Merry Christmas from South Texas

Well, it took us until 12/22 to get all our Christmas decorations outside here at our place in Mission, Texas. We had high winds for two days and the wind destroyed our live poinsettias in front of the motorhome and in my clay pots on the patio. The poinsettias which had been in front of the motorhome are now planted beside our storage casita just off the left side of the photo. As we were hanging the large balls in our grapefruit tree, our neighbor, Garry, said we should just get some spray paint and color all the grapefruit on the tree! In this photo, Doug and Homer are watching a Cowboys game on TV.

Hope you have a Merry Christmas and blessed New Year!

Homer Rothgaber receives his Christmas present from Uncle Sam and Aunt Ginger!

 Today Homer received his Christmas present from Uncle Sam (Nada's brother) and Aunt Ginger. Sam and Ginger always makes sure Homer doesn't run out of bones. The UPS man dropped off a big box addressed to "Homer Rothgaber." We didn't have to tell Homer it was for him... He could tell by smelling the box. Since Sam and Ginger do this every year, Homer thinks it is his job to sniff every UPS delivery we receive! ;-) Doug opened the box for him and, in the photo above, he is getting his bone out and enjoying it in the second photo. Homer says "woof, woof" which is thank you in doggie language. ;-)

Donuts and Bike Club

Every Friday morning, we have coffee and donuts at the clubhouse plus have resort announcements and, of course, lots of conversation. This past Friday, Doug and I plus several other couples were responsible for setting out the donuts and the clean-up. It was interesting being behind the counter and seeing the crowd descend upon the donuts! ;-)

Every Friday after donuts, the bike club takes a group bike ride. One would think they are riding off the calories of their donut, but really they are riding somewhere for lunch. ;-) I can't ride with them with my 3-wheel bike so sometimes I meet them in the car where they are going for lunch. Here is the crew from this past Friday.

Making Christmas Stockings for wounded soldiers

Each year, our quilting gals spend one afternoon per week making Christmas stockings for wounded soldiers at Fort San Houston in San Antonio. We are a skeleton crew before Christmas as some of our "worker bees" stay up north until after Christmas. Linda, our leader and inspiration has us set up in an assembly line fashion and in just two afternoons we have made over 80 stockings. On this particular day, above, you see Jeanie ironing the fabric to get all the wrinkles out of it.  Below, you see Patty, Ruth, Linda cutting the Christmas fabric, padding, and lining for the stockings. On the right, Diane is tracing the pattern of the stocking onto the fabric. Then at the empty station at the table in the foreground, I was pinning the the fabrics and padding together.

 Then Joyce and Mary at the sewing machines stitch them together.

After the stocking part is stitched, then they go to a station to be turned right-side out and the hanging loop is attached and the furry cuff is stitched onto the top of the stocking.Voila! the finished stocking.
Here is a photo of several on display in the clubhouse.

December 11, 2013 - Clubhouse decorations and little tree

I thought I'd post a few pictures of the clubhouse decorations. Doug and the guys decorated the outside of the clubhouse and the entrance to the park with lights and wreaths, etc. but these couple of photos are of the inside of the clubhouse which the ladies decorated.

First is the creche, then nutcrackers, and finally some of the stockings our quilting group has already made for Christmas 2014 for the soldiers in the hospital at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. I am heading right now up to the clubhouse to work on more stockings.

Below is a mini-table tree I just made.

Dec. 9th - Early December happenings

In Christmas shopping.... I have been looking for plastic snowglobes to get for our grandson Trevor but so far I haven't been successful. ;-( Doug found this big one at Walmart and thought I might want to buy it for Trev. ;-)

 Doug picking some grapefruit for our friend Maryanna - They are turning yellow!

 Our neighbors across the street, Ken and Lois had a tree die so a crew of friends helped to get the trunk pulled out of the ground

Doug enjoying a shrimp and spinach calazone at the Republic of the Rio Grande Restaurant for lunch the other day.

Sandburrs

Several folks asked what are sand burrs. I've tried to get a few photos but they are hard to show.

 They have pretty little yellow flowers as this one photo shows, but those flowers turn into hard little pea-sized burrs with lots of pointy spikes. They are hard enough to attach to the bottom of shoes (so they get tracked into the motorhome carpet), to puncture bike and golf cart tires, and to hurt the paws of our Homer.

You can see some of the burrs forming on the second photo if you double click on the photo to enlarge it. Doug has been fighting the sand burrs for 3 years. We thought of having all our sod removed and new St. Augustine grass sod put down, but that was way too expensive. So for now, Doug dug up a whole patch of the sand burrs and put down St. Augustine.

Hanging Christmas lights - November 30, 2013

Doug worked on putting up our Christmas lights while we watched the last game of the season for Penn State. He needed hazardous pay because of bumping his head into all the grapefruit on the tree ! ;-)

My poinsettias look nice (there are more of them outside the photo) but my petunias and impatiens are still little guys but they are growing!

 Even outside, my guys (Doug and Homer) still choose to watch the game from the rug instead of chairs! Although I question whether Homer is really watching the game! Ha, ha! Penn State won the game (even though they were picked to be a 24 point underdog) over Wisconsin! Yippeeee!

 Blue sky and out palm trees and grapefruit tree. The green parrots have taken to roosting in our palms and the live oak tree of our neighbor so we wake to a squawking chorus every morning.

Lunch with Garry and Barb

We went to lunch last Sunday after church with our friends Gary and Barb. The Remington Restaurant is such a pretty setting but we were disappointed by their food this year. It had always been such a good place to eat a Sunday brunch but it seems they scaled back the choices so much this year that it isn't worth the price anymore.

You can see from our photo below, it was during our spell of cold weather so we all had sweaters and jackets on. 

Lunch at Riverside on the Rio Grande River

We went to lunch today with some friends from Pennsylvania - Jon and Marianna. We had met them this summer at Gettysburg Farm Campground in PA and discovered they were coming to the Valley for the first time for this winter. It turns out they are staying in a campground about a mile from us - Small world!

 

 Here we are with Jon and Marianna at Riverside on the Rio Grande River. That is Mexico on the left side of the river. It was a gray kind of day and even started to sprits rain while we were waiting for our food.

 We saw the usual border patrol boats but we didn't see the horses and goats that are usually on the Mexico side of the river.

Swimming in November

It was almost 90 yesterday so we headed to the pool. As you can see there were many others who had the same idea! ;-)

Grapefruit galore at our Texas place

 We arrived at our RV lot in Mission, Texas on Monday afternoon. We spent the late afternoon getting the motorhome set up on the campsite, enjoying the squawking of the flock of green parrots as they arrived for their evening roosting in the pecan and palm trees, and then went out to dinner with our Oklahoma friends, Garry and Barb. Temperature was in the 80's. Tuesday evening, a cold front started to arrive from the northwest which means high winds. Our palm trees were bending in the wind. When we went to bed we realized our neighbor's grapefruit tree was rubbing on our bedroom slide so we brought the slide in for the night. This morning, Doug was out there trimming Vern and Barb's tree so we could put the slide back out. That tall pole-like thing in these photos is a palm tree - You just can't see the top.

 It is always a 64 dollar question as to what kind of crop of citrus we will have. The first year, we had lots of grapefruit, last year we had a small crop, and this year we have a massive amount of grapefruit! Our friends, Ruth and Gavino from San Antonio will be glad to know that when they visit us again this winter, they will be able to take home a trunk-full of Ruby Red grapefruit!

Funny thing is... In San Antonio, I was buying some super large Christmas ornaments to add to our outdoor Christmas directions that we hang on the grapefruit tree. I could just paint some of the grapefruit red and gold and I wouldn't have to buy ornaments! Ha, Ha!

Well we always spend the first couple of days getting things in order from on storage casita. This year we have a little more to do since we added some additional concrete at the end of last year and we planned on planting some new flower beds. Now if Doug and I can just agree on what we are going to plant and where, we can move forward! ;-) As I post this, Doug is out searching for our irrigation sprinklers - over the summer the St. Augustine grass spreads like wildfire and totally covers them so they cannot lift above the grass level. We also have lots of the dreaded sandburrs which seem to have spread even further than what we killed last year so we need to decide what to do about them. They have such a pretty little yellow flower but that beauty turns into a sputnick-like burr that can cause a paw infection in our Homer's paw. ;-( I'll get you a photo of the sand burrs shortly.

Take care until next time.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

It has been a busy week in San Antonio with something going on every day. Today, Sunday, is a quiet day of morning and evening church with Ruth and Gavino and spending the afternoon getting the RV ready to travel south to our RV lot in the Rio Grande Valley tomorrow. we are anxious to see how it looks. When we left last spring, we had just had additional concrete poured and had planted new grass. We are looking forward to seeing what it looks like after a summer of irrigation and to get busy planting some flowers and shrubs. We also wonder how our grapefruit tree and all those little grapefruit made out over the summer with the drought and irrigation. We'll know tomorrow!

Short visit with nephew Sam and grand nephews, Zach and Nicolas

 saturday morning, we headed to the northern suburbs of San Antonio to see one of our nephews from Austin play in a soccer game and have some lunch with our nephew, Sam III, and two of his three sons. Zach is #10 in white in the photos.

It was good to see Sam III and two of his boys, Zach and Nicolas and to eat lunch with them at Rudy's BBQ. Drew, the third son was at a debate tournament so we didn't get to see him this time.

Witte Museum

 On Friday, we headed to the Witte Museum with Ruth and Gavino. Our main purpose was to see a special exhibit that was to start that day. It was to commemorate JFK's visit to San Antonio the day before his visit to Dallas where he was assassinated.

 The lovely courtyard here at the museum was the setting for Rita and Peter's (Ruth and Gavino's daughter) wedding reception several years ago.

 Unfortunately, the JFK exhibit was still being set up so we spent some time in the CSI Exhibit and had the fun of solving three crime scenes and then went through the Settlement of Texas exhibit.

 The new Settlement of Texas exhibit was very well done. That is Ruth and Gavino above and a life-sized Texas Longhorn below.

 Finally, just minutes before the museum closed for the day, we got to see the JFK exhibit. Doug, Gavino, and Ruth are below.

 The staff putting the finishing touches on the exhibit.

 The chair on the left is the one that JFK sat in.

Day in Gruene with Denise

 We always have to go to our favorite restaurant, the Grist Mill, in Gruene, TX (pronounced like the color green) with Denise, our friend who winters in New Braumfels. We picked her up and off we went. We each enjoyed our favorite foods there. denise loves their ribs and all of us love their Texas-sized onion rings! One of these days, I'll remember to take some photos of the food!

It was a cool day for south Texas (a cold front had just come through) - we all had a lightweight jacket or sweater - but the big glass walls of the restaurant were partially open but they had roaring fires going in all the fireplaces so it was lovely. Just 4 days before the Gaudaloupe River had flooded due to heaving rains and wiped out several of the tubing businesses and restaurants down along the river and also a whole campground which sits right on the river's edge. I knew there was a reason I never wanted to stay at that campground! ;-) Here are a few photos of the Grist Mill and our walk through the quaint town of Gruene.