Last night in Texas for awhile!

On Sunday we visited my stepsister, Carol and her Mom, her Granddaughter and husband, Bill.  We had a good visit followed by a good pizza!  It was nice visiting with them.

This morning we left Lake Conroe and are in Texarkana, Texas tonight.  We took the back roads and saw lots of wildflowers!  I took pictures but they are a lot prettier in person!  Tomorrow we will actually be out of Texas!  We were in eight different campgrounds...man this is a huge state!

Texas wildflowers..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Lake Conroe Texas

We finally made it to Lake Conroe Friday afternoon.  We got the RV set up and took off to visit my Stepbrother Ron, his girlfriend Melinda and my Stepsister Carol.  They took us out to dinner and had some delicious Texas barbeque (complete with leftovers)!

Today we were going to Old Spring to the Crawfish festival but alas, it up and rained!  It finally cleared up late afternoon in time for a barbeque at Ron's house.  He and Melinda had a feast for us and Melinda wouldn't let anyone do anything so we sat around and ate delicious wings, hamburgers and hotdogs (much better than Crawfish)!  Carol lives next door so she came over along with Ron's Mom, her friend and Ron's kids.  It turned out to be a nice afternoon! 

Visiting with family..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Stopping Power!

Wednesday morning we got up very early and got the RV ready for travel to the RV Repair place!  They get started on the brakes and find they need another part! Arrrrgh!  Of course it had to be ordered because it's something that ususally doesn't have a problem and of course we had to pay a fortune for overnight delivery!  They have a campground at the RV place so we spent the night there and at 10:00 a.m. when the part was due to arrive, we got in line to get the repair done.  But of course we were scheduled for Thursday at the last minute and they were already booked up so they finished us at 5:00 p.m. (closing time).  Funny how that works out. 

We decided to start out to Lake Conroe since it stays daylight until around 8:00.  We made it to Bastrop, Texas, east of Austin about 20 miles.  We hurried to get set up thinking we would be able to watch Survivor (they have cable here) and of course it was over, it was at 7:00 p.m!  So at 10:00 (8:00 San Diego time) we called Peggy.  She gave us blow by blow so we could keep up with what was going on.  The hero's are doing so much better now I am very excited!

Time to get ready to leave Bastrop.  We will be spending the weekend at Lake Conroe visiting my Stepdad's family who live in Splendora on the east side of Texas.

Getting the brakes fixed..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Last day in Boerne!

Tomorrow morning we have an appointment at the RV repair shop to get the trailer brake fixed.  From there we are traveling to Conroe Lake to visit my Stepdad's family for a couple of days.  Today we had lunch with Laura Joann and stopped by to see Gloria and her 4 charges (the tots she babysits) before fueling up for tomorrow!

Yesterday I left to go get a pedicure and the running lights were back on!  On the way to John and Gloria's for dinner we stopped by an auto repair shop John recommended.  Since it's working again, they would have to go by trial and error to try to find the problem.  The good news is our RV lights work so we don't have to worry about that and will wait until it fails again to try to find it.  What a pain!  We did have a good dinner with Gloria and John and left with some more of her good banana bread and some more leftovers!  We are all set for awhile!

This morning there were 27 deer outside our window.  I was putting some top soil on my bonsai plant and the little pregnant doe wandered over to see what I was doing!  I wasn't dressed too well so I cropped myself out of the picture (author's perogative)!  There are a ton of deer in Texas!  The wildflowers have just popped the last few days.  They are really pretty!

Max was very interested in my interaction with the deer!

Enjoying the wildlife..."Ain't Life Grand!"

A very happy Easter Day!

Ted and I hope all our friends had a wonderful Easter.  We sure did!  We went over to Cheryl and Dan's house who are John and Gloria's daughter and son-in-law!  As always, we had a feast!  There is always enough food we could probably feed most of Haiti!  The good news is, Ted and I also got left overs since they don't like to eat them.  We will be eating well for quite awhile!

Ted and I got the "grandkids" a little Easter gift so I took their picture.  The kids are a lot of fun.  They have a wii game so we worked off our meal by bowling.  They have a bowling game with a 100 pins!  John won the first game, Ted won the second game (I came in last)!  Then we played a game with obstacles.  Again Ted won but I came in second this time!  Ted and John dueled Jack (who is 5) in a sword fight!  Of course Jack whomped them!  He is really amazing at all the sports games on the wii.  There was lots of whooping and hollering going on while we played.  It was a lot of fun!

Family at Easter..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Happy Easter 2010!

On Friday John and Gloria took us on a drive through the Hill Country of Texas. And since they like to take us to all the nice places, we had to visit "Uptown Luckenbach" and "Downtown Luckenbach".   At uptown Monre operates a mill and a little rock shop.  He has the fastest armadillo around!   He etches a picture of one on a beer bottle in about 10 seconds flat!  He has quite a yard of stuff! 

From there we went over to Fredericksburg and visited the Wildseed.  John wanted to see if they had a Passion Plant.  It was a very cute place.  They have garden stuff, a ladies boutique, some food, wine tasting and food stuffs to buy.   Then we had lunch at the Biergarten.  John and I tried the Schnitzil and it was good!

From there we headed back down to " Downtown Luckenbach Texas" the place Willie and Waylon Jennings wrote about in his song!  Downtown is a very interesting place with a  Population of 3!   A friend, Bob Zajonc, asked if that was the "bartender, the cook and the drunk"!  Yes, with a lot of folk visiting (and some of them drunk I'm sure)!  Several people brought their guitars and were serenading the crowd.  It's an interesting place started by Albert Luckenbach in 1849 as a trading post.  Since it's a real town with a real post office, they put in one parking meter some time ago which was stolen last month.  It has been replaced with a double headed meter.  They say "a large cement shoe and a steal dead man" will keep this one in town for a long time to come!

 
On Saturday John, once again, took us to a place you want to visit in the daylight only, Chris Madrid's whose famous for hamburgers!  I had a cheeseburger that had cheddar cheese melted all the way down my elbows!  It was really good.  The nachos were flat corn tortillas on the plate with smashed beans and cheese and they were really good too!

We decided we needed a walk after that big lunch so we headed further into San Antonio to the Pioneer Flour Mill to walk around the house and gardens. Those of you who read the blog regularly, know I LOVE SWEET CREAM PANCAKES!   C.H. Guenther and Sons has been in business since 1859.  They were originally in Fredericksburg then moved to San Antonio.  The mill is right on the river and they built their home there also on the river.  The historic house has been restored and holds their restaurant and store.  They have a very small museum there and they kept the parlor intact.  There is a room on the top floor that was having a private party so we don't know what was up there.  We bought some sweetcream pancake batter which is only sold there or on-line, but they do sell some other items like their biscuit batter is in Walmart and HEB here in Boerne Texas.   You can find their website under www.guentherhouse.com/Main.aspx  if you are interested.  It's a pretty home and you can sit in the garden and have dessert or they have breakfast and lunch on the patio of the restaurant which is next to the San Antonio River.

We got back to John and Gloria's so they could both beat us at Phase 10, a card game WE taught THEM last time we were here!

On the way home I had another adventure; I got pulled over by a Boerne Sheriff!  Our running lights were out again so he gave me a warning that we need to get it fixed.  We had brake and turn lights at least.  This is the problem that one Ford place wanted to charge us a bundle for.  We are going to have to get this problem fixed too!

Great adventures..."Ain't Life Grand!"

Back in Boerne!

We got back to Boerne Wednesday afternoon, I selected us a nice spot in the trees.  Our site came complete with deer!  But I forgot one thing, do we have a clear spot for the sattelite????  Nope!  Darn and there are a couple of shows I hate to miss.  Ted is going to try again tomorrow to see if he can hone in through the tree branches!

Wednesday afternoon I found a nail lady.  Boy did I need my nails done.  Yesterday I got my hair cut and color done - yippee!  All's right with the world again!

We had lunch with our friend Laura Joann yesterday.  She is doing well and a very busy lady.  Still working on buildng her home, going to school and working.  Then we went over to Ted's cousin Gloria and her husband John and had a great dinner (and I talked her into the left overs because her freezer is full) and enjoyable conversation.

Ted needs the computer and I need to get ready for today's adventure...more later!

As I've said before, visiting friends and family..."Ain't Life Grand!"