Jenny

Playing ball out at Fiesta Island.

Have a great day!

Texas

Joe and I had a great time in Texas last weekend. We visited for two reasons: to see Paul and to check out Joe's Dad's 39 ft fifth wheel.

We had a great time with Paul. He has such a beautiful place there in San Antonio. Great gardener too, he has some awesome plants and a lot of knowledge. We spent two full days with Paul and the evening of our arrival and morning of our departure too. We had so much fun helping do some yard work! He and Joe went to town cutting down limbs and pruning trees while I tried to focus on pruning and cleaning up the potted plants instead of how high they were climbing or how they were scrambling around limbs to cut from or, well anyway, you get the general idea! We don't get to do that kind of stuff that often (my potted plants are probably suffering from too much attention) so it was a blast and a real treat! The next day we touristed around a bit of San Antonio. We went to the Alamo, which was crowded but still impressive.

I never realized that it was a mission. I've always heard about the California missions, but never thought that they were really anywhere else. Crazy me! After the Alamo we headed down to the Riverwalk. COOL! It's just a walkway built on the river with neat delicious looking restaurants and cute shops and things winding through San Antonio. Really fun and pretty. Paul says it is stunning at Christmas with all the lights that go up and all and I believe it! And after that, we went to the botanical gardens, which we all really enjoyed. Beautiful place and well worth stopping into.

We also ventured outside of San Antonio down to Del Rio to look at the fifth wheel. Del Rio is a pretty small town surrounded by scrub brush but it has most of the conviences you could really need. The area was pretty in its way (as all areas are) though I'm glad we were there in the spring instead of high summer or something! It was pretty green and there were a couple of flowers blooming so it was nice. The fifth wheel is HUGE, bigger than some of the apartments we've seen, but unfortunately a little old and pretty happy where it is I think. I have to admit though, I don't think I've ever been in an RV that was that BIG. I think for the first time in our marriage Joe and I had to raise our voices to hear each other at opposite ends of the RV! Nice place.

Anyway, Texas was great between touristing around and relaxing with Paul (his Playstation is addictive by the way) and it would be a treat to visit again! And you'll never guess what two birds I added to my list!! A crested caracara

and a black-bellied whistling duck!

Hooray for birds!

April

Happy April everyone! In honor of this beautiful month of spring and because my sister has finally convinced me that even a picture post a day is worth putting up, I am going to try to put up at least a picture a day. I know, what a crazy thing for me to do with my posting history, huh?! But who knows, maybe it will help make it a habit and that couldn't be a bad thing, could it?I took this picture of these pretty pansies at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens last weekend when we were in Texas visiting Paul. Beatiful gardens with LOTS of flowers blooming. I couldn't help but think of Jennifer, Dad, and Mom especially when we came to the annual beds (which I didn't get any pictures of, can you believe it?!)which also happened to be next to a very scentful citrus grove. How much more beautiful can it get? We had a great time in Texas and I promise, I will do a longer post about that. But I'm pretty tired after a busy day so I'm going to wish you all a good night!

Happy Birthday!

Once a year I get the chance

To wish you birthday cheer.

It pleases me no end to say,

I wish you another great year.
So happy birthday to you Jennifer and Vanessa,

From the bottom of my heart.

And may your good times multiply,

Till they’re flying off the chart!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hope you all are having a wonderful, happy, Irishy day!

OMG!!!

Oh my gosh! You'll never guess what Joe and I did yesterday!! We went sailing!!!!! Like I told you a couple of weeks ago, Joe challenged and passed the boat exams at the Navy MWR so that he could check a boat out. Yesterday, we went and did the little check out exam (they wanted to make sure that he knew what an outboard is and how to work it, etc) and then we went sailing in the Bay!! We were on a Capri 22, which was a pretty fun, fast little boat. We were out for three and a half hours and had a great time. Sailing down the channel towards downtown to the Midway, the Star of India and the Master and Commander ship took probably 2 hours, but sailing back took only 45 minutes or so. I have to admit I was a little scared (ok, a LOT scared!) when the boat keeled over far enough for me to put my hand in the water from where I was sitting at the tiller, but it was super exciting too! I was at the tiller almost the whole time, which was pretty sweet, and Joe worked the sails for me. We successfully managed to tack and gybe and even managed to outrace a couple of other boats! Gybing scared me a little the first time because we came down to what felt like a full stop and I looked around and it felt like there were a million bigger boats racing towards us and I admit it, I had a slight panic moment ("Ah! Joe, we're sitting ducks, they're going to get us, I can't look, what happened to the wind, are you sure this is safe.....?!") but we survived and it actually became fun to tack and gybe. Tacking into the wind was a little more fun and seemed to maintain our speed a little more than gybing away from the wind, but we got them both down pretty decent. Hopefully, we can get back out on the water once a month or so because I think I'm hooked on it!! Hope you all have a great week!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Hope your day is filled with lots of sweetness and love!

Love to you all,

Veronica