Cool and rainy here in Palacios.  And a cool rainy Saturday means no excuses for getting caught up over here at RV There Yet! So – let’s get started!
First of all – Gary.
He doing pretty darn good. He’s still stiff (and achy) when he goes from sitting to standing, and he can’t actually sit for too long (but that’s not really new, is it?), but he’s been back to work all week, and is well on the way to full back health. (Whatever that looks like for old folks like us!). Thank you all for your continued prayers for this guy!

And just what has he (and the rest of the team) been working on? Well, there has been a fair share of electrical fixes and other odds and ends, but the biggest project they’ve been working on is that Ga-Ga Court. You know, the one he fell from. (For those who are still wondering just what is this Ga-Ga thing, here is a little better description.)  Yes, this was a classic “get yourself back in the saddle after you fall” kind of project.

So here is the stage of construction the court was in when we got here -

And as it progressed through the project -

Yes, that is Gary up on the scaffolding. Remember that saddle thing…..

It still needs a little trim work, but it’s almost done!

Since I was working in the yellow building closest to the Ga-Ga court, I didn’t get any shots of the what the other guys were doing. But I did manage to snag a couple of pictures from one of the other fellows -
A little tractor play goes a long way….

And I’m REALLY glad I wasn’t around to watch what was going on here (and neither was Gary, thankfully!)

So the guys were quite busy, and so were we ladies!
It was an interesting and fun month for us that involved lots of paint and many brushes, but it was quite different than any other painting assignment I’ve had!

For you see, most of us ladies spent the entire three weeks painting surfboards!
Ok. So we weren’t painting actual surfboards, but we were helping to paint the 86 decorative surfboards that are lining the walls of the main meeting room.
Here are a couple of shots of when we first got here -



At first we were just giving some of the boards a coat of “color”, since not all of the designs had been determined

but eventually we were given a bit of the detail painting.

Talk about using a lot of different paint brushes!
Here’s the one I did – with a little help from the overhead!

(the one with the turtle, not the Endless Summer one!)
Along with the surf boards there was also lots of staining and varnishing and even some furniture refinishing.



And at the very end of the project, when everything had to be cleaned up and out of the room, we managed to find one last thing to paint – the “sandwich” sign of a local thrift shop!

Nothing like 4 SOWER ladies crowded around a 3′x4′ sign!
So, here are the surfboards after the room had been set up for this weekend’s guests, all ready to be worked on by next month’s group!





Lots more to paint, but I think we made a pretty good dent in the job at hand!

Enough for today.  Rainy Saturdays are also good for catching up on the laundry, working on some sewing, and even a marathon day of Downton Abbey watching (thanks to a SOWER friend who owns the DVDs!).  But now it seems that it might just be time to think about what’s for supper!

More to come, I promise!

Pssst – if the sun comes out tomorrow, we might even get to the beach after church.  :)

It was evening. The sky had cleared in the afternoon after clouds and rain for several days. As I was working on dinner Gary pointed out the full moon. And then I noticed how the sky had that beautiful early evening pink hue.

Since I was waiting on the brown rice (why CAN’T I remember how long that takes to cook!), I set out in search of the sunset.




I think I’m getting close -

Oh yeah…..



It was a great little walk – and I was back in plenty of time for that brown rice!

It’s pretty sweet that we can enjoy the sunrise in the morning, and just walk through campus to enjoy the sunset in the evening! And just so you know that not all of my sunrise/sunset shots are successful, here is my attempt to capture the early morning “pink” on one too-cold-to-get-out-of-the-house morning….

This time the drive between projects was only about 160 miles.  Easily done in a day. But why take a day, we say, when you can just as easily take two – and see some fun stuff along the way.

We pulled out of Camp Tejas on Thursday morning – a very misty Thursday morning at that!


Hey, wait for me!!!!
He did.
By the time we reached our first stop, the mist was beginning to clear.

Nothing like a brewery tour to start your day! Wink.
We actually had to wait until 11AM for the tour of the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, TX – home to one of Texas’s favorite beers – Shinerbock.

No cameras allowed on the tour (free and very interesting), but here’s a shot of just some of the copper involved in brewing this beer .
Oh, the shine of it all!
After our tour, and a bit of lunch, it was back on the road.


(Take note of the hills – they will soon be gone!)
We spent a quiet night at the Walmart in Port Lavaca

and come morning, we were back on the road for the final leg of the trip.
Here’s the Lavaca Bay in the early morning light -



Hello Boat!

And as the road stretched out in long strips of ribbon

(Good-bye, hills)
We were delighted to spot these big guys mingling with the cattle -


Love those Sandhill Cranes!
We made it without incident to our project – Texas Baptist Encampment, aka Palacios by the Sea. Here is our new view -

Pretty sweet, eh? That’s the Palacios Bay out there, which empties into the Matagorda Bay which empties into the Gulf of Mexico. (Check it out on a map HERE!)
Each project has its own “flavor” and since we’ve just been here a little more than a day, I’m not sure just what that flavor will be. But I know it will be different from our last couple of projects – beginning with our neighbors. November and December our neighbors looked like this -


As in, we had none.
January they looked like this -

As in, fair size group – a nice mix of SOWERs and other volunteers.
And this month, they look like this -

As in – Baby, we got us some Community going on!
All in all, a great start to what I’m sure will be a great month!

Later ‘Gator!

We’re starting to wrap up our time at Camp Tejas, and I thought I’d “flesh out” our time here. First of all, we’ve met and worked with some great people. Not only were there three SOWER couples here -

But there were six couples from the MMAPs Ministry -

We didn’t necessarily work together, but we shared devotions and breaks and a couple of meals and general good times. It’s always good to meet folks who share our hearts even if we don’t share the SOWER Logo (though we did make them sing the SOWER song most mornings! )
And speaking of work – I know I shared a little bit of what we ladies did all month –



but I haven’t really covered all that the guys did. And believe me, they were plenty busy. They started off with painting (and in fact went back to that during any lulls between jobs)

but probably their biggest project was a covered walkway off of the dining hall.






Came out great, didn’t it? All they had to go on was – Make it look like the other one!
Gary also got to work on another “out of the ordinary” project – making an indoor shuffleboard game. Apparently they had a base and they had the board itself, but they needed the frame to hold the game board.
Here it is getting close to completion -

and here it is just waiting for the board to be installed.

I think it looks great – and I’m really happy that we aren’t in charge of moving it to its final destination!
Today, even though the project is officially over, Gary and Jay built a railing on the golf cart pathway -

We’ll be here until Thursday AM, so who knows what projects he’ll dig up tomorrow and Wednesday!

I think this is enough chatter for tonight! I’ll get to the Places and Things in my next post!

Texas weather is….well, crazy! After a record hot summer (Waco, where daughter Lara lives, had 90 days over 100 – and that wasn’t even the record for the state!), you’d think maybe winter would calm down a bit. Well, this past month as we’ve been at Camp Tejas in Giddings, TX (about 60 miles east of Austin) we’ve had days in the 40′s, nights in the 20′s and then days in the 80′s. It’s been a total roller coaster of a month. Sunshine and Rain. Layers of coats and shorts. Heavy frost and balmy mornings. Crazy really.
But early this morning wins the award for the craziest (and maybe the scariest of them all). After a night of heavy rain, the howling wind woke us up around 5AM. And when you live in a tin can on wheels you REALLY REALLY REALLY feel the wind. And then there was the rain that felt like it was coming in diagonal sheets, battering against the sides of our tin can. We held on tight, and kept listening for the camp to sound any tornado warnings. We lost power around 6AM as the weather continued to rage around us. Finally, around 9 the rain stopped and folks began venturing out of their rigs to assess any damage. Fortunately, all the trees around us held their ground, and all their branches. And while the rest of the camp had many limbs and at least one big tree (falling on the wires – hence the no power)on the ground


I do not believe that any of the buildings were damaged or any of the folks at camp injured. After watching the news at noon (power was back on by 11AM), we learned that we had been the fortunate ones indeed. We got about 3 inches of rain overnight. Fifty miles to the SW – almost 9 inches! Tornadoes were reported thirty miles south of us. When we saw the flooding and damage that had happened so close, we knew that a little rockin’ and rollin in the house (ok, and some wet carpet by the slide) was NOTHING.  Thank-you, Lord, for sparing us (and our RV neighbors and camp hosts) any significant damage – and be with those families who’s homes and livelihoods have been dramatically altered due to last nights storms.

Phew.