Monday, December 24, 2012

Friends and Summer Job


Rockport, Texas
Saltwater Flats RV Resort
Weather Condition; High 81 Low 63, Sunny

We have been busy this week. On Wednesday we went to the post office to mail a few Christmas gifts and had lunch at The Shack - Bar B Q in Fulton.

Friday we attended a 60th wedding anniversary for our good friends Charlie and Carol. WOW! Sixty years, that’s a life time. They are a wonderful couple.

On Saturday we did laundry and ran to the grocery store to pick up a few last minute items.

Sunday a group of us met for lunch. We went to Butter Churn. It’s a buffet with home style cooking. We all stuffed ourselves and had a good visit. 

Later that afternoon we drove our friends Charlie and Carol to the Corpus Christi International Airport. They’re flying to Amarillo to spend Christmas with their daughter and family.

I did skip a day there, Thursday! I skipped Thursday because that was an interesting day for us. We decided last summer that we would try our luck at bidding on a gate attendant job with Our Lands and Waters Foundation. We requested to be placed on the bidders list for summer 2013 season. We received our bid packet on November 27th.  The deadline for bidding was December 18th.

Can I just say that it covered a lot of information? It was 61 pages that contain information covering the job description and a lot of legal jargon!   

We’ve never bid on a job. This was a new experience for us. We didn’t expect to get the job but at least we would have knowledge for future bidding.

We read the bid packet and talked about it. A week or so later we read it again. We discussed it and dropped it. A week later we discussed it some more and sent emails to the contact asking for clarification on a few items. We read the packet again and had a lengthy discussion. This time we decided to go for it.

We submitted our bid for 3 different parks on December 10th.  We planned on getting a response sometime after the first of the year.

Thursday morning we received a call informing us that we were awarded the bid.  We couldn’t believe it! We have a summer job near our home turf.

The job is gate attendant at a Corps of Engineers lake. This park has 23 RV sites, day use pavilion and 2 boat ramps. The hours are 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. 4 days on and 4 days off. Our contract dates are April 1st to September 30th. We are looking forward to the experience and the extra cash will be nice too. We will be paid for our hours and provided with an RV site with utilities and storage building.

We were going to spend most of our summer in the area anyway due to a few events that we were planning on attending so we’ll be getting paid for being in the area, how sweet is that?! 

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Christmas Party Time

We had a Christmas party at the park club house. It was a nice party with a gift exchange too.







This a sign at the entrance of a neighborhood.


Sunday, December 16, 2012

Progreso Mexico


Rockport, Texas
Saltwater Flats RV Resort
Weather Condition; High 82 Low 60, Cloudy

Yesterday we drove to Progreso Mexico with our friends Bob and Pauline. We woke up early to leave by 7:30 A.M. We stopped off at the Bakery Café for breakfast in Aransas Pass before getting on the road.

The drive is about three hours. We didn’t see much because there isn’t a lot to see between Corpus Christi and the Mexican border.

We arrived at the border a little after eleven. We parked on the Texas side and walked across. We didn’t encounter any lines.


Street vendors lined both sides of the sidewalks. It was almost impossible in a few places to walk thru the crowds.

We slid into a bakery so Bob could have a pastry and a coke. We listened to the mariachis play. 


Afterwards we were back out on the sidewalk maneuvering thru the crowds and vendors.

Dawn found a T-shirt and we picked up a few things for a friend.  We were back at the truck by two or two-thirty.

Bob drove us to Donna to the flea market so we could get some fresh produce. We bought grapefruits, oranges, limes, cilantro and watermelon.

We had intentions to walk thru the flea market and look around but we were all tired. We returned to the truck and headed back to Rockport. Bob stopped in Kingsville and we had dinner at Whataburger.

We arrived home a little after seven.

Our fur kids were really glad to see us. Several of our neighbors took turns checking on them throughout the day.

Our neighbor Marsha came over shortly after we got home. She brought over a bottle of margarita. She and Dawn sat outside until ten talking and laughing. I took a shower and went to bed!

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Loss of a Friend


Rockport, Texas
Saltwater Flats RV Resort
Weather Condition; High 87 Low 67, Sunny

The mood here has been very sad since Tuesday. That’s when we found out our friend Colette passed away. She was only 70 years old.

Colette and her husband pulled out of the park a week ago Wednesday morning driving to Irving, Texas so she could have noninvasive back surgery. Her back surgery was on Friday. The word is that the doctor wasn’t able to get it all done in the first surgery so on Monday she was back in surgery. We were told that during her second surgery her heart stopped and there were complications. Colette was moved to ICU. On Monday we were told things didn’t look good. Colette died Tuesday evening.

It's just so surreal. We thought she'd be returning here in a week or so. Everyone's in shock.

Colette’s family held a memorial service for her on Friday in Irving.  Unfortunately that’s 400 miles from here.

Colette and her husband started full-timing this past spring.

We will all miss her.

We spent yesterday in Corpus Christi with our friends Bob and Pauline. We walked around the mall and had lunch at Golden Coral. We all stuffed ourselves to the gills!

Monday, December 3, 2012

Looking Like Christmas Here


Rockport, Texas
Saltwater Flats RV Resort
Weather Condition; High 87 Low 67, Sunny

We’ve been doing our usual housekeeping things and we’ve been trying to help with Christmas decorations at the clubhouse.

Someone mentioned we needed to find a Christmas tree and decorations for the clubhouse. Dawn and I took her old recliner to the local thrift store and noticed a Christmas tree box lying on the ground beside the dumpster. Dawn asked the gentleman unloading the recliner from the truck, if the tree was going to be thrown away. The man said it was not all there and we could have it if we wanted it.

Dawn grabbed the top of the tree out of the box and she also snagged some of the tree branches.

When we got home, I found a block of wood and used my drill to drill a hole in the block. This block is now a tree stand. The little tree is only a couple of feet tall, but it will work for now.

 With the extra limbs I made two large wreaths for the door. We left the wreaths lying on the table and told everyone that the wreaths needed some decorations.

The past couple of days we have been busy building a couple of Christmas light trees for the outside. Our friend Bob has one and we wanted one too. When we were leaving to get the supplies, our friends Peter and Judy asked if we would get enough supplies to make them one too.

First day we built wooden base, painted and cut PVC.



Day two, we installed the hooks and strung the lights. 


 It looks so nice. Thanks Bob for all your help and patients.

 Our neighborhood is looking festive.

More winter Texans pulled in the past couple of days.