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.