We’re Back!!!
After several months, I thought it was about time to catch up the last few months in a nutshell about where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing. It’s been almost a year since our last Blog posting! Hard to believe, isn’t it?
It’s not that we haven’t been doing things because we have and can’t believe how quickly time flies when you’re not paying attention. We spent the past summer in Kingsland, TX at the Rio Vista RV Resort with Dee working in the office and Larry was the “Pool Boy”. Larry vacuumed the pool, cleaned the filters, adjusted the chemicals and kept the deck area cleaned and in order. On one occasion, he reached in to clean a filter trap and found a live “rat snake”. Luckily, he didn’t show it to me or we would have packed up and left the area immediately.
Most afternoons, Dee was at the Kingsland Sr. Center playing bridge. Everyone was so nice there and really tough bridge players. My duplicate partner is a ACBL Life Master, as were most of the other players, and I am not anywhere near that level of play. Charley and I managed to get second place most of the time, but first place was hard to come by. I really enjoyed playing though.
We also drove to San Antonio, New Braunfuls, Austin, Johnson City (home of Lyndon Baines Johnson) and Fredricksburg. Two of Larry’s nieces and their spouses met us in Fredricksburg so it was a great day shopping and visiting with them. We’ve been to Fredricksburg several times and really love this small community. The Alamo was kind of a disappointment to me as I was expecting to see the old fort and the surrounding territory. The area was probably 1 large city block and most of the space was the gift center with a miniature mock up of the original Fort. Only 1 building remains of the original compound. Johnson City is a really small town but has a lot of history there. My favorite part of this area was the Wild Safari Zoo where we spent a half day seeing the animals, including a baby buffalo that was born the morning we arrived. One of the animals we had never seen before was a Scottish bred steer with the long shaggy hair – Big Red weighed in at about 1 ton. The driver of the tour ride was very informative about all of the animals.
After a 5 weeks stay at our friends in Childress, TX, we headed for Mesa, AZ for the winter season. We are working in the gift shop here at Mesa Regal 12 hours a week. It’s nice to be back and see everyone. Jan. 17th our friend Cherokee flew into Mesa to attend a Family History EXPO (genealogy). Dee and Cherokee attended to 2-day EXPO and took 8 classes with the experts learning how to research past relatives. As genealogy beginners, it was kind of overwhelming because almost all of these program leaders have doctorate degrees in this field and have been researching archives for at least 30 years. I am very thankful that some of my cousins have done extensive family researches on both of our families so that saves me many hours of work. It is addictive though searching through historical records, census records, and vital records trying to find one person. The mind-boggling thing is that so many people have exactly the same names so a lot of filtering through the information is necessary.
Larry’s brother, John (age 81), passed away last April about a week after we left Mesa. He had been ill for many months before his death. We also lost three very good friends this past year: Jack Peryatel (Dee’s former boss at Raton Natural Gas Co.), Jim Yarbrough (NM Parks & Recreation Dept.) and Paul Babek (Roswell Ind. School Dist.). We had visited with each of them this past year.
Signing off for now, and promise to do more blogging in a much shorter time span in the future
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