Happy Thanksgiving, Excitement in Retama

Had some excitement today around noon. As Danielle and I were walking the dogs down our street there were two young men walking along the fence behind the rigs. As we watched them they started walking faster than started running. They ran along the front wall than came back. About that time one of the border patrol guys arrived on a ATV and we pointed to him where they were at. But they were able to climb the wall and the BP took off back out the gate. There was another BP walking behind our place and he was trying to find a place to climb back over so I got our 3 step stool out for him. Than I spotted another guy walking down the street towards our place and another BP on ATV came up too him, the guy raised his hands and the BP pointed to the front of the ATV to climb on. A little later one of the BP stopped and said they had caught 15 of them in our park. So our normal lazy Sunday afternoons turned into something to watch. We head the helicopter over head with the spot light around 10pm last night so I'm wondering if this group was part of the one from last night.

On to other things, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving with some special friends. It was a perfect day to have our dinner outside on Dave/Sue McCarrons patio.

The guys did the turkey's

And the ladies did the rest
There were 4 turkeys - 2 grilled-1 deep fried - 1 smoked
Pepper couldn't have turkey but we gave her a nice rawhide bone

Friday we had left over day and there was plenty of food left. That night we went up to the clubhouse for the Christmas Open House which I'll share next week with you.

Saturday we put up some lights around the window and Marilynn and I went to the nursery and I got some plants to put in the pots.
That night we were invited over to Gary and Marilynn's for dinner of steaks on the grill, sweet potatoes, salad and a yummy desert. Than this afternoon was our Turkey Soup day that Dale makes every year. I'm thinking it's time to quit eating completely until say mid January.

One of the nice things about Facebook is having family put pictures on. This one is our great great niece Delilah who seems to be gearing up for Black Friday
Also our gr-daughter Anissa picked up her senior pictures on Friday and Brandi posted a couple of previews. Can't wait to get ours but this is one of my favorites too,.

So that fills you in for this week. Our beautiful weather turned on us on Saturday and we had strong (30mph) winds out of the north with gusts up to 40. It didn't let up until tonight and now they are saying we could be in the high 30's tonight. Words can not express how I feel about these temps. Actually there are words but I'm not allowed to use them.

That's it for now, Till next time........................................

Shopping, Puppies, Getting even

This last week seemed to be shopping week. The best part is I did lots of looking and not much buying. Wednesday I went with Marilynn to the McAllen Mall and just walked around. This is a pretty good size mall and one thing I noticed there wasn't one empty store front. The other thing I noticed was there were lots of shoe stores (with the 4" heels) and if your a size 2 this is the place to be. Thursday I meant Linda C. for a cup of coffee than did a little shopping at Target. Saturday Donna wanted to go to the new Hobby Lobby so of course I couldn't let her go alone. So lots of window shopping which is the best kind.

I did pick up a album. Thought it would be neat to have a recipe book up at the clubhouse for everyone to either share or copy a recipe. So passed out some 4x6 cards so hopefully the ladies will fill up the book. For those of you here in the park that are reading this I'm putting more index cards up in the clubhouse.



Larry also did some shopping this week only he never left the house. He ordered a Kindle Fire. So the last couple of days he's been having a love/hate relationship with it.
Pepper has a new friend called Foster. Foster and his friend arrived in our park several weeks ago. Not sure where they came from but eventually Foster was caught by one of the residents and his friend avoided the animal control guys for about two weeks. Anyway the bigger dog may be adopted by another resident (still up in the air on that) as he has a lot of problems but little foster has found a home. He's pretty much been adopted by the whole community. The vet figures he is about 4-5 months old and is such a cutie. He was very shy and scared but with the help of other dogs and especially Pepper he has become a active friendly little guy. Here's Pepper and Foster enjoying their play time together that we try to do often.
Speaking of new puppies in the neighborhood Gary and Marilynn were feeling a bit left out with all the newbies so they decided to get themselves a puppy. We have some strict covenants here and one is that all pets have to be on a lease at all times. Well Larry didn't want them to get into trouble so he took a lease over and made sure it was safely secure.
So far they haven't named their puppy that I know of. He/she (to be determined) seems to be fairly quiet and doesn't bark too much. But if he continues we may have to loan Peppers bark collar (which by the way he no longer needs) to them.

Plans are being made for the big Turkey Day. There's a group of about 20 of us that will gather at Sue and Dave's home. Weather looks to be perfect for having dinner outside on their patio, sure hope so. Since I probably won't post until next Sunday I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving.

OK, so I do have one more picture to share. As most of you know I'm not one to have my picture taken and I've shared some photo's of Larry that he's not thrilled with. Well the other day he said he had a picture on the camera and he wanted it on the blog as a "small" pay back of all the ones of him. So here it is:
Enough said: Till next time..............................

New steps, Luncheon, City Market

Can you believe how fast this month is going. Turkey day is just around the corner than Christmas, New Years and than we all have to get use to writing 2012. Not sure about you but I'm just getting use to the 2011.

A few weeks ago when we were in the local HEB (like Kroger's back home) they had these mini crock pots. I've been keeping an eye out for one that has duel temps (high, low, warm). The one I have is just too big but this mini one is perfect for the two of us. So this week I've given it a work out on different recipes. What really caught my eye on this was the color.

Orange

For those of you who don't no my Michigan kitchen is done in gray's and oranges and this will fit right in. So I had to stop back this week and pick up another one to take home.

Another project completed this week was new steps for the trailer. I love them, so much easier to try and carry groceries in without having to balance on skinny steps to open the door. Of course if I'd quit trying to make only one trip and have bags hanging all over me I'd probably have an easier time but who wants to make two trips.

Here's my new steps.

We had our first community meeting this week. Interesting meeting but was a little long. These clubhouse chairs are only good for about an hour of sitting and by the time it was over everyone was ready to get out of there.

Wednesday Donna Zinnecker and I were the hostess for this months Ladies Luncheon. A new tradition was started last year on having some of the men in the village plan, shop, cook, serve and clean up on our November meeting. Our head chef was Dave McCarron and here's a picture of him with some of his helpers.
L/R Dave McCarron, Ken Adams, Mark Bruss, Richard Shong, Grant Zinnecker. Not sure where Gail Quinn was but he also helped.

So what was the menu you ask. First we were served with a Fresh Garden Salad with Italian dressing. Than came Roasted Pork Loin, Red Potato's covered in real butter with parsley and Home Made Applesauce (made from 4 different apples). Than cookies to top it off. The service was great and the food was wonderful, thanks guys. That day also went over the 1-hour chair limit after the program and visitors we had lined up but it was fun.

Here's a couple of pictures

Have to share this picture of Darrius that Brandi had on Facebook this week. Seems he felt he needed to watch TV in this for protection. Not sure what he was watching??
Today we went down to the City Market in Donna. Picked up some peppers (.50 ea), radishes (.50 huge bunch), 10lb each of oranges and grapefruit ($3 ea), and a whole fresh cut pineapple ($3). I wanted to check on the price of pecans. Not sure what it is up north but it was $4.50lb in shells and $9 lb shelled.

Since I've been working on and off all afternoon on this blog I guess it's time to close and fix dinner. Till next time........................ which seems to be on Sundays

Helicopter, Mexico trip, Dinner w/Friends

So did everyone remember to set their clocks back. Not sure how a person can forget with all the reminders on TV, Internet and newspapers. Of course it was one of those nights that I was wide awake to meet the time change in person. After watching Brothers & Sisters, and two repeats of Cheers I was just about ready to fall asleep. But it was not to be as the helicopter arrived and started to make a circle over our trailer and out in the field west of us. I finally got up and looked out as this was continuing much longer than normal and saw the big spot light so knew they were after someone. This went on for over an hour and I was about to call my brother Bob and find out how long it takes for these birds to run out of gas. But figured that wouldn't be very nice at 4AM. Found out this morning from a neighbor that they were after a fairly large group of drug runners who were carrying bundles. The only reason we new about this is while she was walking her dog she came across one of the bundles and called the border patrol. We don't normally get drug runners around us so maybe it's time to have the border patrol people come here and give us an update again.

We were invited over to David/Linda's for dinner one night along with Gary/Marilynn. David put some ribs on the grill and were they good. Had a great time with them at their home.

Thursday we decided to make a quick trip down to Progreso Mexico. We needed to pick up some heart worm medicine for Pepper. We did some comparison and found there wasn't much difference in price for the Frontline med's but a big difference on the Heart Guard Med. In the states you have to have a prescription from a Vet but like people med's we can buy it over the counter in Mexico. We got six months worth (once a month chewable tablet) for $17.00.

One of the first things we noticed after crossing the bridge was all of the military men, tanks, sandbag barricades and the 12 year old looking soldiers with their machine guns were all gone. We had heard the the town was trying to make tourist feel safer and one way was to move all the military on the outskirts of town. They also did some major clean up along the streets and painted the outside of the buildings. This town relies on the Winter Texans and with all the News about problems in Mexico the last couple of years have really hurt this small town. It was a short visit there but we did stop and have lunch at our favorite place.

My brother Bob was released from the hospital on Wednesday and has been enjoying being home in his recliner and own bed. Not to mention having Diane fixing some of her wonderful home cooked meals.

Have a few pictures to share this week. The first one is from my sister Nadene. It was taken off their patio at the cottage at Lake George MI.
Here's our Grandson Darrius all ready to hit the streets to collect as much candy and he can.
We decided to start taking Pepper out on our bike rides to use up some of that energy she always seems to have. She does very well on staying along side of Larry unless she see's another dog or someone calls out her name.

She really loves going as fast as she can down the road.
Two mornings a week there's a Play Date at the dog park. I'm not sure who enjoys it more, the dogs or the owners.
But when it's over we have a good two hours of piece and quiet.

So that's about it for this week. Till next time...........................