Traveling Supremes Highland Tx Rally

On Thursday Ted and I drove north on I-59 to meet up with my stepsister, Carol.  She took us to the Senior Center for lunch and bingo.   The bingo hall was packed and pretty much everyone wins something! They played 3 games of bingo that each had about 100 winners!  I think Carol won 5 or 6 bingos, Ted and I each won one!  Our prizes:  Oxy Clean Rug Cleaner and Jiffy Banana Muffin Mix!  Then for good measure we won a cake and so did Carol.  We took them to dinner Friday night!  I forced Carol to have her picture taken with us and she finally agreed.  I couldn't believe how much more she looked like her Dad than the last time we saw her!

Thursday night we went to the Monument Inn for dinner as a group of 10.  We had to cross the river on a ferry to get there.  It was a short ferry ride and I was nervous because we barely fit, but they put up the wall behind us and everything was ok!  I had baked shrimp, stuffed with crab and covered with a white wine sauce...delicious!  Ted had the beef kababs (no surprise since he's not crazy about fish)!  The ferry stopped running so we took the long way home!

On Friday after I got my nails done; Ted, Max and I took off for Galveston.  It took us about an hour to get there.  It is a nice drive around the island.

Part of the pier taken out by the hurricane

We got back to the campground in time for picture taking and the best beef brisket I think I've ever had!  It was delicious.  Everyone made side dishes and desserts and we were sure stuffed when we left there!  We watched a movie about the Battleship Texas which we were going to tour on Saturday and there were card and Mexican Train games going on.

Saturday morning we awoke to big time fog but were able to get to the Battleship Texas where it is moored.  We had a group of about 25 that were going to do the tour and so Texas Parks provided us with two rangers to show us around and tell us about the ship.  It was an important ship, launched in 1914 and in WWI and WWII.  It was the first battleship and they designed it to have a high bow and then go downhill to the stern.  That didn't work out so well so they only made a few with that design.  She had 14-inch ammunition which was large for that time.  She was also the first ship to launch an airplane from her deck!  It was an interesting tour.  There was one big problem, the area was thick with huge Texas size mosquitos!  We didn't want to tour the engine room because they were thick down there!

Ted and Dave and the Battleship Texas (in the fog)

"The Big Guns"

This is where the enlisted men bunk!

John playing with the guns!

After our tour we went to lunch and home to rest before bringing in the New Year!

Bringing in the New Year..."Ain't Life Grand!"



The road to Highland, Tx

Before going over to Dan and Cheryl's for breakfast, Max opened his presents.  He loved them all and had a great time opening them!  Breakfast was delicious and then we watched the kids open their presents.  They were all happy with their gifts!  Then everyone else opened gifts.  They had a really soft luscious (marshmallow)  throw for me and a teapot with cups and some green tea for Ted.  They surprised us with these very nice gifts.

We came home to relax and spend some time with Max before going back for dinner.  They had cooked prime rib and a turkey, and of course all of the trimmings.  We had a delicious dinner.  The ladies, including Olivia and Haley played Phase 10 for awhile until we all decided it was time to go home and rest.  It was a great day!

Monday morning we left Boerne and went east on I-10.  We were going to spend the night in Columbus, Tx on the Colorado River.  This is one of our membership campgrounds that we had not been to and was about half way to our destination for the rally in Highland, Tx.  We had a spot right on the river.  It is really a nice quiet campground and we will enjoy spending three nights there on the way back.  There were lots of deer around and great places to walk the dog!

On Tuesday we had a two hour drive to Highland.  There are about 25 RV's attending the rally.   We are camping on the San Jacinto River.  It's a nice campground with a great view of the river!

We had dinner with a group at Iguana Joes last night.  Had a good meal and talked to several people we had not seen for awhile.  It was a fun evening!

This afternoon we went to the Port of Houston and took a free ride on a boat tour of a harbor tour!  They saved 16 spaces for us.  We were not allowed to take any pictures at the direction of  Homeland Security.  But we did take some in the parking lot before boarding the boat.  They served coffee or a soda and took us about 7 miles each way.  It was an interesting tour.

Going new places and seeing new things..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Made it to Boerne!

We got into Boerne Thursday afternoon and it was still daylight!  Fortunately it was a good 4 day trip without incident, although long days and arriving after dark. After we got set up we headed over to see Ted's cousin Gloria and her husband John. They are in their brand new home. They were able to select the lot and have a huge corner property and behind them should stay somewhat of a wilderness area. They selected beautiful flooring, countertops etc.  They did a great job and have really done a lot in only a month! Gloria made some sandwiches, veggies and chips since they didn't know what time we would get in!  We also had a nice visit with their daughter Cheryl and three grand kids.

Yesterday we went to Bass Pro shop to meet California transplants, Pam and Jon. We had lunch and did some shopping.  It's cold here and supposed to rain so I got a new raincoat and Ted and I both got some warm gloves! We had a good visit with Pam and Jon!

Can't get my pictures to download this morning so will add them later!

Right after they moved in the new house, Gloria went to Illinois to visit her mom, Wanda, who was not doing well. Wanda passed away yesterday so Gloria and John will leave on Monday for the funeral. Wanda was a sweet, fun woman and Ted and I always enjoyed visiting her these last few years. This is better for her but she will be missed.

Today we are having Christmas Eve dinner at John and Gloria's and Dan and Cheryl and their three kids! Tomorrow will be Christmas dinner at Dan and Cheryl's where there is always lots and lots of food of all kinds!  She mentioned prime rib and turkey!

Ted and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a safe, healthy, happy New Year!..."Ain't Life Grand!"

On the road again!

Craig and Claire should have keys to their new house Wednesday or Thursday! They are already scheduling workers for floor, carpeting and wallpaper. They want to get as much done as possible and move in before they have to start school again!

We finally took off about 11:00 and made it to the Colorado River in Needles. We got here about 7:00 and only opened our bed slide. We went over to the Arizona side for fuel $3.72 for diesel. In Needles it's $4.10 to $5.00 per gallon. Since we were out we stopped at the Avi for dinner and a 1/2 hour of gambling. Left our deposit.

Have to get ready to leave...more later!

Happy for the kids..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Craig & Claire's Great House!

This morning Ted and I took off to have a good breakfast in preparation of the manual labor Craig and Claire were going to assign to us...lol!  We were saved!  Since it was 10:00 and we were to be at the new house at 1:00, we all went to look around Home Depot instead!  They picked up some paint samples and Claire found a light to replace the dining room chandelier that is supposed to be taken by the seller.  We had fun looking around with them and then headed to see the house!

The house is 2500 square feet, 3 bedrooms 2 1/2 baths, living room, formal dining room, den/office, breakfast nook, kitchen and laundry area.  It is a one level ranch style house.  The house is in great condition considering it was built in 1955 and has not been remodeled.  Craig and Claire will have a lot of fun with it.  They plan to have all of the "dated" wallpaper removed, paint, new flooring and new carpet before they move in.  It has a two car garage and a very large lot.  It has a new fence in the back yard.  They also will be putting in a new air conditioner.  FHA only requires that it has heat and the forced air furnace works great (it was cold today and house warmed right up), but the water cooled unit doesn't work!

Here are some pictures:

Craig's best man, Nate and his girlfriend, Jessica, joined us at the house!

Happy for Craig and Claire..."Ain't Life Grand!"

House papers to be signed Monday!

The lender for Craig and Claire's home phoned this afternoon and we are schedule to sign loan documents Monday morning at 8:00 a.m.  That is good news because we were almost positive they were going to be held up.  The lender has been great to work with and has really worked hard to push it through. The house should close some time next week.  We are going to see the inside of the house tomorrow!  We will head out of town after docs are signed.

We had lunch with Craig and Stephen today.  Stephen finished finals Thursday and he's excited!  Today he was volunteering at the High School he attended, Buchanan, as a wrestling assistant for a tournament.  Craig and Claire have been busy at work and after work with parties and dinners.  When they are in school they just don't have time to do anything but work, school and study so all of their friends want to see them and they are having fun!  We still haven't seen Chip and as assistant wrestling coach at Madera High School, they took off yesterday for Las Vegas for a weekend tournament, so chances are we won't see him this time around :(

In the morning we are going to help Craig and Claire organize some of their stuff for the move before heading over to see the house.  We'll be their worker bees!

Loans done on schedule..."Ain't Life Grand!"  (hope I didn't jinx it)!

This and That!

We've been enjoying ourselves in Fresno.   We've gotten most of our Christmas shopping done, we've had some meals with the kids and spent some time up at Chukchansi yesterday!  It wasn't a profitable meeting at Chukchansi but we played for several hours and had a nice lunch and drive!  Ted's also been working on hooking upa replacement amplifier/tuner for our built in surround sound.  It's working for some things but not for everything!

We thought we were going to see the inside of Craig's house but unfortunately the realtor had to cancel so we have to wait until this weekend.  We did have dinner with Craig and Claire and Stephen and Marissa Sunday night.  Marissa has left for Missouri to spend some time with her Mom's family, so we were happy to have a chance to visit with her.

We are still waiting to see when Craig and Claire's house will close.  They are shooting for Monday but the underwriter needed a couple of things so it may hold it up.  We have to figure out if we are going to leave Monday as scheduled and sign from some place on the road or stay here in Fresno.  Just not sure yet.

On Sunday Craig, Claire, Chip and Stephen had some pictures taken.  Here are a couple of the pictures:

Ten days before Christmas..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Dinner at the Tuttle's!

Last night we enjoyed a great dinner and evening at Claire's parents, Ernie and Linda.  They also invited one of Craig's law partners' (and very good friend) Kim and her husband Don and their son Trey.  Stephen made it to dinner and of course Craig and Claire.  Chip had a wrestling tournament, he is the assistant wrestling coach at Madera High School.  Linda made a great pot roast, Claire made a delicious Risotto that she said was easy and Kim brought a great salad with a yummy homemade Champagne vinaigrette dressing! We brought a cake from the bakery and it was delectable!  It was a very nice evening.

Stephen has really turned into a man this past few months.  He is no longer that skinny little kid.  He has filled out and is very handsome!  He won't be embarrassed because he doesn't read the blog!

I did forget to take pictures...shame on me!  There will be more chances for pictures!

Good food, good friends and family..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Time with Craig

We got to Fresno Thursday afternoon and rushed over to Craig and Claire's lender.  We are co-signers on the loan for their new home and needed to sign some papers.  We are hoping they will close next Friday but it may not be until Monday.  It would give them an extra weekend to move in if it closes on Friday.   Everything is falling in place so hopefully it will work out.

The lender is right down the street from Craig's work and we knew he was still there so we headed over.  We had a bunch of mail waiting for us so picked it up and found Craig was available for dinner.  There is a bar/restaurant within walking distance of his office, the Elbow Room and so we had wine and dinner with him.  Claire was getting her hair done for Craig's office Christmas party which was last night.  I asked Craig to text me a picture of the two of them all ready for the party!  

Tonight is dinner at Ernie and Linda's (Claire's parents).  We are bringing desert which Craig ordered for us from the bakery where he worked when he was in High School!  Chip and Stephen will be there with dates and I believe Claire's brother and family may be down from Sacramento as well.  It will be a lot of fun.  I hope to have some pictures tomorrow!

A very happy nephew..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Enjoying Sacramento!

We arrived here in Sacramento on Monday afternoon. We thought we were going to have to have an RV repair service out immediately for our refrigerator which was out again in the morning, but then it started working again! We think we have figured out a pattern with it. Every night when it gets down in the low 30's it stops working. Then in the morning around 8:30 when it starts warming up (to the 50's) outside we can get it to come back on. It is so strange but think we will wait until we get to Fresno to see about getting it checked out.


Vicky sent out a picture of the group from the Atwater weekend, taken by her granddaughter which turned out much better than the ones I had taken, so I'm adding this picture:

Yesterday we visited our friends Joel and Lale' that live here in Sacramento.  Joel and Ted used to work together at the County of San Diego.  They are having some medical issues right now but we had a good visit with them.


Today we visited Old Town Sacramento with one of Ted's classmates, Sharon Gillam.  She is in the above picture, lower right in the pretty blue jacket.  It was fun getting to know her better and after a nice lunch we did some shopping and we both found a couple of things to buy!  There are nice shops, museums, the Sacramento River and the Train Station and museum, It's an interesting "old town"!


Tomorrow we leave here and head for Fresno.  We will be there for 10 days visiting the "kids"!


Ready to visit "the kids"..."Ain't Life Grand!"

RLS Christmas Party 2011!

Yesterday we waited and waited for the RV service guy who was "on his way over" about 11ish.  I called at 1:00 and was told that he was on another call.  Hmmm, that wasn't mentioned when I spoke to them at 10:00.  Since our refrigerator had started working again I cancelled the repair guy and we got ready to go to the party.

The band was in full swing when we got there and sounded great!  It was chilly but beautiful afternoon!  There was even some dancing going on!

Craig (friend of Bob's) was busy making balloon art for the kids!  He made a great Spiderman,  Aliens, Santa hats and more!

There were tons of appetizers and drinks for all!

The band stopped at 6:00 and we had a fabulous feast!  Duane's pulled pork cooked all day in a crock pot with apple juice and liquid smoke and was scrumptious!  Everyone contributed and we had the best brussel sprouts I've ever had, Mexican slaw, potato salad, a great bean dish, a wild rice dish, a great salad and probably more that I can't remember!  Everything was delicious.

After dinner and dishes, the gift exchange started!   Della came with "her bells on" little elf shoes!   Vicky drew number 1 and opened the first gift...a spiked dog collar and the fun began!  There were some very nice gifts such as a platter, chip and dip set, flash light set, alcohol, RLS Starbuck glass and card, indoor/outdoor thermometer, candles and more!  Mr. Dick Head (somewhat like Mr. Potato Head) made a comeback (unfortunately), Redneck Wine Glasses, a pig, emergency underwear, a dog that laughed and rolled around, a talking old guy and more!  It was lots of fun.  When it was all over we took our 2011 RLS group picture!

Of course there was dessert and we called it a night!

This morning we met for breakfast at the Almond Tree before everyone headed out for home.  After breakfast we said our goodbyes!

Ted and I decided to stay in Atwater until tomorrow when we will go up to Sacramento for a few days before heading to Fresno.  We had a restful afternoon!

The 2011 RLS Christmas party was a great success..."Ain't Life Grand!"

We are in Atwater, CA

We arrived in Atwater on Thursday afternoon.  I called my nephew when we were passing by Fresno.  He asked how we were doing with the wind?  What wind?  He said it was extremely windy by his law office.  A couple of minutes after we hung up we got to the wind!  It was blowing pretty hard and we saw several Eucalyptus trees down along I-99.  We had to slow way down but fortunately were able to safely keep going.  After Fresno, wind died down and then started again close to Atwater.  The wind stopped that night but it has really gotten cold!  It was 32 this morning...yikes!

To top it off, our furnace stopped working!  Our little fireplace can't keep up so the plan was to buy a small heater to help us keep warm until we could get to a larger city.  And then....this morning the refrigerator stopped working?????  What is going on.  We played around with it and it wouldn't work on electric or gas.  So we called a repair service (hard to find on Saturday) and then Ted switched the propane tanks to see if that would fix the furnace (even though we had plenty of gas to light to stove) and then the refrigerator started working again on electricity!  We are still going to have them come out and still awaiting their arrival.

When we went to Murray Farms in Bakersfield, we found an interesting item.  It is a Buddha's Hand!  In Western cooking, it is used for zesting.  It is less tart and pithy than regular lemons but has the skin (look) of the lemon (with fingers)!  We bought one and brought it to our "gathering" in Atwater at Billy and Vicky Whited's house (Ted went to high school with Vicky, class of 64 and her husband Billy graduated in 1963).  There are about 20 of us here for the weekend.  We decided to see if anyone had ever seen a Buddha's Hand and give 5 scratch off tickets as a prize to anyone who knew what it was.  Cathy, the date of one of Ted's classmates, figured out it was some sort of lemon so she won the prize!

They are pretty funny looking!

We had a fabulous spaghetti dinner last night made by Della Crownover with her husband Jim reheating the meatballs and cooking the spaghetti.  Pat Gordon made her fabulous cheesy garlic bread and we brought a green salad.  For dessert Sharon Gillam brought a great cheese cake sampler!  There was plenty of good food to go around!

I took a few pictures of the group!  I only got a few and then got too busy partying!

Vicky and Billy's dog, Thor, always enjoys dressing up for Christmas!

Sometimes we bring small gifts for each other.  We usually pass them out after our gag/good gift exchange which will be on Saturday night after dinner.  Since we have such a large group Ted and I passed ours out last night.  I found santa and snowmen candy dishes for everyone and bags and bags of all type of candy.  We had chocolate, non chocolate and sugar free Christmas candies that we pass around and they fill their candy dishes!  It doesn't sound like it but it is a lot of fun!  After that Jim and Della brought in their decorated jars of cookie mix for everyone.  We got a jar of Chocolate Chip (Ted's favorite) and Gourmet Cookies (Della said they are yummy)!  I'll have to see if I can bake them!

Today Vicky and Billy's son and some of his musician friends will bring over drums, guitars and amps and do some old time rock and roll for us.  There are two or three different bands that actually come and play together.  It is a lot of fun and I hope the service guy comes soon so we can get over there for it!

When things are going wrong with our RV, at least we have our friends and health..."Ain't Life Grand!"