Settling into living in Retama Village, Nov 25, 2012

We arrived back from our trip to Europe about three weeks ago.  We were met at the airport by our next door neighbors, Roger and Dianne and they even had a great dinner for us to share for our homecoming! 

It took us about a week for us to acclimate to the six hour time change, jet lag sure does do its thing on us. 

Dianne had raised some beautiful tomato plants from seed and had saved two for me.

So we had to go shopping for some potting soil and pots for my new babies.  I also added some water retaining crystals to help maintain the water in the pots. 

Jump ahead two weeks, they are doing wonderful, even have a few tomatoes set.

Bob made a fruit bird feeder out of a 8” 1”x 2” cedar board and some screen for the bottom.

Another jump ahead…see who is eating, do believe it is a Golden Fronted Woodpecker.

Thanksgiving at Retama Village was awesome.  There were ten folks at our table.  All the dishes were delicious.

With Thanksgiving behind us, we decorated the coach for Christmas.

See our new bikes!  They came from Amazon with a few parts to assemble and adjust.  Now we can explore the area and the state park next door.

Meet our new betta named Guy.  He is a beauty.

Leaving on a jet plane…tomorrow, Aug 13, 2012

Follow our European travels on Bob’s blog. Just click on the words Bob’s blog and you will be linked to his blog. Below is the actual link, if you want to use it.

http://because-we-can-bob.blogspot.com/

The excitement builds. My bags are packed and ready to go. Bob has a few more items to pack.

I know I am going to really love the fact our new luggage has wheels. I am now ready for us arriving at the furthest away airport gate and having to walk miles to our next connecting gate.

We fly out of McAllen Airport tomorrow early afternoon for Houston, then around 6:30 leave Houston for a 10 hour flight to Frankfurt Germany. (Germany is 6 hours ahead of Eastern Time, 7 hours ahead of Central Time, and 9 hours ahead of Pacific Time.) After arriving in Frankfurt at 11:30 am on Wednesday, we will travel by train to Wurzburg for our first four day stop on our three month trip.

To read about our trip check out Bob’s blog.

Travel to and arrival at Retama Village, Mission, TX, Aug 1-11, 2012

While staying at the Escapees’ Rainbow’s End RV Park making sure our washer/dryer unit worked and the Norcold refrigerator remained cold, Bob tacked another much appreciated, by me, job.  He recharged the A/C Unit in the Explorer.  After adding two cans of R34a we both were happy and cool.

On our way down to the RGV (Rio Grande Valley), we made two stops.  The first was in at the Dixieland RV Park in Carmine, TX, the next two night stop was at Goliad State Park in Goliad. 

Then on Wednesday the 8th we drove the last 230 miles to our RV lot at Retama Village.

Today, (Sat) we were doing a little gardening and trimming  when some new to us neighbors stopped by, Bob and Kathleen (plus their dog named Cookie.)  They spend their summers here and when they heard we were flying out on Tuesday, they offered to take us to the McAllen airport which is about 15 minutes away.  Thanks Bob and Kathleen for the gracious offer.

“Our bags are packed”, or mostly packed for a couple of days now.  Every day I keep adding a few items, so far so good, the zipper still zips. 

I have a list of tasks yet to do:  1) Suspend our Verizon phone service,  2) Suspend our Directv service,  3) Call the bank to increase the withdrawal limit on one remaining ATM card (the others have already been increased), 4) Backup the Quicken program on my computer. 

I have already taken care of our insurance renewals for the coach and car which come due during the time we are gone.   Have also suspended our internet satellite service, formerly Motosat, now through Real Time.  We have also called and notified the bank and our credit card company of our upcoming European travel so they don’t shut the card down for unusual usage outside the country.

I will not be updating this blog during our European trip, leaving out of here on Aug 14th and returning Nov 6th.  But we will be updating our travels on Bob’s Blog,  and will also be posting brief updates on Facebook.