CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY IN OHIO

December 31, 2013 - We're both back in Houston now but had a memorable Christmas in Ohio. Marsha got to experience some SNOW, but Paul escaped the worst of it. As a matter of fact, the weather was so nice one day, Paul mowed the grass and cleaned up the leaves.

We had a partial-family Christmas Eve party, and then the entire family returned on Christmas day to exchange gifts and enjoy a wonderful Christmas ham dinner. With the family together there is always time for a few beverages and some card playing.

Kelly making one of the numerous dishes for Christmas Eve.

They are really having fun but must wear their game face while playing.  

Table ready for the Christmas dinner.

How can there be so many presents and we don’t even have any children?

A few of our favorite gifts.

After dad/grandpa said a few words to us all, we made a toast to another blessed Christmas day.

This isn’t a normal gift for an 86 year-young man. We got dad/grandpa a new computer, and he loves it!

Marsha’s brother and sister with dad and his computer.

As we stated in an earlier blog, our oldest daughter, Kelly, got engaged. That means Marsha is involved “big time” in wedding planning. Carrie will be the maid of honor so the girls were busy discussing wedding options. Paul knows it's best he avoid these discussions, so as planned he headed back to Houston the day after Christmas.

Kelly had a very unique way of asking Carrie to be her maid of honor. She wrap a note in one of the candles she made for Carrie.

Marsha and Carrie caught their flights back on the 28^th and both had uneventful flights. Temperatures in the 70's welcomed them home, so we spent the day relaxing outside in the sun.

We'll be attending the New Year's Eve party at the Elks Lodge, aka…the Club…where we are enjoying our friends here in the campground. Bella has sure enjoyed the field of grass next to our RV and the many birds that visit the bushes nearby.

We've decided to remain in Houston for the winter. The women have a wedding to plan, and Kelly and Dave will be flying in for a long weekend in early February. We may make another short trip to the Rio Grande Valley but considering the difficulty in getting a site here at the Elks (our Houston home), we may either leave the RV here or erase those thoughts all together.

We wish all our family and friends a very happy, healthy and safe New Year!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE WEAVERS

Wednesday, December 25

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

AND THE BIG NEWS IS….

Monday, December 23 – We have waited almost 30 years for this day…drum roll please…

Our daughter, Kelly, and boyfriend, Dave, are engaged. 

He asked her last Wednesday, December 18. She was totally taken by surprised. She said she is so nervous right now. Marsha asked if they had set a date, and Kelly said she just wanted to enjoy being engaged for awhile. Dave is going to make an excellent husband and wonderful son-in-law. We are both thrilled with the news.

Congratulations, Kelly and Dave. We love you both.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

S- N-O-W IN O-H-I-O

Saturday December 21, 2013 – Here is what has been happening since December 5.

Marsha flew back to Canton, Ohio, for the holidays on December 5. She's been doing her holiday shopping and baking, visiting with family and friends, and enjoying the COLD and SNOW!!! She says sorry about not reading many blogs. She has no Internet in Ohio and only 2G on her phone. She went a bit nuts not having the Internet.

Yep, Ohio, as most of the Nation, has been getting hit with unseasonable cold and some pretty good snow falls. Paul hasn't been basking in the sun either....been dang unseasonably cold in Houston too! At least we don't have SNOW! But he does have a bad case of cabin fever. But the sun did come out this past Sunday-Thursday. The days were beautiful with 70-80 degree temps.

Marsha is enjoying baking holiday cookies. Our daughter, Kelly, and boy friend, Dave, joined in and helped out. Hey, now don't eat them all. Leave a few for Paul and Carrie when they arrive just before Christmas.

When it snows you gotta' make the most of it! Dave was out shoveling the driveway, and Kelly decided to join him to make a snowman.

What great neighbors. The fellow across the street was out plowing driveways in the neighborhood with his four-wheeler and cleaned our driveway several times. That sure put a smile on Marsha's face – she's got visiting and shopping to do!

Many people have wondered about “Who’s going to take care of Bella while you are in Ohio?” Carrie has a couple friends staying in Houston for the holidays that will “cat-sit” Bella for a few days when both Paul and Carrie fly North. Come Christmas day, the family will be together, all except poor Bella.

Now to the present. Paul flew back to Ohio on Thursday, December 19. There was tons of snow on the ground. But come Friday and today, it has rained and no more snow. He is not one bit unhappy.

Kelly and Dave came Friday night to stay the weekend with us. Carrie flies in on Sunday. Kelly is on winter break, so she will stay with us the entire Christmas break. Poor Dave has to go back to work…boo hoo.

We have some big exciting news to share but that will be in our next blog.

Hope everyone is done with their shopping. There are lots of nutty drivers out there this time of year.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

WE ARE IN OUR SITE….YEA!

Tuesday, December 3 – Ahhhh......full-hookups! We moved into our site this afternoon after a three-day delay. We don't mind dry camping entirely but have sure gotten use to full-hookups. Nice to be able to use all the modern utilities.

We are in site #1.

Looking to our left.

We usually are on the other end of the campground, Site #10, but feel this site is the best! It has a very nice patio and extra grass area with no one on our door side. We are next to the pool, but it obviously isn't in use this time of year. So a nice private patio is a joy!

Bella always thinks the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

We joined our neighbors by putting out some Christmas decorations. We kept it manageable, but if Marsha gets her way, it may expand.....LOL. She's decorated the inside of the RV too.

Marsha flies back to Ohio tomorrow. She will be there four days longer before Christmas than last year. She said she needs more days to get all the shopping, baking and lunching done. Paul will fly back on December 19; Carrie the 22. Guess Bella and Paul will live like bachelors for awhile.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Hope you have a great day!

WE ARE STILL ALIVE AND DOING WELL

Monday, December 2 – Again this year we enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with our daughter, Carrie and a group of her friends. We are always so pleased with what a wonderful group of kids she has as friends.

At about 11:00, we began to get the two turkeys ready.

Played a little Cornhole while the turkeys were cooking.

Coloring the tablecloth for the celebration.

Just waiting for those turkeys to get done.

Finally!

We had a wonderful meal, an awesome day, and an abundance of fun. Thanks Carrie!!!

Our month stay at Forest Retreat expired on Saturday, so we headed to the Houston Elks Lodge. This is our “normal” home while in Houston and is only 15 minutes from our daughter's apartment instead of the 35 minute drive we had in New Caney. We will have to dry camp for a day until Site #1 opens up. The people in that site are planning to leave December 1.

It is 7:30 a.m. on Black Saturday. Everyone must be shopping…good for us!

Dry camping at the Elks.

Big football game day. We met Carrie and her group at Pub Fiction for some refreshments and watch the Buckeyes tangle with the Wolverines. Finally score…

Sunday we spent most of the day baking at Carrie’s. Her big Annual Holiday Extravaganza is coming up and the boys love her cookies.

Buckeyes…yummy!

It is Monday, and we are still dry camping in the Elks parking lot. The people planning to leave on December 1 have extended there stay for several days due to illness. Dang! Boy, the Elks could sure use more RV sites. They have ten sites, and according to the camp hosts, they've been full almost constantly for the past year or more.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

HISTORICAL DOWNTOWN HOUSTON

Sunday, November 24 - We were back in Houston last Wednesday to do some more visiting with Carrie.  She had some interesting city sights to show us. After finishing some work around her apartment (hanging pictures), we jumped in Carrie's car and headed downtown. She's a fearless big city driver, so it's good to let her do the driving in Houston.

Our first stop was Carrie's new office building, Enterprise Products. It's one of the highest buildings in Houston – wouldn't you know it. What a beautiful place to work, It is connected to the Houston Underground, a huge shopping/restaurant area located BELOW the city.

We walked around a bit downtown stretching our necks to see the many tall skyscrapers. Some very interesting architecture! With the train running right through downtown, it makes getting around fairly easy. Carrie rides the train to work...nice! They are currently expanding the train system to hopefully relieve the madness of the highway system here in Houston.

We ventured into the Historic District containing some of the oldest building in town. Most have been converted to restaurants or taverns. This area of town is also being revitalized with remodeling and planned events taking place to get the people here in the evenings.

The Hearsay building once served as a Confederate armory during the Civil War.

We stopped to view Houston's 9-1-1 monument. It's a memorial to a Houston native, Lauren Grandcolas killed on United Flight 93. An interesting feature is the smoking fountain (We think they use dry ice for the smoke.) with a tall skyscraper, similar in appearance to the NY towers, in the background appearing through the mist. 

The information about this fountain is fascinating.

It was getting near four o'clock, that means the three-hour rush was about to begin, so it was time to scram or hang around Houston for awhile. We choose this time to flea before things got nuts. Even during non-rush hour times, Houstonians drive a little crazy, during rush hour – forget it!

We'll be back on Saturday to watch college football with Carrie and her gang, a pretty constant happening during football season. Nice they welcome us “old folks” to come along and soak up some of their enthusiasm.

Flowers are still in full bloom.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y'all back real soon. Have a great day!

COMPUTER ISSUES PUT A DAMPER ON POSTING

Saturday, November 23 – Marsha's been busy, busy, busy! Her computer died on Monday, dead motherboard. It was time to replace her aging laptop with a new one. Buying the new computer is an “ouch” on the wallet, but that's the easy part. Now she has to load everything to make it useable. That is absolutely CRAZY!!! It's like buying a car without tires, or a transmission. Paul just doesn't understand this.

Regardless, Marsha has been using the DSL line at the clubhouse to download software and other updates, amazing.....a new computer needs updates. She broke away from the HP brand name and bought a Samsung. She read rave reviews about her choice. She loves the feel of the keyboard. Yes, it came with OS 8, which now causes her some additional headaches. The first issue she ran into was our printer software…not suitable for OS 8. She went on line to research update drivers. This is just one example of why it takes so long to set up a new computer.

It's been three days now, and Marsha is still at it! She had the hard drive removed from her old computer and placed in an NexStar TX 2.5” hard drive enclosure. Now she can transfer “stuff” from her old hard drive to her new computer. Will she ever be done???

Marsha wants to share her opinion of OS 8…..not difficult to learn at all. She can’t get over how many people are having so many problems with it. One girl here in the campground said she is having a difficult time leaning how to use the new operating system. All she wants is her desktop back. Marsha showed her how to hold the window key down and hit D…desktop appears. She showed her how to pin her applications to the task bar. Debbi is now a very happy camper. She says it looks just like her old desktop…imagine that.

Paul's been diddling around the RV, cleaning his truck, reading, and snoozing in his zero gravity chair. At least the weather has been beautiful here in Houston.

TIDBIT: November 22, 2013, marks our 1500^th day on the road.

We will post a new blog hopefully very soon.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

RICE UNIVERSITY

Monday, November 11 – Since we arrived in the Houston area, it has been nonstop visiting with our daughter, Carrie. She and her friends are always on the move.

Saturday found us at a beer festival. Even though the sign in the photo below says Hill Country, Houston is definitely not in Hill Country.

A small sample of Carrie's friends.

We spent the day in Houston on Monday visiting with Carrie. We spent the morning at her new apartment in Mid-Town Houston. She's right in the thick of things in the middle of a very exciting city. She's adapted well to big city living. Her apartment is very nice with plenty of parking, (Paul loves the ability to park his big ole' truck in a safe parking garage), an entertainment room, two pools, a computer area, two workout rooms, security systems, and cable TV all in a gated building.

After a short shopping trip, we returned to Carrie's apartment to park the truck. We then walked the two blocks to jump on the train ($1.25 for 4-hours of travel) to visit Rice University.

Rice University has a beautiful campus located right in the city of Houston.

Many of the buildings have the Rice mascot carved in the pillars.

Rice is a is a private research university located on a 295-acre campus. The university is situated near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. It has a gorgeous walking paths throughout the campus.

We did a pretty extensive walking tour of the campus seeing many of the 70 buildings, the beautiful grounds, and the athletic complex.

Lovett Hall

Herzstein Hall

Fondren Library

Rice Memorial Chapel

One of the many lounges in the Student Center

The Shepherd School of Music

Rice Stadium

After visiting the University, we walked around Rice Village, the entertainment/restaurant/bar section of campus.

Not too many campus can boost about having a violin shop.

Now this is unusual.

We even stopped for a cool beer and to talk with our other daughter, Kelly, back in Ohio, where they are getting ready for a couple inches of S@%W this evening.

The flowers are still blooming in this area. Carrie and Marsha just couldn't resist a photo op.

After a couple screw-ups trying to find the right train, (We had to get on and off the train a couple times before we were heading in the right direction.), we jumped off again in Mid-Town where we grabbed a lunch/dinner at Pho Sa'i Go'n, a Vietnamese Noodle House. Carrie tried her best to teach Marsha how to use chopsticks – all in vain! Paul just asked for a fork, and Marsha finally gave in and got a set of silverware too!

With the famous Houston rush hour(s) behind us, we then jumped in the truck about 6:30 to head back to the RV Park. Unfortunately, we caught up with the traffic backed up behind three accidents. Golly, it would be wonderful to do this driving twice a day, five days a week! We just took our time and eventually found our exit and the Forest Retreat RV Park. Good to be home!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y'all back real soon. Have a great day!