busy day

We sure worked out in the yard a lot this morning.  Too bad it's not our yard, but at least for while we're living in it, we'll try to make it look as nice as it can be.  The weather was quite hot, but staying in the shade it felt ok.  We have many more plants in pots now and placed underneath trees around here.

In the afternoon, we copied all the NEW necessary forms for the Spanish consulate, then went to the Credit Union for a Teller's Check to send to the consulate to pay the taxes that Spain requires.  Then we took all of it to the post office and mailed it off to Houston.

In the evening, we had a very nice dinner with our good friends George and Sandra at Red Lobster.

I'm posting this on Wednesday.  Last Sunday, we had our neighbors over - Mary, Matt and Evan - for some Sangria (Evan - water) and we sat on our back deck and enjoyed the evening.

So, this is the view from our back deck.  Looks really nice after the mowing that Guillermo did.

 Last night, Tuesday night, Guillermo and I sat out there again and watched the Titmice feeding at the bird feeder.  This was the best picture I could get.....

And here's Guillermo's garden.  Nowhere NEAR as big as it was at our own house, but at least he has a garden.  It's kind of in the background by that white shed.  I need to get a closer picture......

Guillermo's gardening again

Yesterday Guillermo spent practically all day digging up a little plot in the backyard here to plant a few things.  It was rough because the ground had never been dug and he didn't have his favorite tool with which to dig it up.  But working from morning until late afternoon he got the area dug up.  He even was able to plant a few seeds!  After he took care of setting up his garden, he got the mower out and we both mowed the front and the back a little bit.  Looks nicer around here now.

So, this is the house we're living in for the summer

Fernando, this is where your car is temporarily.  It will be moved this week sometime, switched with the car that is next to it.

Today, Guillermo is suffering from all the digging he did yesterday - not bad, but he IS feeling all that work he did yesterday.  Pictures of his garden coming soon.....

Picking up Fernando's car

Saturday morning, Linda and Jacob came over to our house to join us on our drive up to Greenville to pick up Fernando's car, which has been stored at John and Elaine's house.

We left around 9am, stopped for lunch at Chick Fil A in Temple, then when we got close to Dallas, found that the highway was jammed up with cars.  So, we quickly looked over the maps since we were fairly close to Greenville by then hoping to find an alternate route.  We found one that took us through Terrell, where we stopped for snacks and then took the little country road up to Greenville.  Actually, the road we took up to Greenville is the very road that John lives off of but we drove past where we'd turn off to get to his house and instead drove on to get our hotel.

After looking at the hotel we thought we'd stay at - and deciding against it - we drove around a little more and settled on the Hampton Inn, which turned out to be a GREAT choice.  We called John after we had settled in and made plans to meet them at their house.

We sat around with them for a little while at their house talking with John and Elaine, and sometimes James and Amy.  We had a nice time talking with them and then we went outside and took a few pictures.  The weather was colder than we thought it was going to be!  John and Elaine lent us jackets!!

With this picture I'm taking the picture and trying to figure out the timer on the camera.

This test of the timer worked, but some people were caught with their eyes closed.

Everyone's eyes are open this time, but John's head got cut off a little.

Then we went out to eat at a place in downtown Greenville called the Landon Winery - the food was delicious!  Very enjoyable meal we had there.  Then we took these pictures outside the restaurant.

This one without flash...

This one with flash.

Then we drove to a park close to their house - a very nice park with a playground that is every kid's dream.  It had absolutely anything a kid could want to play on.  Jacob had a blast there.  James wanted to show me the pond at the park, so we both walked over there.  Very nice.  We stood on the little pier for a while listening to the sounds of the pond and watching a few birds.  We all had a very nice evening.

Gypsy episode number 8

So, we are now in another new place to live for a while.  We figure this is the 8th different place we've lived in since we had to move out of our house last August.

It's a little house, just a few houses down from where our old house used to be, except this house is across the street.  There've been a few kinks that needed to be worked out here, and some are still being worked on.  We have internet and TV now, which is good.  The washer still needs to be looked at and also the stove, but other than that, we have all we need here.  It's kind of weird being on the street again, but it's SO convenient to everything.  We worked a little bit this morning out in the backyard of this house, trimming some potted roses and branches from trees and stuff.  It started thundering while we were out there and the sky got dark, but the rain never did materialize.  That's too bad, it is incredibly dry here in San Antonio.

Before we we left my mom's house, she picked some daisies and ferns so that we could have some flowers in our new place.  They look really nice on the table in our kitchen and sure do brighten up the room!

Daisies are one of my favorite flowers!!  They look so pretty!

This is my Mother's Day rose - finally starting to open up.  This color rose is my favorite!

Mother's Day

I had a nice day today.
Went to an early morning mass with my mother and nephew Chris and afterwards we all went to IHop to have breakfast, which was very good!

Then in the afternoon we went to Kathy's house.  Carlos grilled some meat, we had salad and avocado with it and then we had some good desserts.  A nice suprise was that George and Ryan showed up at Kathy's for a little while.

Mom getting out the fruit salad she made

Later,  Guillermo and I went to Starbucks, where we used the internet and had an iced white chocolate mocha - something we've been doing for the last 3 evenings, and finding we enjoy doing that.

Tomorrow evening, we move into the little rental on El Verde Rd..........

Been back 3 days now

Well, it's Thursday now and we've been back in town for 3 days.  Not much has been going on except for running errands and trying to get some things accomplished.  Fortunately for us, the weather was cool when we got back so that was very nice.  Unfortunately, it is extremely dry here and most everything looks brown and like it's suffering.

We drove by our old neighborhood yesterday and while the whole are looks interesting with all the houses gone, it is very messy with debris all over the place and concrete slabs still in place.  Then, with everything looking so brown and dry, that didn't help either with the way things looked.

Our last full day in Central America

It was up BEFORE the crack of dawn today for us.  We got up at 4:20am and were packed pretty quickly.  We had asked the guy who works the desk during the night to knock on our door at 4:45 if he didn't see us by then.  Well, around 4:48 we walked out to the lobby, and the guy was there, asleep on the sofa!  He was startled when he woke up!  He unlocked the front doors and waited with us until we got a taxi.

The taxi drove us across town to where we would catch our bus back to Costa Rica - and where we waited was actually just on the sidewalk along the street.  We waited there as the day was starting to light up along with another family.  We waited for about 30 minutes or so for the bus.  Once on the bus, we noticed that Marta (who we met on the bus coming in) was on this same bus!!!  The bus trip went much faster (it seemed to us) from Granada to the Nicaraguan border than it seemed to take on the way in.  At the Nicaraguan border, we all had to exit the bus again and we stood around with Marta as we waited for our passports to be taken care of.  I bought a pair of sandals and it was tempting to buy food from the vendors (like Marta did) but we thought better of that.

Then it was back on the bus to go the few feet across the border to then get off again on the Costa Rican side.  That side took a little longer, as we had to handle everything ourselves.  We waited in line to get our passports stamped and then everyone waited outside for someone to come inspect luggage.  We must have waited 30 or more minutes before a guy finally arrived and started going through the suitcases.  Since all Guillermo and I had were the backpacks on our backs (and one other small bag), we just walked away from the inspection area and waited at the door of the bus with some other people.  When we were all on the bus, they let a few vendors on who had been hawking sodas and other things, and then we were on our way.

It had looked like it was going to rain when we were at the border and as we drove along, the ground along the side of the road looked very wet.  There was another long line of trucks but this time in the left-hand lane  and now we were on the right side of the road, but had to be careful for other cars and buses that were going the wrong way in our lane to get around the long long line of trucks.  Just as our bus had done when we were coming to Costa Rica.  There were tight moments.  Moments when a bus as big as ours was headed in our direction in our lane.  There wasn't much room to pull over on the shoulder (and of course the left hand lane was filled with trucks) so all the buses could do was get as far apart from each other as possible and then drive by each other very slowly - almost touching.

When we got past all of that, we went along fine for a little while and then all of a sudden everything stopped. We could see a long line of trucks ahead of us and nothing coming from the opposite direction.  So, all we could do was wait.  And it started raining while we sat there.  After a while, we got word that there was a trailer sideways on the road up ahead.  We probably sat there for about 45 minutes before we finally started moving again.  There was one other delay along the road of about 15 minutes and then a slow section where there were some cyclists and then finally we were approaching Liberia.

The bus dropped us off right exactly where we were planning to have lunch (although they had no idea how convenient it was for us - it was actually convenient for the bus, too)  We had a quick lunch and then walked over to our hotel, got our room, took a shower and then just relaxed.

In the evening, we walked over to TCBY to check it out, and ended up staying there for dinner.  It was nice and the food was decent.  Guillermo had spaghetti pesto and I had a turkey panini, along with smoothies.  It was quite tasty!!