Fun at the Zoo

Our walk this morning took us over to the Glendale Cemetery. We didn't have much time to explore it, so we'll go back the next time we're in Lufkin. After our walk we went over to the house where Ed was cooking a delicious big brunch for us. We took the laundry along and got a load started before the meal.

Glendale Cemetery

We had the grandkids for the day while Ed and Julie had some time together. They went to Nacogdoches and walked along the Lanana Creek Trail. Later they went to a movie.

We took the kids to the Ellen Trout Zoo. I had been there before, but it was many years ago. The kids had been to the zoo before, when they were at "Nana Camp." We all enjoyed getting to see lots of animals actually awake and active, including the African Lion and the Jaguar.

Majestic male African Lion

Kids on a lion!

Daring kids put their heads in another lion's mouth!

One of the most entertaining exhibits today was the hippopotamus underwater viewing. I had no idea that hippos actually play with each other. These two were opening their mouths wide and putting them together playfully. One was swimming around the pool quite a bit, and the other was on the bottom directly in front of the glass. The swimmer came back around several times to interact with the other one. It was only inches from Sam, who stood fascinated.

We walked around the exhibits. Most of them have informational signs, which Cate read aloud. Several species are part of an SSP, or species survival plan, set up by a network of zoos to breed the endangered animals in captivity. They move animals around to provide genetic diversity.

Flamingo

Tortoise

Chinese Alligator!

Kids on an alligator!

Giraffe

After seeing all the animals, we took a ride on the Z&OO Railroad. We expected it to go around the zoo and across the lake, but it made two circuits of the zoo and never went across the lake. The kids still enjoyed it. Then we walked over to one of the playgrounds, where the kids had a great time and ran off lots of energy. Sam especially zipped around and showed no sign of slowing down, but we had to go home after a while for dinner.

Z&OO Railroad

The lake had signs all around warning "Alligators inhabit this lake." Fortunately we saw no alligators outside the zoo, but Ken did spot several water birds.

Elegant heron--at its feet are a turtle and some plastic water bottles....

Back at the house, we ate dinner and took a walk around the neighborhood. Sam and Jesse and I played a Memory game. Of course Sam won. He matched 18 pairs, I matched 14, and Jesse matched four. Cate helped Jesse a bit.

This evening Jesse announced that when he grows up, he wants to live in an RV so he can take his house wherever he goes! Great idea, Jesse. We agree.

We've had a great visit, but tomorrow we'll move on south. We'll be hoping to flee the advancing polar vortex which will bring very cold weather by Thursday. Read more!

MapMyHike

We walked around Trailwood Circle today. Turns out it's almost exactly one mile, doesn't have too much traffic, and is an attractive neighborhood, with great trees and interesting homes. When we started out, I realized that I had forgotten to bring my GPS. What to do? I downloaded a free app to my iPhone called MapMyHike. It has way more bells and whistles than I know what to do with (some of which only work if you pay for premium service).

I like the fact that it logs my walks, so I can look back and see where I walked, including a map, and when, with statistics like time and speed and distance. That will provide good feedback and motivation.

On the second lap around the circle, Sam came along, riding his bike. A little while later, on our third and final lap, Cate and Sam rode their bikes, and Julie and Jesse walked with us. Julie was walking Charley. She says that Bijoux has gotten so old and tired that she never even asks to go along on walks.

This evening Ed and Cate and Ken and I played a game of Rummikub. Lots of other games were going on too, including several Words With Friends games and the kids' electronic gadgets.

The VFW has a five-acre lake. So far we've seen several herons. Today we spotted some unusual ducks.

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Sunny Day

Today was a beautiful sunny day, though still cool. We watched as a portable stage was set up in the parking lot of the VFW where we are staying. It took us a bit to figure out that it must be connected to some Veteran's Day celebration. Ed will be driving a dealership car in the Veteran's Day parade in downtown Lufkin tomorrow morning. Cate plans to ride with him.

Portable stage towed in by a semi and one side dropped

We stopped at HEB again on our way over to the house to fix dinner and visit. This time we made some Tex Mex enchiladas and tacos. Sam at first declared that he didn't like Mexican food, but after he tried the enchiladas, he decided that they were really tasty.

There is no television in the Shaffer household, but that doesn't mean the kids are deprived of screen time.

After dinner I tagged along with Ed and Cate on a trip to Walgreen's and CVS Pharmacy. Cate bundled up against the cool night air in her "Little Brown Riding Hood" outfit.

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Pizza, Pizza!

We managed to chip away at our to-do list today. We drained and flushed our hot water tank, a twice a year task  to keep mineral scale under control. It's been long enough since we last did it that we had a bit of a learning curve, but we succeeded.  We also put new foam grip wrap on our entry assist handle. The old foam had deteriorated and split open.

This evening Ed had a company dinner to celebrate a record month, so it was just Julie and the kids and us for dinner. We stopped at H.E.B. for a deli pizza and rounded off the meal with salad, veggies, and grapes.

When we arrived, all the kids were bubbling over with news about their first day at their new school today. Jesse said it was "fabulous!" Julie said that the kids had been welcomed with open arms and drawn right into the group. Jesse has been put in the kindergarten class, so he was a bit leery at first of finding himself surrounded by kids taller than him.

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Fun and Games

Today was rainy pretty much all day, but the day was brightened by the arrival of Ed and Julie and the kids for lunch with us. It was a quick visit because Ed had to get back to work and Julie had to take the kids to get new school uniforms. They will be attending St. Patrick Catholic School starting tomorrow. They are very excited.

We went over to join them for supper tonight. We were greeted enthusiastically by Cate and Sam and Jesse and Julie--and Charley and Bijou. We also met Adzi, the cat, an appealing four month old.

Julie fixed pasta and we brought salad and fixings. After dinner Ed, Ken, Cate, and I played Ten Days in Asia while Julie took Jesse to buy a lunch box and water bottle. His are irretrievably buried in storage. Sam was off somewhere glued to his electronics.

Chris and Anara called. They were on their way to see Interstellar. Both of them sounded good. Chris will be doing a lot of traveling over the next few weeks with three visits to Chicago. Read more!

Legal Truck

Our big accomplishment today was getting the new Texas Safety Inspection Sticker for our truck. First we had to go to the Ford dealer to pick up the replacement mirror glass, which we then took over to Loving Honda. One of Ed's colleagues suggested that we take it to another auto dealership where a good friend of his worked. There we got the mirror installed and a new inspection sticker. Mission accomplished!

I also got my hair cut really short again, which makes it very easy to style--if you can call spiking styling. Not my best haircut ever, but hair does grow out. Meanwhile, Ken took care of changing our reservations. The new plan is to stay in Lufkin over the weekend, since Sunday is Ed's only day off.

Mike Daniels, the manager of the VFW Post, stopped by to say hi and collect our site rental, a grand total of $56 for the week.

Julie and the kids were out of town today, driving John and Nancy to Houston and visiting with Nancy's daughter Amy and family. Ed was working all day and then not feeling great, so he went straight home. Read more!

On to Lufkin

We wrapped up our stay at RV Parks R Us in Tyler this morning and headed south to Lufkin to visit Ed and family. It's a 90 mile, two hour trip, but we stopped halfway for lunch. We're staying at the VFW Post. Right now we're the only ones on the 30 acre grounds, including a five acre lake. Sweet. Of course we'll have lots of company on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday nights: charitable BINGO!

The RV sites are on the grass behind the VFW building. The ground is a bit soft, and you can see that our slide has very little clearance to the ground.

After we got settled in, I went over to see Edward at Loving Honda, only a couple of miles away. It was good to see him. I flew to Atlanta over Easter to visit with them. In September Ed moved to Lufkin to take a new position as a car salesman for Loving Honda. He flew back to Atlanta last week to move the family and the dogs and cat and all their stuff back to Texas. (Yay! Texas!). They went trick or treating with their friends, the Butlers, on Friday night and then drove the moving truck and their SUV back to Texas on Saturday, November 1.

Tomorrow Julie will be driving John and Nancy to Houston. They will fly out on Wednesday to Singapore to visit Terri and family. Read more!

Whodunit???

We went over to Carol and Dick's this morning, to do laundry and eat before going to the musical. Debbie called to say she was stopping by with the kids for a few minutes on the way home from church to coordinate the week's schedule with Carol. They always provide a burst of energy when they come.

Sam even gave me a kiss goodbye when they left.

We went to the matinee performance of Clue the Musical presented by the Tyler Civic Theatre Center. The set represents a Clue board, complete with Conservatory, Ballroom, Billiards Room, Kitchen, Lounge, and Study. The standard weapons are all present. Mr. Boddy introduces the plot and the characters. The gimmick is that three audience members draw cards to determine the perpetrator, weapon, and room where the murder of Mr. Boddy takes place, and it is up to the audience to garner clues and guess the solution to the mystery. The program includes a clue sheet, and everyone gets a pencil to record notes and clues.

The performance was quite entertaining and lively, with plenty of singing and comic interactions. The regular reminders that we are watching game tokens on a game board makes for some of the humor, along with references to other popular board games of the same era.

After the performance it was time to say goodbye to our friends and thank them for a great visit. We'll be back in the spring for more adventures.

This evening we watched an episode of Makers on Women in Business. The series features women who have been successful in various fields while putting their achievements in historical context. We also finished watching Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek LIVE!, a live performance of their recently released album. Both of them are talented performers, and they are backed by some great musicians. Read more!

Fall Back

Sadly, the inevitable onset of winter is bringing with it shorter days and longer nights, so it's been getting dark earlier and earlier. But tomorrow will be different. It will suddenly be dark an hour earlier than it has been. Daylight saving time is ending.

We took the ingredients for a salmon dijon dinner over to Carol and Dick's. Carol made a salad with her delicious mustard vinaigrette. She had also made more of the pumpkin pear bread.  Yummy dinner.

After dinner we played Big Boggle, one of our traditions. As usual, it was great fun. Everyone comes up with different words. It seems amazing that a word can be right in front of your eyes but you can't see it.

Carol had bought a garage sale DVD of six British movies. We decided to watch Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown, starring Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Billy Connolly as her servant--and more. We had some trouble following the dialogue in parts because of the English and Scottish accents and the generally poor audio quality, but the film was quite dramatic, all the more so because it's a true story. It reminded us of The King's Speech, another film that features a plain spoken commoner who develops a complicated relationship with a monarch.

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Happy Halloween!

We went over to Carol and Dick’s around 11:30 a.m., so we all could beat the crowds at the Potpourri Restaurant.  This was our birthday treat and a chance to check out the place where Dick’s 80^th birthday celebration will be held.

We all had the Soup an Salad and Potato Bar, which had quite an array of prepared salads. After lunch we did some window shopping in the store that surrounds the restaurant. It’s an eclectic boutique shop, with something for everyone, including lots of Christmas decorations just to get everyone in the holiday spirit.

But wait! That’s the wrong holiday—today is actually Halloween. This evening on our walk we saw lots of little costumed kids trick or treating in the neighborhood. Dick was handing out little boxes of raisins and bags of pretzels. We stopped to chat with several of the neighbors and take photos of their decorations.

We've been wondering if the neighbors across the street were going to put up their haunted house tents for the "Nightmare on Eagle Street." It turned out that the attraction had been moved to the rear of the house, and expanded. We didn't go in.

Another neighbor had transformed their garage into a Halloween party room, where lots of kids and adults appeared to be having a great time.

Carol took our photo standing by the skeleton on the front door. It's eyes light up with a baleful red glow. We are wearing our standard Halloween costumes: weird alien shirts we've worn for the last several years.

Of course many of the older kids were at the Friday night football game. Carol picked up Christine and a friend and taxied them to the game. Fortunately the friend's mother was in charge of getting the girls home.

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Mirror, Mirror

We realized yesterday that our broken towing mirror would probably prevent us from getting a Texas safety inspection sticker—and our sticker expires tomorrow. So this morning I removed the black electrical tape that’s been holding things together. I pieced together the parts of the amber turn signal lens, and I put clear tape over the shattered mirror parts. I tried to reinsert the mirror in the frame, unsuccessfully.

What to do? We talked about our options and checked out the law and found out that we have a five day grace period, so we’re legal until next Wednesday. I had done some extensive searching for replacement parts soon after the accident and come up with nothing, but today I found what I hoped was the correct replacement mirror. It's being delivered to Loving Honda in Lufkin, where Edward works, and where we will be next week when it arrives. Unfortunately I realized later that it's the wrong item, so back to the drawing board.

We went over to Carol and Dick's this afternoon, taking along the ingredients for black bean and yellow squash stew. That's a recipe I got from Carol and one we really like. The secret ingredient is peanut butter.

Carol made an interesting vegan desert called mint brownies. Since they have no sugar, all the sweetness  comes from chopped dates. The frosting included fat free cream cheese, mint flavoring and a cup of baby spinach leaves (presumably to make it green). (The vegan version calls for soaking cashews and grinding them up instead of the cream cheese.)

Ken has been working on organizing our recent photos, deleting some and adding captions and locations to the rest. This is an ongoing project that keeps him busy. It's so easy to take lots of digital photos.

Right outside our window there's a bluebird box, but it's apparent that the wrens have moved in.

We watched an old episode of Doc Martin. It's one of Dick and Carol's favorite PBS shows, but we don't get it on the national PBS feed.

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CESSE at TJC

We went over to Dick and Carol's at lunch time today. Dick was attending a luncheon to meet the new volunteer coordinator for Heart to Heart Hospice. Carol and Ken and I were going to lunch at Potpourri House, but when we arrived there, all the parking spaces were full. Carol figured that meant the tables were full too, so we decided to go home for lunch and come back Friday. Potpourri is the restaurant chosen for Dick's 80th birthday celebration in 2015.

This afternoon we went to CESSE, the TJC planetarium. We bought day passes to see all three shows (25 mins. each) and go to the exhibit area, which right now features an earthquake exhibit. The three shows this afternoon were Cosmic Journey, Earthquake, and Black Holes. The facility is brand new, with comfortable seats and a great sound system. The shows all had spectacular visuals, but they seemed rather slow moving to us.

In between the shows we went to the exhibit area. Along the walls are portraits and brief information of a selection of astronauts and scientists. I especially liked Neil DeGrasse Tyson's vest 8-)

The earthquake part of the exhibit included some videos and interactive displays, including a simulation of the movements of the continental plates over the millennia. That exhibit is controlled by the viewer. You turn a knob to move the simulation back in time or forward in time. It was amazing to see the various configurations the plates have had over millions of years and to see the projection of the continuing plate movements over a couple more million years in the future.

Carol left after the second show to go home and prepare dinner. We stayed and walked back to the house after the third show. It's a pleasant one-mile walk, and we arrived to find some delicious food waiting for us (or in the case of the pumpkin pear bread, in the oven).

Carol went to her choir practice and Ken and I went grocery shopping on the way home. We haven't been able to find the unsweetened organic soy milk we prefer, and tonight was no exception.

Jeff called to tell his dad that he's buying a Mercedes Benz. It's a 2011 model that he is purchasing from Car Max. To get the color he wanted, he's having a car shipped from Delaware. Read more!

Visiting and Laundry

We went over to Carol and Dick's house this morning. Carol was home on her one hour break from work. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she usually has a longer work day and gets home after 3:00 p.m. So we had time to have a hug and a chat before she left.

Meanwhile, we brought over all our laundry from the last two weeks. We didn't want to break up our week on the lake with a drive to town and a laundromat. Fortunately Carol has a large washer and we had plenty of time, so we got it all done.

While the laundry was running, we took our walk. Major construction on a new middle school is underway, so all of the temporary classroom buildings are crowded around the old school while the rest of the block is being given a complete makeover. The school is scheduled to open in the fall of 2015, and lots of workers in hard hats were busy working on it. We walked farther west and then through the Tyler Junior College campus. We were particularly struck by the new Planetarium building, which has large letters around the top proclaiming it the Center for Earth and Space Science Education (CESSE).

Later Debbie came by with Sam and Robby to visit for a couple of minutes. She was dropping off Sam and taking Robby to his Cub Scout meeting before going to her choir practice.  Meanwhile, Robert was at work and Christine was at an after school practice for the school fall musical, Oklahoma! It takes a lot of coordination and taxi service to get all the kids to all their appointments and activities. I rode along with Carol when she went to pick up Christine after her practice and then to drop off Christine and Sam at their house. Christine was in charge of Sam until one of her parents got home. Whew!

Carol had leftovers of an interesting new recipe, fruit and nut chili, which we ate for lunch. She had spinach lasagna waiting in the fridge, along with brown bread. We brought some salad. No one goes hungry at Carol's kitchen! Read more!

We're Back at RVParks R Us

After breakfast and making preparations to head out this morning, we took a final bike ride around the park. We circled the Deer Haven camping loop, where we saw five occupied campsites, and rode through the Buggy Whip (equestrian) area, where all the campsites were empty. We saw one horse trailer leaving the park the day we arrived and haven't seen any evidence of horses since.

We rode over to Sunset Cove and Eagle Point, where we walked out one last time to see the lake and a few water birds. We have not seen the pelicans and cormorants again, so I guess we were lucky to spot them once during our visit. Then we were off to Tyler to visit Carol and family. It's only a 90 mile drive, but we stopped for groceries--and for lots of red lights. We pulled into RVParks R Us after 3:00 p.m.

We're in site #56, near the front. It was an easy site to back into. We got set up and then took our paperwork back to the office. Linda is one of the managers, always friendly. She's celebrating her birthday tomorrow.

When I called to talk to Carol, Dick told me that she had gone into work. She called later, and we agreed to go over in the morning. Read more!