Sunday, Chris Tenney and I drove to Resaca de la Palma State Park to capture photos of some unique butterflies.  Chris is on a quest for a “Big Butterfly Year” in 2015—to identify and photograph as many species of butterflies in the US in 365 days; you may read his on-going efforts in this regard in his blog, http://www.butterflybigyear.net/  His wife passed away 2 years ago in January, and last year he was still in deep mourning.  His specific target on this Sunday was the Gemmed Satyr, and he was able to identify and photograph it before noon.  Additionally, he identified and photographed a White-scrubbed Hairstreak, a life butterfly for him, i.e. the first time he has ever observed one, and allowing him to add two to his “big year”.

As for me, I have been chasing the elusive Mexican Bluewing Butterfly for three seasons, a species I have seen twice, but never photographed.  I was able to see several of these butterflies on Sunday, and capture a decent photograph.  I also saw many Blue Metalmarks, a species I had never seen, and was able to get several photographs of the butterfly, a lifer for me.  We saw over 25 species on an overcast windy day—not too bad!

Coincident with Kay returning from 10 days in Arkansas, this week has been a “coming out” week for me, as the funk I’ve been in since last March 2014 seems to finally be dissipating.  With the new house progressing, and no commitments for the future, it seems like we’ve finally retired, though neither has worked full time for over 10 years.  It seems as if I’ve been going ninety to nothing the entire 10 years, and speeding up even more when Ronnie died, I was diagnosed with cancer, and had the mild heart attack this past summer.  It feels good, actually great, to be cool, calm, and collected again, finally!  I resumed fly tying, the first time tying in the RV since 2009, and the first time tying for fun in several years, I have really enjoyed it.  It sure seems like the older one gets, the more one returns to the things truly enjoyed and loved.  So, I returned to my first love in fly tying—popping bugs and bream flies—readying for a great spring and early summer of fly fishing for bream and bass, a first love in fly fishing.

Overall, the week was quiet, with cold, wet weather predominating—no golf, no dancin’, and bridge only once—resulting in a quiet, indoor week.

A constant topic in the blog this winter has been the cool, wet weather here in the Rio Grande Valley.  And this onerous weather pattern continues, with only a few days of normal 70s and sunshine among the many days of windy, overcast, cool days, with occasional rain—this tropical desert area of south Texas is supposed to be dry, sunny, and warm!  Consequently, we have altered our normal winter activities, having to forego many of the things we enjoy doing outdoors.  While golf has been my main entertainment, we have had few warm sunny days on which to play.  Cycling has been almost non-existent, though we do find a day here and there where the weather is conducive, i.e. not too much wind (less than 15 mph), and not too cold (above 60°).  There have been few birds and almost no butterflies since early November.

Early November provided consistently great winter Texan weather, but the end of the month, December, and January were largely cold, wet, and overcast, at least by Rio Grande Valley standards.  However, this week saw weather in the mid-60s to low 80s with lots of sun.  With encouragement from neighbor Chuck, we did 3 bike rides this week, increasing the distance on each successive ride so that our latest ride on Thursday was 13.0 miles with a slow average speed of 8.8 miles per hour.  And, on the last ride we saw 3 Roadrunners, and the last two posed for photographs on the trail.

Al, Sharon, Kay, and I attended a mariachi concert at Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle – National Shrine where the Rio Grande City middle and high school mariachi bands, the La Joya high school mariachi band, and the Basilica’s mariachi band all performed.  The level of talent, even for the middle school, is amazing—some of the best male and female vocalists and trumpet players we’ve heard.

On Sunday, February 15, Kay returned to Arkansas to assist with childcare for Ridge and Acker, and to see progress on the new house.  She made it safely, despite a plane problem in Houston.  Unfortunately, freezing rain, possible snow, and cold temperatures are arriving there tonight.

Early Sunday morning, about 4 AM, we left the relatively warm RGV driving north to central Arkansas, arriving at Hot Springs Village at 4:30 PM where it was windy and cold.  The real purpose of our trip was to witness the birth of a granddaughter and take care of newly dubbed little brother, Ridge, for a few days.  At the Village, we quickly “inspected” both the inside and outside of the new house where we were met by Pam Williams, and Martha and Bobby Altom.

During the course of the next 8 days we viewed the house 3 times (see separate Our HSV House blog), and it would be an understatement to say that we are excited.  We spent Sunday and Monday nights with Ron, and enjoyed our visit immensely. Tuesday evening, we celebrated Ron’s birthday, and stayed at Karyn’s until our departure back to the Valley; I played planes, trains, and hero action figures with Ridge for 5 days and nights, and saw more Dusty and Thomas the Train videos than imaginable!  Regrettably, Jenny, Brian, and Harper were sick, suffering a stomach virus, and our scheduled visit with them on Wednesday and Wednesday evening had to be cancelled.  Friday, just after 12 noon, Acker Elizabeth Adams entered this world at 8 pounds 14.6 ounces, and 19 inches;  mother, father, and baby did great, and were released from the hospital late Sunday afternoon (this photo was from Thursday, February 5).  Kay and I were up real early Monday morning, February 2, and left for the RGV at about 3 AM, arriving at 4 PM, just in time for happy hour!

Former next door neighbors, Wayne and Loretta, arrived in the Valley a week ago, and are living just up the road.  It was nice reconnecting with them, and we plan to spend some time touring the Valley while they are here.

Otherwise, life goes on.  Most of the  season, we play bridge at least a couple times a week.  And, when the weather is conducive for outdoor play, I stay quite busy with golf, with a few other things filling the blank spaces.  Here are a couple of photos flying an RC helicopter, a gift from next door neighbor Jim Miles.  It is an absolute hoot, but lasts only 6 minutes before the battery runs down.

Kay, on the other hand, is always doing something, be it shopping, turning bowls on a lathe at the woodworking shop, or doing Swedish weaving. Here are a series of photographs of her newest bowl creation, turned from a piece of solid red oak, followed by a photo of the just completed 72 X 72-inch Swedish woven blanket.  Isn’t she a talented artist!   And Sunday evening, she was in a variety show here at BPVRV Resort.

The photo is from Tierra Santa, a golf course Al and I played last Tuesday, our only “good” weather day last week.

This winter season has been full of distractions for us, what with building, furnishing, and decorating a house from near 800 miles away; unseasonably cool and wet weather that has limited all outdoor activities, including birding, butterflying, bicycle riding, and golf; family obligations; RV resort quality and amenity issues (60 counted vacancies on Friday, January 9, compared to a significant waiting list a few years ago); and health issues.  These have significantly lowered the fun meter for us. So, here we are on Tuesday, January 13, another cold and damp day, washing clothes, cleaning house, and waiting for sunshine, and the water lines to be repaired, again (maybe the internet is working today, too).

We were up early Saturday morning, departing for central Arkansas by 5:15 AM.  The 13-hour trip was uneventful, and we enjoyed the lowest gasoline prices of our travels since beginning to RV in 2007.

We spent Saturday evening, Sunday, and Sunday evening at Ron’s, and he had baked one of his famous blueberry pies for our enjoyment.   We snuck in a visit to the new house under construction on Sunday morning.  A neighbor stopped by to compliment us on the lot and house plan, and advised that it was a great, sociable neighborhood.  After lunch with Ron, Cheryl, and Kaden, we met with a decorator at Bassett Furniture, and identified “collections” and pieces for use in the great room, dining room, sun room, breakfast room, and master bed room.  The decorator is to develop a design for each of the rooms for our review on Friday.  This story is covered in the new HSV House blog.  We found central Arkansas to be cold, at least by our standards—guess our blood has become thin with the mostly 70s and 80s in the Rio Grande Valley.  

We returned to Hot Springs Village Monday to insure that our storage of household goods was paid up to date; pay for storage for the RV; take care of Property Owners’ Association business, including buying new stickers for the cars, kayaks, and canoe, and paying for tee time registration and the golf handicap system; and pick up some balk mark repair tools at the Coronado Golf Club.  And, of course, we snuck another look at the house construction (info on the house construction can be found in its own blog).  As we arrived another neighbor couple was inside looking at the house.  They asked questions about the floorpan and affirmed that the neighborhood was a good one.  We drove from there to spend the next few evenings at Karyn’s.

Hot Springs Village was our destination again Tuesday morning, as we met with Brandon, Sam, and Cris of Renaissance Homes, Inc. (our builder) to discuss progress, verify electrical, television, and HDMI outlets, and view layouts of the various cabinets with the cabinet maker.  The plumbing subcontractor was there also, working on plumbing installation, but we did not meet with them.  Several changes were made on the advice of the Renaissance Homes, Inc. team, including changing the shower door location and restoring the television connections to the right shelving unit; we had moved it to the left on the advice of our decorator.  We also talked in generalities about the landscape plan and the grade of the driveway.  Regretfully, the motorhome is not going to fit the parking pad as originally conceived, but we’ll make adjustments and alter our plan of attack!  Late afternoon and early evening was spent celebrating the holiday meal and gift-giving with Kay’s side of the family.  Matt and Karyn served a delicious meal of pulled pork, beans, slaw, potato salad, chips, and cookies and pies.  Of course, Ridge was star of the show, opening and playing with his many gifts.

Christmas Eve, Wednesday, was a rest day for me and not necessarily by choice; I spent most of the day in bed, sick with a head cold.  Regular doses of ZyCam and Tylenol were the order of the day.  Kay, on the other hand, was busy all day helping Karyn get ready for the evening’s activities. Matt and his family allowed us to join their family celebration of the holiday as we all ate pizza, salad, and cookies and pies.

We were up early Thursday, Christmas, for a trip to Memphis to celebrate the holiday with Jenny and her family.  Harper was in rare form, and enjoyed opening the many gifts from grandparents and Santa.  She had an assembly line going with DD (that’s me) taking the toys out of the packages—this involves cutting, untying, unscrewing, and sometimes tearing away packaging materials—while her dad put the toys together.  He spent several hours putting her kitchen together because the parts did not fit, and the instructions were pitiful; he did a great job, and she enjoyed it immensely.  Jenny and I prepared portions of the meal—I mainly assisted as she is a great cook.  Kay visited with the Simanks, taking Sandy a few pieces of hammered aluminum Kay picked up from a Canadian collector in the Rio Grande Valley.  After stuffing ourselves and cleaning up the kitchen, we drove back to central Arkansas.

Friday, we met with Kecia, our decorator at Bassett.  She was gracious enough to come in during her day off.  Before her presentation, we advised her of the construction changes we made Tuesday, and furniture preferences for the sunroom.  She quickly added and modified the design as necessary, and made an awesome presentation; we liked everything.  Now, it’s add a lamp here, a pillow there, a additional rug or two, a few televisions, and we should have a furnished house, or at least part of one.  While we were at Bassett, Ridge and his mom were at the zoo; he loves the zoo.  Afterwards, he and I played super heroes and race cars.  Now, his definition of playing is different than our—his definition is for me to sit with him on the floor while he plays!  Friday evening, Kay, Karyn, Ridge and I had dinner at The Pantry, a German restaurant in Little Rock.  The service was poor to fair, and while most of the food was very good, a few items, like onion rings on top of the dish I had, were so over battered and cooked that they were too hard to eat without breaking a tooth, seriously!  And, some of the food prices were quite high.

Ridge joined us in bed Saturday morning for an hour or so, before we all got us for playtime and breakfast.  We reluctantly said our goodbyes and departed, in the rain, for Corpus Christie, where we met Al and Sharon Crawford after their flight from Toronto, Canada, via Houston.  They arrived about 10 PM, and we drove the two and a half hours to BPVRV resort, arriving at 12:20 AM.  It rained almost the entire 800-mile drive. 

We were sluggish all day, Sunday, having had little sleep after the later/early arrival from central Arkansas yesterday.

A return to our routine Monday was the order of the day with Kay exercising early in the morning and Al and I playing golf, despite the cool, misty day.  Kay began turning a new bowl in the woodworking shop, this time from a solid piece of wood brought to her by Paul Graham, our next door neighbor and her “turning” instructor.  The maintenance folks in the RV resort turned the water off, did some never-ending repair work, and then turned the water back on.  Our potable water tank overflowed, and we think their turning the water back on created a surge that created havoc with the fill tank valve.  A call to Lichtsinn RV got us a new one in the mail; I do dread having to replace the valve again as it’s only been a few weeks since the last one was replaced.  The electrical and water supply infrastructure in this RV resort is unreliable, to say the least, in my opinion, as there are constant problems with blown circuits and leaks, respectively.  We did manage to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks football team demolish the University of Texas Longhorns in the Texas bowl in the evening.  Whoo, Pig, Sooie!  And, cold, wet weather returned to the Rio Grande Valley, not fit for outdoor activities.  And, it’s supposed to hang around for a week or more!  Oh well, beats freezing temperatures and ice!

I woke up with a horrendous back ache in the left shoulder area during the wee morning hours Tuesday.  It was so bad that I spent most of the day in bed, trying to get some comfort with a heating pad and ice rub, but not to much avail.   Kay continued “turning” the new bowl.  Cold and light rain continued.

I was in so much pain Wednesday, that I remained in the motorhome all day and evening; Kay did go to dinner with the Circle 3 group,  We both skipped the New Year’s Eve party, though.  Cold and light rain continued.  Happenings these last few days were a tough way to end a year that saw so much occur in our lives.

We took time out of an otherwise hectic schedule to visit the National Butterfly Center Sunday afternoon.  It was the first time Kay had been there this season, and the first time we had ridden our bikes any distance since arriving a couple of months ago.  Walking the trail to the garden revealed several Orange-crowned Warblers, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Green Jays, Kiskadees, and Altimira Orioles.  While it was windy, we saw a few butterflies, including Zebra Heliconians, Queens, and Monarchs, as well as the usual Skippers.  And, an owl was gawking out of the newly-erected Screech Owl box.

I explored the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands and World Birding Center on Thursday morning with a group of birders from the BPVRV Resort.  There were fewer birds observed than on any previous visit.

Kay has been feverishly shopping for Christmas gifts for family; I feel bad that I haven’t helped, but …  As it’s now Friday, “we’ve” finished almost all preparations; we lack washing clothes and packing the car.  And, we identified a few things we don’t want/need here in the Rio Grande Valley for the rest of the winter, so those things will be making the journey to Arkansas for storage.

The HSV house is progressing nicely.  Updates can be found on the blog we specifically created for that purpose:  Our HSV House

Kay and I wish for each of you a stress-free, blessed Christmas.  Until then…

This was a pretty typical week in the Valley, with too much going on and not enough time to do all we want to do. Exercise and golf, for Kay and me respectively, were significant events of the day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Kay decorated the motorhome for Christmas this week.  We began waxing the motorhome, and made significant progress on the almost too big job.  I have been foregoing happy hour at the palapa and margarita hour, to have some “me” time, and enjoy the peace and quiet in the motorhome.

The week began on Sunday with a TubaChristmas at the University of Texas, Pan America.  TubaChristmas is a music concert held in cities worldwide that celebrates those who play, teach, and compose music for instruments in the tuba family, including the tuba, sousaphone, baritone, and euphonium.  Some 400 musicians played to a standing room only crowd (2,500+ people) in the concert we attended.  The music was great and the event was a hoot!

Kay managed to get a dental appointment Monday to check out the tooth ache, and scheduled a root canal for next week, ugh!  This has becoming an annual event.  She is taking heavy antibiotics in preparation for the oral surgery.

On Tuesday, we did cutouts of furniture for the new house, and placed the pieces on the floor plan in different configurations to see how the furniture would fit.  And then, our attempts to shop for furniture were defeated as none of the stores here in the Valley carry the brands in which we are interested.

On Thursday evening, we attended an outdoors “big band” Christmas concert at Quinta Mazatlan.  The concert was just so so.  (NOTE:  Quinta Mazatlan is an old estate centered around a historic mansion in McAllen.  For much of its existence since construction in 1935, the Spanish Revival Style mansion was a private and rather luxurious residence, complete with a Roman tub. It possessed the distinction then and now of being one of, if not, the largest adobe structures in Texas, about 10,000 square feet.)

Both Friday and Saturday were relatively quiet for us, with no outside activities, except golf at Tierra Santa in Weslaco, though I did finish waxing the motorhome Saturday.

We’ve begun another blog chronicling the move to Hot Springs Village (HSV), Arkansas, and construction of the HSV house.  It can be found at hsvhouse.wordpress.com  Consequently, details and photos for this big activity have been omitted here.  This week did see installation of the floor joists/beams and subfloor, and erection of some of the walls.  And, we approved the first big draw on the construction loan.  Photo below courtesy of Jim Passe.

What can I say—we’ve allowed ourselves to get too busy.  Sunday was church, lunch out, and dancing, not really an anomaly, and then we played bridge in the evening.  Monday was golf, exercise, and Court Whist.  Tuesday was an “off day” so we saw Interstellar, just an okay movie, and we played bridge Tuesday evening.  Golf and exercise were on the schedule again on Wednesday followed by the hot tub and pool.  While we were both away, we had the motorhome washed, and Nick’s did a good job, especially for $60.  With too much going on, I passed on Margarita hour in the evening.  We did dance lessons Thursday, including our first “night club” dancing, followed by pool and spa time, with bridge again in the evening.  Friday was golf and exercise, a 50th anniversary party for next door neighbors Paul and Lorna Graham, dinner at Costa Mesa (our favorite Mexican food restaurant in the RGV) and the “First Friday Art Walk” in downtown McAllen with Al and Sharon Crawford, Dave and Sandy Muscat, and Ernie and Karen Martelle.  We were treated to a performance by the McAllen High School Mariachi Band at one of the venues for the Art Walk, and they were amazing as usual. Finally, Saturday, with Kay suffering from a serious tooth ache, we called a halt to our “goings and comings” though we did show at Costco’s, I waxed part of the motorhome, and Kay did some Christmas shopping for the grands.

Hot Springs Village house construction this week included preparing the garage footprint for placement of the slab, involving leveling the base material and placing a vapor barrier on top of the base, and delivering the “house kit”, i.e. lumber and wood components for framing the house.

Many, many thanks to Jim Passe for keeping us up to date and proving photos for our enjoyment.  In addition, we made a decision on the style of brick for the veneer, Vernon by Claymex; hopefully, it will be within budget.