Christmas Day

Christmas Day we woke up early and headed to Porter, TX to Wayne’s brother, Kim’s, house.   As usual Irma had the house decorated beautifully. 

 

Wayne’s brother, Leslie, was able to fly in to join us this year.

Irma’s Christmas village scenes take up all of the display space plus the pool table upstairs.

I was able to get a picture of the four remaining Stamper boys together.  From left to right they are Kim, Darrell, Leslie, and Wayne.

 

I even had Kim take a picture of Wayne and I in front of the fireplace.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and will have a Happy and Healthy New Year.

Christmas Eve

Christmas eve we drove to Spring Branch, TX to Bob and Doris’ house.  Nola, Matt, and Todd were already there when we arrived.  Here are Bob and Doris.
 
And here is their Christmas Tree.

In lieu of a fireplace, the stockings were hung on the couch.

Before dinner we Skyped with Michelle who was in Pittsburg.  Here are Doris, Nola, Matt, and Todd talking to her.

Matt even made a face at her.

After a while she woke Michael up so that we could wish him a Merry Christmas too.

After a wonderful dinner of turkey and all the fixings we opened our stockings.  Here is Trouble trying to get his rawhide stick out of his stocking.

Wayne always puts lotto tickets in the stockings and everyone is trying to find out what they got.

Here is Matt on his computer as Doris is in the kitchen.
  
Later on that evening we got a call from Lois in Australia.  With some technical help from Matt we finally got hooked up to Skype on Doris’ computer and called her back.  Here are Nola and I talking to her.

And here  Matt and Doris joined in on the conversation.

Nola, Matt, and Todd went back to Austin and Wayne, Trouble and I spent the night.

Ladies Day Out

Wednesday twelve ladies from The Palms RV Park took a small bus into Corpus Christ for lunch and shopping.  We had lunch at Senor Jaime’s Mexican Food Restaurant.  Since we were riding in a bus we were able to have drinks with our meals.

 

After lunch we went to Susann’s Jewelers to see if they had anything we needed in their “Going Out of Business” salel.  We all left empty handed.

From there we went to La Palmira Mall and walked from one end to the other.  Most of us bought a little something there and we all got out exercise in.

Our last stop was Spec’s and Jo-Ann's where we all bought something.  Then it was back home to the park in time for dinner.  What a fun day.

Stamper Family Dinner

  Last Thursday night we had dinner with Wayne’s son Greg and his wife, Teresa, at Fogo de Chao in Austin.

All of the cook/waiters wanted in on the pictures.

Here are a couple of pictures of the meats cooking.

 

The

food and the company were great.

UT vs. Kansas Halloween Tailgate

Our daughter, Nola, wanted to go to a football game with Wayne so he took her to the Kansas game last weekend.  As usual they went to the Alumni Center Officer’s room prior to the game.  Here they are in their Orange and White.

It happened to be the Saturday before Halloweens so they were taking pictures of people in costume.  Here is Wayne with Laura who is the Assistant Director of Chapters.

And here he is with Lynn, Courtney, and Laura.  The black wig was his choice but the crown was their idea.

As you can tell he was having fun.  UT won the game and a good time was had by all.

More Pictures from Mike and Patty’s Visit

I had forgotten that Wayne had taken some pictures when Mike and Patty were here.  I just edited them so here they are.

Here is our motorhome at our spot in Oak Forest RV Park.  Note that it is long enough to park one car in front and the other one in back.

 

Mike and Patty were parked to his left as he took this picture and here is their coach and car.

He got a better picture as we were waiting for the bats.  That is Mike, Patty and I on the left hand side of the picture.

And here we are closer up.  Note that we all had on long sleeves.  It was a beautiful Fall night.

 

Again, it was great to spend time with them.

Harvest Moon and Visit from Mike and Patty

I thought it was about time I posted again.  On the Wednesday before we left Aransas Pass we went to Captain Hook’s at Port Aransas with Edie and George our across the street neighbors from The Palms.  Naturally I didn’t take my camera but Edie took a picture of the harvest moon with her cell phone while we were on the ferry.

The next day we drove to Austin and we are staying at the Oak Forest RV Park.  It is aptly named as there are lots of oak trees on the property.  We  chose a spot without trees so that we can get Direct TV. 

Last Tuesday Mike and Patty who traveled with us to Alaska and the Canadian Maritimes came to see us.

On Wednesday they went to the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum and enjoyed it.  Then we went to County Line for Bar-B-Que.  Patty had a whole rack of beef ribs but the picture is on her camera.  We all had leftovers to take home.

On Thursday we did a tour of Austin.  Austin has painted cows on street corners.

This one was in front of the restaurant where we ate lunch.

Patty took a picture of me with the cow.  The pictures of both of us are on her camera.

Lunch was at Threadgill’s which is a fixture in Austin.  The original Threadgill's is in an old filling station and is where Janis Joplin got her start.  This one is at the site of the old Armadillo World Headquarters.

Kenneth Threadgill was a musician and lots of musicians still play there.

These concrete armadillos are above all of the windows on the outside of the building.

 

We had the waitress take a picture of the four of us.

 

The pictures on the wall behind us are all musicians who have played there.  There was one of a really young Willie Nelson.

We drove around some of the older parts of Austin and came across this pumpkin patch with another painted cow.

Patty decided that she wanted ice cream so we went to Amy’s.  Amy’s has homemade ice cream.  Here is Mike feeding Patty ice cream.

That evening we went under the Congress Street Bridge.  Austin has the largest urban bat colony around and they come out at dusk.  There were people lining the bridge and on both sides of the lake.

As it got dark the bats came out between the middle building and the building to the right.  I took lots of pictures but the didn’t show up.  At times the sky was almost black with bats.

Friday morning Mike and Patty left and headed to San Antonio.  Wayne and I headed to Magnolia to meet his nephew, Billie, and a friend on Saturday to move our storage room to Austin.

I have been going over to the storage room organizing things this week.  Not a fun job but a necessary one.

Lamar HS Class of ‘56 – 55th Reunion

Wayne and I left Trouble at the daughter’s and drove into Houston for my high school’s 55th reunion.  We had so much fun at the 50th that we decided not to wait until the 60th.

I worked at the registration table from 3:00 to 6:00.  The people with the blue ribbons are from our class and the ones with the red ribbons are spouses and guests.

We had the Rose Garden Room for our Hospitality Room and it worked out well for visiting.

The dress for dinner was western.  Myrna Lois and I were in Girl Scouts together and her mother was our leader.

The ball room was full.  Unfortunately I don’t remember everyone’s name.  Our class had 650 people in it.

As you can see we had a good time.

Saturday there was more visiting and then another dinner.  This picture was taken of us by a friend, Nancy Hunt Hudgins.

Sunday morning we wished everyone farewell until 2016.