A Day at the Beach

Here's a shot of our friends, Sonja and JW with me and Kasey. They were the best hosts we could have ever imagined! We went away with snacks in the car - grapes, muffins, cheese, bananas, juice drinks. They were absolutely great! Thanks for making the last 2 days so much fun.


So after driving for about 6 hours, we finally made it to the island. Remember I can't use the p key on my keyboard and have to paste it in every time I want to type it, so I am not going to try to put that key in very often. So here is Kasey with his first time at the beach. This shot is almost the first few times the waves hit him. He abolutely loved it! He fell down several times, but now he just runs in it and runs back out and says "Here it Comes!" when he sees the waves.

The other thing I wanted to see down here was the Wyland wall. If you read my other blog entry, you will know that I really like his walls, I printed out a list of them the other day, he is painting 100 of them, I checked off the ones I have seen and there are now 22 to the list.
After staying at the beach for a couple of hours, we ventured out for dinner. I think it's funny that everyone posts what they eat for dinner. So I figured I should do the same. We ate at Jake's, just a small restaurant off the beaten path. It had an outside patio, which was nice because Kaseycan get messy sometimes. So here we all are waiting for our meal.
Mark and I had the shrimp appetizer. It was really good and I thought they did a nice job presenting it, don't you?

We also ordered the Macho Nachos. They were really good too.
Here was Kasey's meal.

HA! Just kidding!!! He had to carry his frog around with him and put it on his appetizer plate, so I just couldn't resist taking a picture.

Here's Mark with the sand castle he built. He is so proud of it. That has to be one of the best smiles I have gotten out of him.

Oh, he's smiling so much because he didn't really build it....

Well, tomorrow is beach, beach, and more beach.

Kelly

Quilt Shopping Trip

Well, I did get to do a little quilt shopping while I was in San Antonio yesterday. I got 2 fat quarters of Christmas fabric, one is candy canes and the other is Christmas cookies. My friend at work, Nita, and I are very slowly collecting fabric to make a Christmas Candy jar quilt. I think I have only 3 or 4 so far. So Nita, I will share this with you!!

I also bought 3 charm packs of It's Snowing by Moda. I really like the fabric in this pack and will make a Christmas quilt sometime. Don't have a clue as to what pattern I will use, but am hoping will be enough.

My last item was a yard of Texas fabric for a pillowcase for Kasey to remind him of our trip

Well, that's it for now.

Day 1, 2 and 3 of our Texas Vacation

Our trip so far has been fun. I finally got my laptop back but it has a keyboard problem, I was supposed to get a replacement for it, but it didn't come in yet. So I put my old keyboard on it that has the bad p key. So anytime I have to type a p, I have to copy it from somewhere else and hit ctrl v to paste it in my word. Sure does slow me down, but you don't really use the p key as much as you think. It would have been much nicer if it was the q key, but oh well. But I am sure happy to have it!!

We got to San Antonio and the our friend's house around 9:30. Made it in about 13 1/2 hours, which is good for the stops we made, it was 775 miles. We stopped several times for gas and one to eat lunch at the Cottonpatch restaurant in Denison, Texas.

Sonja and JW’s house is out in the middle of nowhere outside of San Antonio. It is a beautiful house. There is sand all over the yard so it really hard to grow grass. They used to live right across the street from us, then had to move because of JW's job. We were sad to see them leave.

There are these plants that are poisonous. I do not know what they are called. But if you touch them, the burn like fireants have bit you all over. Sonja said even if you wear gloves to pull them out, they hurt. I stayed away from them.

I couldn’t wait to get to Sonja’s to eat her special German noodle dish. It has sauerkraut, bacon and spaetzle noodles (which is a German noodle). It sounds nasty but it is WONDERFUL! Hmmmmm. Kasey even ate some of it. We got up Friday morning and headed to Sea World, San Antonio. Tickets were $120 for both of us and Kasey got in free. Parking was $12 and we bought 2 waters that were $3 each. Isn’t that ridiculous? Oh my gosh, it is so hot here, it is crazy! It was about 100 degrees.

We went to the dolphin show first. That was really neat. Then we went to the ski show, they have a big lake there at Sea World. It was ok, but Kasey was starting to act a little crazy.

Then we went to the Shammu Whale Show. That was really worth the whole trip here. The whales are so cool. I just love them. They would swim around and jump out of the water. Then they would jump on the stage. Kasey enjoyed watching that. The last show we watched was the Sea Lions. Kasey got a little crazy there and ran up and down the aisles. He finally calmed down, but he was so tired.



This is Kasey and I all hot, tired and grumpy!

We left around 2:30, it was just too hot and Kasey was too sleepy. So we let him sleep in the car and headed for downtown. We decided we would just go ahead and go to the Alamo and the Riverwalk. The Alamo was neat, but there wasn’t a lot there. I am glad I got to see it.




Then we walked to the Riverwalk. It’s like a river under the streets of San Antonio. We walked around for a little bit, then decided to go on the boat tour of the river. It’s about 2 ½ miles long and took us 30 minutes. The boat was really crowded and Kasey moved around a lot, I worried he was annoying everyone, we were so crowded, he was kicking others. The tickets were $7.75 each.

Here are the boys on the boat. Mark has his eyes shut, but it's a great picture of Kasey.

Then we headed back to Sonja’s. I had some more German noodles and Mark had tacos. Sonja bought Kasey all sorts of toys, some toy trucks and cars. She got him grapes and bananas and some juice box drinks, some string cheese. She sure knows how to spoil that boy.

Saturday is lazy day, we got up and walked down the road a little ways, then came back, ate a huge breakfast of biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, sausage and juice. Sonja says that JW’s next assignment with his company will be in Germany or Hawaii. Ah, another trip maybe!!!

Kasey played in the pool in the morning. I think he enjoyed that more than anything we’ve done so far..

This is all I will post for today, we are not planning on doing too much. Tomorrow we will get up and head to South padre Island and do a little swimming at the beach!!

Kelly

Vacation Time!!!!

Well, I am off on vacation and taking a laptop with me. I got my laptop back, still have a few problems with it, but I can use it. I made a DVD copy of all the files on it, so I think I am ok. We are heading for San Antonio, Texas to visit our old neighbors, Sonja and JW. We are so excited to see them and show off our little darlin, Kasey! I am hoping the 12 hour trip won't be too bad with him, we'll just stop every couple hours. Will probably have to stop at some quilt shops.. HAA!!! Mark doesn't know what he's in for.

We are going to spend 3 days at their house and leave Sunday morning, heading to South Padre Island, Texas. We have a hotel by the ocean.



Doesn't that look nice? It will be fun to walk out on the beach and hang out!

I am trying out a new thing on blogger.com, I am sending this from my email account. I am hoping it works well. (not sure but the email thing didn't work, maybe it will show up later, then there will be a duplicate - oh well!)

I hope to post what's going on each day if I can...

Kelly

Mark Got a New Job!

Mark and I have been married for 6 years in September. I started working at the company I work at now in 2002. Mark and I met there and got married 11 weeks after we met! I know that's crazy, but it's worked out great for both of us. 2 years after we were married, our company went through a bankruptcy and Mark lost his job as there, he was the engineering manager. He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. He spent 20 years there and had a very stressful job. So actually, this was a blessing for him and gave him some time to think about what he wanted to do. We then had Kasey in 2006 and we decided it would be best to him to stay home with Kasey.

This month a job opportunity came up for Mark to teach a Pre-Engineering class, a Robotics Class and a CAD class at our local vo-tech school. He went for an interview Friday and he got the job (but it does have to be approved by the school board).

A Wyland Wall on a Truck!

So, I have this fascination with Wyland Walls. They are walls painted by Wyland all over the United States and other countries. He has a goal of painting 100 walls, I think he just painted his 99th in June, but I can't remember where. I guess I could look it up but I am too lazy.... (imagine that?) The first wall I saw was when my mom and I went to Hawaii, there was one on a building in Honololu. At the time I thought it was neat, but didn't take a picture of it because I was driving. So when we got ready to leave, we got our pictures developed at Sam's so we could put them in the album on the long trip home. There was a Wyland book will his walls in it and I bought it. It was crazy expensive (or so I thought at the time), I think it was $26.00.

The second wall I saw was downtown Chicago, I just happened to be walking down a street and looked up in the sky and there was one on the side of the building. After that, I have started looking them up before I go to a new City. I actually started a scrapbook of all of them I have seen. I bet I have pictures of at least 30 of them.

Last week, I rode my scooter to work all week on a 1/2 tank of gas, which cost $2.00! I just love riding it, but this week, I had some things to do that I needed my car for and then it rained Monday and Tuesday. So I rode Wednesday and Thursday. Well, tonight on my way home, a truck was in front of me crossing the Interstate. It was a Wyland Wall truck. I could hardly believe it. He didn't want to turn on the Interstate, guess he had made a wrong turn, so he went straight and turned around in the new round-about we have and went back the other way on the Interstate.

I pulled off the side of the road, got off the scooter, pulled out my handy dandy Casio Exilim Camera that's credit card size so I can carry it with me all the time and took a picture of the truck going around the round-about.


This is a good close up I got as he drove passed me. I am sure he thought I was crazy because I was standing on the side the of the road taking his picture. He might be used to it, because he hooked at me and smiled and I just waved at him.



Here is a picture of me and Wyland. I have seen him twice now, once in Florida and once in Springfield, MO at the Bass Pro Shop Museum. He is such a nice guy and really believes in protecting the environment and the water resources we have. When I was in Florida, he painted a picture, in a matter of minutes. They auctioned it of and sold it for $10,000. Can you believe? Most of his paintings go for $1800 and up, but they are just copies that he signs. This one was an original.

Anyway, I thought it was a great day, that I got to see a Wyland Wall in my town.


Nicky made it home tonight. I will post some of the pictures of her coming home this weekend.

Plus we are having a garage sale Saturday so have to get all of my junk ready for that. Ah....

Kelly

Nicky's Washington DC trip

Nicky's leaving for Washington DC today and they have setup a blog so we can see what she's doing.

http://moyouthtour.blogspot.com/

I Won! I Won! I Won!!!

I am so excited. I actually won something off a blog posting. Kristie drew my name from 58 people who posted on her site! You can click on the link and see the stuff she is going to send me. All quilting goodies!!! I can't wait to get it. Kristie lives in Kentucky and I just love reading her blog. She is such a great quilter and is always busy with her family, I don't know how she quilts as much as she does.

Still haven't heard anything about my laptop yet. I hope it can be saved.

Thank you, Kristie!!!!