Monday, December 28, 2009

HOLIDAY TIME

Monday, December 21 – Beautiful day. Just hung-out around campground. We did go on a tour of Escapees CARE Center….Continuing Assistance for Retired Escapees. CARE is a Texas-licensed, adult day-care center here at Rainbow's End. Its mission is to provide a safe haven with professional assistance at affordable prices for members whose travels are permanently ended because of age or temporarily interrupted because of health problems. The facility provides older RVers who need medical attention after surgery, a heart attack, stroke, or those who are suffering from other medical issues. You receive three meals per day, a place to park your RV, help with laundry, cleaning, rides to doctor visits, and any support you need. You still live in your RV at night but spend days in the care center, as needed. All of this at about a third of the cost to comparative adult care facilities. They have a neat train set up for the holidays. Check out the additional pictures to see the train.

TV Room
TV-room

Gift Shop
gift-shop

Dining area
cafe

Meeting area
meeting-area

Garden Sitting Area
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Garden Walk
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See additional pictures

Wednesday, December 23 – Texans are proud to say that everything in Texas is BIG! Well, let me tell you about one thing.....when it rains in Texas it R – A – I – N – S !!!!!! It comes down in buckets! Guess it's better than S#&*W! Turned out to be a pretty nice day....but humid.

Have to take care of final preps for departure to Tyler tomorrow morning. Need to go up to the office and pay my electric bill. Moving the bikes over to our neighbors/friends site so I don't have to load them until we return here on the 26th. Putting things in place so they don't roll all over the place and making sure Santa will know where to find us!

Marsha baked some more cookies today to take to Kelly's house. Did some house cleaning and took Bella, our cat, for her daily walk. People around here get a hoot out of seeing her walk on a leash....just like a little dog!

Off to “social” at the activity center to say “good-bye” to everyone, and then we'll play Mexican Train this evening . We'll miss our new friends!

Thursday, December 24 – CHRISTMAS EVE! WOW! We experienced our first Texas thunderstorm over night. Quite a bit of thunder and heavy lightning and of course the accompanying wind. A tornado “watch” was issued for our area....wonderful! No problems but the noise...all was well!

We had to switch to “Plan B” due to severe weather. We were suppose to have storms and WIND warnings so we decided to leave the MH here in Livingston and drive the car to Kelly's. We'll all crowd in with her for the weekend! The important thing is to be together for Christmas!!!!

Kelly and Scott adopted not one but TWO kittens.They are so little compared to Bella. Bella was traumatized by Kelly's two new kittens. Bella spent most of the time in the bedroom trying to maintain her space. A lot of hissing and pounding of her chest!!!!!! We now know where the term “scaredy cat” originated.

Kelly’s kitten, Chloe
cleo


Scott’s kitten, Abby
abby

Christmas Eve church service was AMAZING! We again worshipped at Scott’s church, Colonial Hills Baptist Church. The music, singing, entire service was beautiful. The choir director sang the Lord’s Prayer. Not a big surprise here…Marsha had tears in her eyes. What a push over! After we got back Carrie and Marsha went to work putting out about ten different hour 'droves for us to eat. I ate too much!

Friday, December 25 – MERRY CHRISTMAS! Had a wonderful holiday at Kelly's.......Santa was very good to us!  Scott is a great cook. He started our day out with a super breakfast of French toast, bacon and toast. We had a delicious dinner. He made a Carolina Barbecued Pork….WOW! This was dynamite. He then made a new recipe…Crock Pot Stuffing. I forgot to get the recipe for this one. Marsha is waiting for Kelly to email it to her. If anyone is interested in either of these recipes, send Marsha an email, pmbweaver@gmail.com. She would be happy to send it to you. Carrie and Marsha also contributed to the dinner with salad, rigatoni, and a fresh green bean, mushroom and onion dish.

Marsha, Kelly, Paul, Carrie
family-1

The girls get a Peppermint tree.
peppermint-tree


Chloe gets into the act.
cleo-in-box

Abby follows Chloe's lead.
Christmas-morning

The girls always get lottery tickets in their stocking. This year Santa brought Marsha some Bingo lottery tickets. She and the girls took about an hour uncovering the numbers. Marsha was the big winner….winning $18.00. She even took a picture of the winning card. She thinks we should visit Las Vegas real soon. She feels lucky….Geesh!

lottery-ticket

Eastern Texas has a tradition of shooting fireworks off on Christmas Eve through New Year’s day. It was way too cold for us to do it Christmas Eve night, but Christmas day was beautiful. We got out the sparklers and celebrated like a real Texan does.

The girls had a big time.
k_c-sparklers

Marsha was having a great time.
marsha-sparler


Not sure what Paul was having.
paul-sparkler














See more pictures of Christmas day.

Saturday, December 26 - Returned to Livingston this morning and Carrie went on to Houston. We had a great Christmas at Kelly's........except Bella. Bella spent most of Saturday sleeping. She was so happy to get back to her own stomping ground.

We “chilled-out” the rest of the day in the MH. Watched some football and rested for our travel day on Sunday.

Thanks for visiting. Y’all come back now!