Friday, November 1, 2013

Becoming Texans, Uninvited Happy Hour Visitor

A busy week for us. One of the things we wanted to do this winter was become Texas residents. It gets confusing sometimes trying to remember which zip code we need when you have three of them. One of the weird things about this State is you have to go to two different locations to get your tags and driver’s license. And you have to do things in a certain order. So step one, had to get Texas Insurance for the vehicles. That one was simple stopped in at the agency we have the trailer insured at and they had us all taken care of. A little bit of a sticker shock going from one of the lowest cost State but we knew this was going to happen. Once that was done we decided to stop in at the County Tax Assessors Office to find out just what we need to take care of registration the vehicles. Since we have the truck in Michigan and Texas requires a vehicle inspection we have to send a request to Austin Texas for a waiver before we can register that vehicle. So the next day we gathered all the needed papers, filled out the forms and went back to the Assessor’s Office to take a # and have a seat. This is where we’ve heard stories of waiting for hours and the people behind the glass windows not being friendly. But we were in and out of there within an hour and the people there were very friendly and helpful. As of today our vehicles (or at least one of them) are Texas Residents. Now on to getting the driver’s licenses – but that will be next week’s blog. Hopefully that will run as smoothly.

Another thing we needed to do is get our flu shots so we stopped into the County Health Dept that’s by us and got that taken care of for $15 each.

My friend Kathy and I have been working on the Retama Connections Newsletter to get this up and running each week. It’s only two pages but I’m a little nervous on finding things to fill these pages up with. But the first one is almost ready and we’ll put it out on Sunday.

The first official event here was last night with the Oktoberfest. The activities committee hosted this (did I mention I’m on this committee) and we had a great turn out. The weather has been pretty warm (90s) most of the week and they were calling for rain so we set the tables up inside the clubhouse where people could be in air conditioning. But just before people arrived the sun came out, the humidity went down and a nice breeze (and not the wind storm we’ve had for two days) came so the majority sat out on the patio. It was just a nice evening of seeing people who came in during the week and getting caught up on summer activities.

OK, can’t have a blog with at least a couple of pictures. This one is what showed up at our happy hour one afternoon uninvited I might add. These are called Cane Toads and they can be deadly to dogs if they come in contact with the toxin that is released. Luckily we caught Pepper before she got close to it and Larry took care of the unwanted happy hour guest.

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This is our favorite picture of the week. Grand-son Darrius went all out on his Halloween costume.

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So that’s this week. Till next time………

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