristics that are worth noting, and that is the tree is stable. The tree is well nourished, fruitful, and the leaves don't wither, and ultimately that tree prospers by living near the water. Now remember, the Bible compares the righteousness to that tree. And if we are compared to that tree, we need to remember that healthy tree is also we don't need a pruning, which means healthy creatures. Probably need some pruning.
MacYeah, it's interesting how this parallels uh with with the Bible, honestly, because uh sometimes you need you need the right equipment, the big equipment. Sometimes uh it takes a lot more work than you think it's going to. And it's kind of unnerving, like Ronnie said earlier, that big limbs come down, trees come down. But if you trust I guess trusting the process and trust in God in doing what needs to be done, uh we're gonna end up with some I think our yard is it already is beautiful, but I think it's going to be even more so probably next summer, uh, when everything kind of grows back in. I I'm just looking forward to it.
RhoniWell, let's let's talk about pruning as it pertains to God's children. So let's look at John 15, 3. It says that you're already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. So Jesus tells the disciples that they're already clean, but he immediately explains how, in a sense, pruning happens. And so the Greek word for prune is related to the Greek word for clean. All right. And Jesus connects pruning with his word. So this is important for us to remember that God's primary pruning tool is his word. Yeah. God never teaches us a lesson through tragedy. No, he does not teach us a lesson through disease or loss. That's not how God prunes. That actually would be child abuse, right? Yeah. We don't teach our kids lessons by giving them a tragedy or a loss. No. But God uses his word to correct us and to adjust us and to renew our thinking. So as you go deeper in the word, then you begin to be enlightened about areas that you might need to change or adjust or take a little step left or right. And I think that's what kind of moved us this past week. It did.
MacAnd we have to remember and keep this in mind that pruning isn't always evidence that something was wrong. Sometimes it has to happen because something is healthy enough to keep growing even after the pruning. And that's the the point of the pruning. I mean, I just learned, you know, we have a rose bush walking out our front door. And when the roses fade, I have always just walked by it and plucked those those dead heads off. Well, that's the wrong way to do it. I'm like, why is our rosebush so leggy and tall on some bran, you know, on some of the stems? Well, it's because I walk by and I pop off the head. Now, if you prune it down lower, it becomes a bushier plant and more healthy looking and produces more blooms. So that pruning, if I if done correctly, is gonna cause that plant to prosper even more. That's that's easily transferable to us.
RhoniSpiritual pruning. And Proverbs says that uh whom the Lord loves, he corrects. So pruning is a little similar to correction, right? Um, a little shift in your navigation, right? And again, it's because he loves us that he wants us to grow. Pruning is connected with growth. So as we make adjustments, spiritually speaking, we're gonna experience growth. Isaiah says that God's word always accomplishes its purpose. So his word will expose wrong thinking, fear, pride, offense, unbelief, all of those things that aren't healthy for us.
MacYeah.
RhoniAnd once the word exposes it, if we act on it, if we prune it from our thinking and our pathway, then we will experience spiritual growth. So really pruning creates room for new growth, whether it's your tree or your spiritual understanding and growth. That's what pruning does. Yeah. Every removed branch creates sunlight and airflow. Same with your spirit. Every time you replace offense, unforgiveness, fear, wrong traditions, old disappointments, all the things that aren't necessarily growing correctly in your spirit. Can I say it like that?
MacYeah.
RhoniReplace that and then life begins to flow again.
MacAnd when you think about it, sometimes pruning is just replacing old thinking with new thinking, or replacing, think about it this way old thinking with God's thinking. Transformation comes by renewing your mind. How many times have you heard that?
RhoniOh, here's an example. So pruning, spiritual pruning, as you said, is going to come through that renewal of the mind. What you thought of. So let's just make it really personal. Let's say you became wounded, or someone hurt your feelings and never apologized, or someone said something that didn't land right with you. Maybe there's a big misunderstanding somewhere with someone, right? Well, what does God do? God is love. So he does and acts and he is all of the characteristics that we see in 1 Corinthians 13. Put God in the middle of that situation. And what is he gonna do? Well, he's gonna believe the best about that person. He's gonna hope for the best about that person. You know, love is going to be pursuing. Love doesn't stay silent and hidden. Love never fails. And so it's possible that if you have any of those unhealthy feelings, thoughts, or mindsets, you're offended or you're wounded, or any of those kinds of things that you know you shouldn't be feeling this way. Right?
MacYeah.
RhoniWhen you decide you're going to do what God does, that's a prune. You're gonna put your pride down. Maybe you don't need to be the one to go to that person first. Maybe it's maybe it's their thing. They did it, right? They're the ones who stayed silent, they're the ones who, you know, held a higher office or whatever.
MacRight.
RhoniMaybe maybe they did have more of the responsibility to make it right.
MacYeah. However, yeah, I was waiting for that.
RhoniIf you want to go ahead and and prune that junk out of your spirit, then it's healthy to just go ahead and shift your mindset. And I think that's what we can do. We can say, you know what? Chances are if they even had the slightest idea that their words or their actions or whatever it was was going to hurt and crush or whatever it did to you, they probably wouldn't have done it. See, because God believes the best.
MacYeah.
RhoniAnd God hopes for the best. And it really doesn't matter if they ever come around. That's the part you need to hear. It really doesn't matter if they ever come around because it's not on you anymore.
MacNo, that's just it. You have let it go.
RhoniYeah, you've let it go. And you've pruned that junk out of your spirit by giving it to God and by going to 1 Corinthians 13 and saying, Okay, I'm gonna I'm just gonna hope for the best. Hope that they do see how their actions are painful for people, right? Or hope that they do understand everybody needs to grow, right? We're not gonna hold on to junk anymore. No, right? But no matter what their decision, you do the pruning for you. You let God do the pruning in you for you.
MacYeah, that's fabulous.
RhoniJust like that tree, you begin to prosper and be in good health.
MacAnd the load is lightened.
RhoniYeah.
MacThe air gets in, the sunlight is all of a sudden coming through the branches.
RhoniThat's exactly true. And then Galatians 5 22, then the fruit of the spirit, more love, more joy, more peace, more patience, and more kindness can grow in you, just like why they pruned those trees.
MacAnd just like that rosebush I was just talking about. Exactly. Oh, that's really that's really good. So I I just invite you to to maybe identify one branch. Yeah, even to start with one. Yeah. One cut that may need attention. Maybe it's uh uh an unnecessary obligation. Uh, still do this. I don't have to do this. A habit that takes too much time. Oh, do we have any of those? Scroll, scroll, scroll. An unrealistic expectation or a commitment that you've outgrown. Yeah. Maybe clutter around that creates stress. You know that clutter creates stress around you.
RhoniOr maybe it's that you you know that you're not spending enough time in the word and not enough quality time with the Lord.
MacYeah.
RhoniYou know, prune the distraction.
MacYeah.
RhoniPrune, prune the distraction that's keeping you from putting God first every single day.
MacThat's right. One small, honest cut. Oh, yeah, that's good. Is enough to get started, so as we were thinking about this episode of the Weekend Joyride, it just led from one thing to another. First of all, the renewal of the of the hot baths and the little vacation itself. Even that was honestly better than the hot baths. Um, and then the pruning of the trees. And then something happened. It was actually on our way home from uh from Arkansas, yeah, back into Texas. We had to go through Oklahoma. My niece had called um several, actually several weeks ago and said, Hey, I found a box of photographs. I don't really know any of the people in them, and I think that you might like to have this. First of all, I want to say thank you, Mandy, because that was a very sweet thing to do, uh, to be that thoughtful, um, to think about that I would want those photographs. Uh, second of all, um, due to things that have happened in my life, I had to leave behind most of my photographs of my family and things like that. At one point in my life, I just kind of packed my car uh clothes and computer in the car and took off and left everything else behind. Not in uh an irresponsible way, but actually in a way that probably saved my life. And then um Mandy, my niece, is really one of the few living relatives I have left. I have cousins and things like that, but she's my niece, and you know, she's my brother's daughter. My brothers are are both gone, they've passed on, and it's really sweet to be able to maintain a connection with her. And she called, she said, I have this box of photographs, and I think you might want it. So we met Amandy and her husband Brandon for lunch. A great place. What was the name of that?
RhoniSmoking Jim Rib Ranch.
MacRib Ranch. Joe's Rib Ranch in Davis, Oklahoma. We gotta give a plug to them too, because I thought up to a little shaky place that showed me. Oh man, and it was RB's Joe's. Excellent. Yeah, it was very good. But the kindness that brought, you know, those photographs to me, and it was a big old box, too. And I kind of felt sad because she said, I don't know any of these people. And that's a sad part of, I guess, my history, my family history, in that we kind of exploded years ago and didn't really stay close to each other, different parts of the family. So she still wants to know about that. I had the opportunity to send her some photographs last night, and she I was like, This is your great-grandmother. And she was like, That is really cool. I love learning about my family. So, what I'm doing with these photographs is I'm going through them and I'm digitizing them, and I'm gonna put them all in a folder, and eventually, soon I hope, we're going to create a like a book on Shutterfly or something, and it's gonna be available to all the all the family that we have left. And it's just gonna be really fun to see. It's precious. You can use AI to restore and and retouch these photographs. You don't have to send them off to anywhere anymore. You can just use, you know, chat GPT and say, hey, fix this photograph for me, and it does a great job.
RhoniIt seems like they're minimalists. I know our daughter and sons seem to not be very committed to keeping stuff, right? Now, we on the other hand have pay storage on stuff, right?
MacWe pay storage on some of their stuff.
RhoniBut I think it bears saying this that even though you may be a minimalist, think about the generations after you. Because if we don't take care and try to preserve some of these photos, we're losing some history.
MacYeah.
RhoniAnd I'm excited that we're gonna put all of these photos in a shutterfly book. At least it's bound. Remember, when you put when you digitize these photos, who knows if we can get into the technology later. Right. So I think it's important to have copies of these photos several different ways. The physical copy up in the cloud.
MacYeah.
RhoniBut shutterfly books are not difficult to make.
MacNo.
RhoniAnd I'm gonna give you a couple of tips on this right now. So, because I've made several, as you know, take your photos and get them into a shutterfly file. Have them up in the cloud. Have them in some people now will will not be happy if I say put them in Google or some other place like that, but have them stored online somewhere.
MacElsewhere, but not in your home, not on your computer or not, you know, not just on a flash drive somewhere that can get lost. Yeah.
RhoniHave them there, but have them in a cloud somewhere.
MacYeah.
RhoniWhen you open a Shutterfly account, you can click projects and you can create a photo book. I believe the easiest way to do it is to go ahead and first pick a template, and then there is a place that says add photos. Go add all the photos that you might possibly use. You don't have to use all of them. It's a click of a button and it grabs them from that digital place.
MacOkay.
RhoniAnd then there are two ways you can do it. You can actually click a button and they will arrange the photos for you within 24 hours. And then you can make changes if you don't like it. So if you're like me, I tend to not be very organized with these kinds of things. And after a couple of years, I'm like, oh my goodness, I just gotta make a book. And then I have too many to work with.
MacYeah. So that's probably a better problem to have than not having enough.
RhoniRight.
MacYeah.
RhoniSo you can have them arrange, and in 24 hours, you'll get it back. And then you can make whatever changes you want. And then if you just have oodles of time and you just want to do it yourself, you just drag the pictures into every page. You can put little stickers and embellishments. I think it's valuable. And I think we should start thinking about how to preserve history with this kind of minimalist generation that we have.
MacYeah.
RhoniNothing wrong with giving your stuff away and need and desiring to live on less, but we need to be mindful of what we might be losing for generations later.
MacThis is a perfect place to talk about that picture of my grandmother, Mandy's great-grandmother, once again, because it was, it was, it surprised me as I was pulling these pictures out of this. It was kind of like a collage board, you know, those things we used to buy in the 70s. And this was a black and white photograph that had really kind of washed out. And I knew immediately that it was my grandmother. We called her Donnie. And Donnie was rather uh, well, I'll just say it, she was rather bougie lady in the in the 40s and 50s. She liked the finer things in life and she let everybody know about it. And my dad was her baby, and she loved by know about that too. And uh, and it was really cute. She she just is imprinted in my heart. It was sad to me to realize that my niece Mandy didn't even know who she was. So I took that photograph and I scanned it into my computer and I stuck it in AI and I said, kind of give more contrast and clear clarify this picture. And it did a wonderful job of just pulling out that black and white photograph into something. I mean, I could see Donnie's face again in it, and it was really sweet. And then I said, Well, colorize it. Let's see what you can do. So it it colorized it, and it was beautiful. The color, the color was great, and it felt really cool to be able to see my grandmother again. She's been gone for 40 years, I guess, by now. Mandy has never met her. Of course, I think Donnie passed before Mandy was even born. And then and then to be able to share that photograph with my cousins, whose grandmother she also was, I immediately got texts back and like, oh, that's our Donnie. Thank you so much. I'm sorry, it makes me emotional. But the thing about that emotional meaning is I didn't simply grab this photograph that was going to be lost. I didn't improve the photograph. We gave people a fresh encounter with somebody that they loved and that they remembered, and some of them didn't even know her, but now she is part of their history. Right, way cool.
RhoniIt keeps it keeps uh memories and the history alive. And so if you haven't thought about that, I would challenge you to pull some photos out or find 10, find 20, find 30, and just consider, ask yourself what about my great grandchildren or my great-great-grandchildren? What of these pictures do I want to preserve? Yeah. And if anybody wants to wants tips or help in navigating, feel free to reach out to us.
MacOh, please, absolutely. You can reach us anytime. Our email address is hello at weekendjoyride.com. It's it's easy. Hello at weekendjoyride.com and just let us know that you you need a little guidance on what to do with this. Yeah.
RhoniPreserve those memories. We have lots of tools for that now.
MacYeah. You know how people talk about how they save a voicemail from someone who's who's gone because they don't want to lose that voice. Yeah. This is the same deal. It is. Save a photograph or save a a a written letter or maybe get a story from one of your older family members that they're the only one that knows that story. I love getting together with my older cousins because they know stories about the same people I know, but I didn't know those stories about those people. And it's really fun to do that. So that that just, you know, don't just preserve your memories, share them with your family. So choose one old photograph and digitize it. Or like Ronnie said, grab 10 and do that. And then write down every date, location, name that you can remember. Ask somebody else who may know more about that, and send it to at least one relative or friend.
RhoniAnd don't make it difficult. The point is not to reorganize the entire family archive and to get into a great big project because that becomes overwhelming and oftentimes you just won't even get started that way. Just start small. That's how good intentions die under a pile of photo albums. So just start small.
MacYeah.
RhoniGrab some photos, maybe upload them, find a way to digitize them. And again, that's another thing you can reach out to us. We'll help you with that. But think about preserving memories and restoring memories for those who will come after you even long when you're gone.
MacThat's really that's all right.
RhoniIt's precious.
MacWe came home thinking about what we needed to release and what we needed to share. The bathhouse reminded us sometimes that we just need to receive care. The trees reminded us that healthy growth may still require pruning.
RhoniAnd then that box of photographs reminded us that the past cannot speak for itself. Somebody has to carry that story forward. So perhaps the question for this week is simple: what is one thing you need to cut back in your life? And what is one thing worth bringing back?
MacThanks for taking the weekend joyride with us.
RhoniHave a great week. We'll be back.