A very late effort to catch up!

Wow - I'm embarrassed to say that we got so busy after we left Arlington, that we have neglected the blog. Okay, not "we", but "me". It will be easiest to pick up where we left off - which was headed to Georgetown.

Well, that was a successful venture. After looking at about 20+ "pre-owned" homes in both Sun City and Heritage Oaks, we decided to build from scratch in the Heritage Oaks subdivision. This is a custom builder, Jimmy Jacobs, who has designated one of his subdivisions for those of us over 55. The house will be about 2,000 sq ft and will include a formal dining room, great room, kitchen, breakfast room, study, two bedrooms, two baths & 2-car garage. I'm going to attach a picture of a similar home in the neighborhood, as well as a picture of our lot. We are on a bit of a hill and have a large easement and the base of a cul-de-sac behind us, so no one will be directly behind the house, which should provide a litte privacy. We are just now signing off on the final plans so we hope to break ground in early February. From there, it will take about 5 months to build.

Next on the list was our annual reunion with family for Thanksgiving. This year, we had 40 people and almost everyone made it. It was just a wonderful event hosted by my brother and sister-in-law. Even my other brother and his wife and son from California made the trip, as well as my sister and her family from Pennsylvania. It is rare that we get both of them to this event in the same year so we were blessed. We also got a chance to visit Bryan/College Station during the holidays and I was able to get a fun shot with my other granddaughter, Hanah. She is my Facebook friend now, so we get to chat often; even if it is online instead of in person.

We spent the rest of November in San Antonio and Bandera and went to an annual event one night in Boerne. I've attached a photo of my brother and his wife as well as some friends of theirs at this event. It was a little chilly and they even had "snow" blowing off the roof tops of the downtown area. I understand it was soap chips, but that's okay - it looked really fun and almost authentic!

The first of December, we traveled further south to the Rio Grande Valley, where we will spend the rest of the winter. We stay in a park called "Bit-O-Heaven" in Donna, which is near McAllen. Initially, it was unseasonably cold and rainy; so rainy that we couldn't park on our lot for a couple of days until it dried up a bit. We even had some days below freezing which threatened all the crops here in the valley. After about the first week in January, it started warming up and lately has even been in the 80's, so we are now starting to get out a bit more and catch up with our friends. The last of our group just arrived from Ohio last week, so now we have resumed our normal activities, which includes eating in strange places and dancing about 3 days a week. This exercise turns out to be great for Dean, who suffered a minor stroke Christmas week. He is gaining strength daily and has resumed his normal habits except for his choice of beverage, which is now non-alcoholic. He's even losing weight and going through physical therapy, so will most likely come out much stronger and healthier than before!

For me, staying busy is always a challenge, so I have recently taken up working with stained glass. Fortunately, one of my friends has a lot of the expensive equipment required, so my investment has been minimal. I will be able to decide whether I want to keep this up by the end of the winter; THEN the expense will creep in! My first little project was an angel, and my second was a likeness of my favorite subject (the dog) which was less than 20 pieces. I'm now working on my third piece which is a 16x20 with 190 pieces and I'm questionning my sanity. I do love working with glass and think I can make a hobby of this, so stay tuned for an update!

It looks like there are some fun events coming up soon - some that even may be worth dragging out the camera. I promise to try to update the blog a little sooner, even if our life here is a little bit boring. We hope you all are staying warm and that the winter will be short!