A Year About

It is so fun to be home!! My sister Lyn and I stayed up until 2 a.m. the first night we were home and last night eight of us stayed up until 1 a.m. Who knows what will happen tonight!


Walking to Hidden Oaks Nature Center.

This afternoon we went on a walk to a nearby nature center and the surrounding woods. We used to live in the townhouses that back up to the woods and go exploring all the time. It was great fun to wander through again. Elise kept saying things like, “Mommy – I remember this!” and “Look! There’s the bridge we used to walk on!” Bobby and I are really thinking about buying a townhouse in that neighborhood again when we get back. My thing about buying a townhouse is the loss of a backyard. But if we back up to woods, the backyard becomes a whole lot larger.


Maggie and Elise at the creek.

Tonight we will have a party with family and some friends. Tomorrow we sleep. Happy New Year everyone!

We lied. We are liars. For the past couple weeks we’ve been living a falsehood. I guess we are falsehoodlums. Not a big lie. Just a lie big enough to fool Danine’s parents. We flew back to Virginia yesterday as a Christmas-slash-New Years’ surprise for Danine’s parents. It was made possible by Danine’s brother Chris and his wife Caren. We waited to tell Elise until she had spoken with everyone on Christmas day. She was beside herself, saying through joyful tears, “Daddy, why aren’t you crying?” Hey, I’m excited too!

We got up at 3:30 a.m. (yes, that’s correct) and drove to Corpus Christi airport and took a small plane up to Houston. Then we hopped onto a smaller plane to Dulles. While bleary eyed, all three of us were cheerful and had a smooth trip. As we descended through the clouds and could see the vast stretches of tract housing that make up western Fairfax county, Elise shouted, “Look! You can see Virginia!” Ah, Virginia.



Pat (Danine’s sister Lyn’s husband, got that?), Conor and Taylor (Lyn’s twins) met us. We went to Lyn’s and Pat’s house where we shocked — no dumbfounded — Danine’s mother. Her dad came over a short time later and he too was amazed. The miracle here is that the surprise remained so after several near-giveaways.



It’s fun to be home! It’s great to be with family! It’s great to take hot showers with water pressure in a clean bathroom. We often have one or two of those features, but rarely all three at once. We’ll be here spending time with family until Jan. 2. Then we leave home to go home (that’s confusing).

For those of you who are appalled by our lying or our lack of pictures, here is an extra bonus paragraph just for you!


Elise is now an exhibit.

I forgot to mention that we went to the Texas Aquarium in Corpus Christi the other day. It’s a modest sized aquarium (we’re experienced aquarium-goers now) with three dolphins that were cool to see up close. Even cooler up close was the tanker rolling into port. It was bigger than the USS Lexington, an older generation aircraft carrier nearby that provided a helpful scale.




Is this tugboat pushing or getting pushed?

Today was one o’ them chore days. We had lots of laundry to do, so the three of us piled into the truck with our clothes, towels, sheets, and even blankets, and drove up the road to the washeteria (sic) — not to be confused with the laundro-teria, the laundrorama or the wash-o-matic. This one was big, clean and reliable. The only problem was it didn’t have WiFi. That’s not a typical laundromat service, but it should be. We found it once in the Keys and have been spoiled and wanting it ever since. Naturally we can read or talk while the clothes journey from dirty to wet to clean and dry, but it’s so convenient to catch up on the electronic stuff while we catch up on the fabric-ee stuff. So write your congressperson.

In other news, Elise has cavities. We saw some brownish spots on a couple of her teeth and tracked down a dentist who takes walk-ins in order to check it out. Cavities. This particular dentist wants to do a few fillings, a few sealants, a few caps, maybe a root canal. On baby teeth! Sheesh. And they will only charge an arm and a leg, which can be paid in easy monthly installments (fingers first, then radii and ulnae, then one humerus, etc.). We are examining our options. Meanwhile, we threw out a lot of leftover Halloween candy and sugary drinks and are feeling like neglectful parents. I’m sure Elise will make the transition from gum to celery with ease…

Our plan is to leave for Padre Island tomorrow and hang out there through New Years. We may have to come back up to the dentist the first week of January, but the campground on Padre Island is only about 15 miles from where we are now. Hopefully the beachcombing will be a little better there.

Yesterday evening we went up to Port Aransas and drove on the beach to the shipping channel. The jetties that define the channel extend about one mile into the sea and are made of huge granite blocks and concrete slabs. We walked to the end and back while choppy seas crashed on both sides of us. We were hoping to see a big tanker come through the channel, but the only ship that came through was a casino cruise ship. We spied lots of dolphins and every seabird species on earth. Every single one.

About 7:15 am on Christmas morning.

As hard as it was to be away from friends and family at Christmas, we had a lovely time. On Christmas Eve, we took a long walk on the beach with our new friends Molly and Harry. We went in the same direction Elise and I had taken on our early morning walk a few days before. This time we walked out onto the jetties and watched the ocean spray against the rocks. We saw the requisite dolphin or two beyond the jetty and helped Molly collect some shells.



After the walk, we frosted and decorated the sugar cookies and got ready for our dinner guests. Molly and Harry came over at 6:00 and brought over homemade wine and a delicious smoked salmon pate from a salmon Harry had caught. They are a very interesting couple and I love their story. Harry retired from being a firefighter after almost 20 years and then was a medic for a while. After that, he and Molly built a 42′ sailboat and sailed up and down the coast working in logging camps in Canada. Harry would always be the medic and mechanic in the camp and Molly would do whatever needed doing. Once they tired of that, they built and ran a resort on an island in British Columbia for 15 years. They sold that about 8 years ago and now they are travelers.

We had a wonderful dinner and afterwards we all played a game of Clue. Turns out it was Ms. Scarlet with the candlestick in the study. Dastardly woman, eh?


Harry shows his cards.

When Harry and Molly left, the sky was crystal clear and the moon was huge. Before Elise went to bed we put out some reindeer dust so Santa would be sure to find our trailer. Christmas morning the fog was so thick I couldn’t see more than three or four trailers down the row. We’re not sure what time the fog rolled in, but either Santa came before it or Rudolph worked overtime!


The campground. It’s really just a big parking lot, but it’s a four minute walk from the Gulf of Mexico, so we can’t really complain.

Christmas morning started around 7:00. Controlled chaos reigned for a short while as we opened our presents. Elise received four books on CD which will keep us all busy and a pair of real Texas cowgirl boots from my cousin Laura.


Elise in her new sweater, jeans and cowgirl boots.

Elise’s cousins Conor and Taylor gave her a digital camera and she has been taking pictures and video fairly nonstop since. Bobby and I received some books (yeah!) and the super-duper extended version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD! Each movie is two and a half days long. There are many more pictures of present opening on our Flickr site.



We did see Santa’s sleigh tracks in the dew as we were leaving for church.


This is right outside our trailer where we had left the reindeer dust.

We went to church at St. Andrew by the Sea in Corpus Christi. They have an outdoor church and we were really hoping that Mass would be held outside. It wasn’t, unfortunately, but Mass was good and afterward we went back to the trailer for our Christmas brunch. Sticky buns, scrambled eggs, bacon and orange juice. Standard Christmas brunch fare at my parents’ house and we tried to recreate it as best we could. The rest of the day was lazy — perfect. We talked to family at different points and stuffed ourselves with corned beef and mashed potatoes for dinner.


The outside church at St. Andrew by the Sea.

I think we are going to head to Corpus Christi today and visit either the aquarium or the USS Lexington. We’ll be here a few more days and then we’ll head down to Padre Island for New Years.

The sugar cookies are in the foreground, the butter mints are in front of Elise and Bobby is decanting the fudge.

I tell you, it is not easy to cook for Christmas in the trailer! Not a lot of space. We gave it the good ol’ college try, though, and despite the messes, I think everything will taste just fine. Yesterday, Elise and I made the sugar cookie dough and today we cut out the shapes with the cookie cutters and baked them. Tomorrow we ice them and put on sprinkles.

My mom forwarded some of our mail and in it was a magazine that I subscribe to, called Wondertime. It is by the publishers of Family Fun, I think, and I really like it. I was reading it last night and came upon two very simple recipes that I had to try. One was for butter mints and the other, a no-bake fudge. Accordingly, we ran out to the store today and picked up the few ingredients I did not have. Unfortunately, my calculations were wrong in a few areas and now we have way too much stick butter and confectionary sugar! But now we have delicious butter mints and fudge to leave out for Santa in addition to his standard plate of sugar cookies.

I talked to my parents tonight and for the first time in about 45 years, my mom does not have to prepare the Christmas brunch at her house, which is the most significant meal of the year for my family. My sister is hosting the brunch this year because she is a kind soul and because my parents’ house is undergoing renovation and is covered in dust.

We will be having homemade chicken soup for our Christmas Eve dinner along with bread and salad. Elise and Bobby both voted for corned beef for Christmas dinner so we will have that with mashed potatoes and maybe a vegetable or two.

I don’t know that we’ll get a post out on Christmas day, so let me take this time to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. We miss you all and pray that your Christmas day will be filled with the love of those around you and the new year will bring you joy and wisdom and peace.

This little guy was hiding from the wind on the knob where our water line enters the trailer.

Today has been a quiet one. Bobby’s sinuses have flared up so he was trailer-bound most of the day. Elise and I got up this morning and left the trailer around 8:00 so he could get some more sleep. We took an early morning walk along the beach, looking, looking, looking. You may remember my indoctrination into sea bean searching in the Florida Keys. Turns out they wash up on shore here, too. I was very excited to get out there today and see if I could find that elusive hamburger bean. I was incredibly disappointed, though. There is almost no discernible wrack line on the beach and very few things stay washed up on shore. A few ladies were coming back from beachcombing and told us that there were some shells to be found on the other side of the jetty, north of where we were. We were able to collect a few shells here and there, but it was nothing like St. George Island in Florida. We did find three more sand dollars and for the first time, we saw some starfish washed up on shore. They were thin and gray, not very attractive, so we didn’t pick any up, but they were still interesting to see.

Elise and I did make our sugar cookie dough this afternoon. We’ll roll out the cookies tomorrow and decorate them on Christmas Eve, just in time for them to be appetizers for our Christmas Eve meal. We have invited another couple to join us for dinner so Christmas Eve will be a little more festive. We met Harry and Molly yesterday when we went to Fulton Mansion in Rockport, north of where we are. They are a Canadian couple who travel through the US six months out of the year, from September to March. They are very friendly and kind to Elise and they have two cats, which pleases Elise immensely! They got to our campground today and already we have visited them twice – once to invite them to dinner and once to give them some extra cinnamon rolls my sister sent us for Christmas. How on earth three people are supposed to be able to eat 18 cinnamon rolls is beyond me! My sister very smartly suggested we share them with friends and we were happy to do so.



Fulton Mansion, called Oakhurst by the family, is an interesting home. It was built by cattle baron George Fulton, starting in 1874. He was one of the enterprising men who took advantage of the cattle boon after the Civil War. If there were cattle on your property and they weren’t branded, then they belonged to you. He did not ship the cattle north for food, though. His processing plants used the tallow, horns, hooves and hide of the cattle. The carcasses were then tossed into the Gulf of Mexico.

The mansion was the only home in the region to have central lighting, heating and running water. A central cast-iron furnace heated the rooms, and hot air piped into the laundry room dried clothes. The fireplaces in the house were false. Heat from the furnace was transported through pipes that led to the decorative false fireplaces.

George died in 1893 and two years later, Harriet (his wife), left Oakhust and never returned. It was left empty for 40 years and then took turns being a seafood restaurant and then a trailer park!


Can you imagine trailers parked on this lawn?!

Before we went to the mansion, we stopped by the post office to pick up what we thought was going to be a few Christmas packages. I called the post office the night before and said, “Hi, this is Danine Welsh. We’ve had a few packages sent there general delivery. . .” and before I could say anything more, the man said, “You sure have! I don’t have any more room up front. When are you coming to pick these up?!” It turns out there were eight boxes waiting for us, filled with Christmas goodies. Now I can’t walk on my side of the bed because I had to put the packages somewhere! Thank you to all who sent us something . You are helping to make our Christmas very special, far though we may be from family and friends.

The weather has been warm (75 today), but windy. We took a walk on the beach after dinner and we were definitely leaning into the wind to get back. As I write this, the wind is rocking the trailer back and forth pretty constantly. Hopefully, the rocking will help get us to sleep tonight and not just distract us . . .

Our site at Mustang Island. The Gulf of Mexico is behind the trailer, just beyond the dunes.

We hitched up under a clear blue sky, packed a cooler with clementines, smokehouse almonds, wasabi peas and peanut butter crackers, then crossed the straight, flat miles to Corpus Christi. We are staying at Mustang Island State Park, which is just north of Padre Island (where we will stay next). Our plan is to be here for Christmas — Christmas morning will be a little easier with water and electric hook-ups. Padre Island has no hook-ups — that’s a lot of fun too!

The one catch is the water in the park is on the fritz. Something is wrong along the pipeline into the park. Since we’re essentially on a big sandbar, the ground is never very stable and rigid pipes and such don’t do well here. They had the water hooked up till 10:00pm tonight, so we took showers and filled our freshwater tank. That’ll last us for several days, by which time they’ll have fixed it I’m sure.

Danine mentioned in the last post how she forgot her keys again. Well, Elise and I forgot the other item we insist on losing. It’s Elise’s brown sweatshirt. We left it at the campground in Savannah, GA, and someone there kindly mailed it to Danine’s parents who, in turn, mailed it to Danine’s brother where we collected it at Thanksgiving. Elise took it off while she and I went down the Largest Playground Slide We Have Yet Encountered. It was an old school playground made of iron bars and heavy timber. Elise said it reminded her of the Swiss Family Robinson. The slide would never be built today. It’s too steep, too tall, and too fast — one of the old stainless steel sheet metal types. It was awesome! Anyway we left the sweatshirt right there on the playground and didn’t notice until we were 150 miles away. Dang. Not sure we’ll recover it this time…

One problem with visiting Mark is that he always makes me want to buy more books. We spend half our time talking about various books and exchanging/expanding reading lists. The problem is we are on a budget (I use the term loosely here) and we live in a small space. However, too many books has always been for me (and Danine too) a good problem. One of the cool things Mark told me about is the American Guide Series. It’s a collection of guide books written as part of the WPA. Writers needed employment too, so the government created a federal writers’ program. Lots of famous writers took part: Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Zora Neal Hurston, etc. You can find used copies and I want to get the New Mexico book, since we’re headed that way.

Today was another day for everyone to hang out at the trailer. Well, everyone except for Bobby, that is. You see, I did it again. When we were at my brother’s in September for his wedding, I left my keys at his house and didn’t discover it until we were over an hour away. This time, I left them at Mark and Kristine’s house. They were the ones who discovered it and called us Monday night as we were pulling into the campground which is about 45 minutes away. So today, Bobby made the trip one more time, this time to retrieve my keys. Thanks, dear. He did get to see Mark one more time and have a cup of coffee with him so he was pretty happy to go.


That big one on the awning isn’t a ladybug. It’s a leaf footed bug. They liked the trailer, too!

Elise and I hung out here, taking showers, eating lunch together and schooling. Good stuff. It has been warm here the past two days and we have discovered that the Airstream is a complete ladybug magnet. I suppose it is the warmth of the aluminum in the sun. We cannot go in or out of the trailer without letting a few in. We found out that one of the screens in the bedroom is bent just enough to let the ladybugs in. When we got back from our bike ride yesterday, there were over 30 ladybugs inside the trailer, mostly at that window and the roof vents. Those are closed today so we haven’t had too many inside. Our Dustbuster is getting a real workout!

One of the paths around one of the lakes in Brazos Bend.

After a wonderful three days with the Embrees, we decided to let them have their lives back and today we stayed home. The day dawned . . . hours before we got up, but that’s not the point. It dawned slightly overcast but lovely. When Elise went outside to check the temperature to help her decide what she was going to wear for the day, she said, “Mommy, it feels like nothing outside!” I used to describe this kind of day the same way when I was a kid- it doesn’t feel warm and it doesn’t feel cold. It feels like nothing.

Elise got everyone’s breakfast for them – cereal for all, but everyone had a different kind. After a leisurely breakfast (and some sewing on Elise’s part) we headed out to see this park we have been staying in since Friday, but have yet to explore. There is a Junior Naturalist program here, similar to a Junior Ranger program in the national parks, so we worked on that first thing. Right away we could see that this park is beautiful. It is one of the prettiest state parks we have seen so far. There is an observatory on the park property that is open to the public on Saturdays. On Elise’s paper, she had to walk the path to the observatory and write down the names of the planets, written on the light posts, as she passed them.



This path took us across a wetland that was full of activity. We saw herons, egrets, vultures chasing each other, ducks galore, and one huge alligator sunning itself on the bank. It was a wonderfully noisy place and we loved listening to the birds and waterfowl constantly talking to each other.




An egret in flight.


These vultures chased each other most of the time we were out there.


We headed back to the nature center to turn in Elise’s work and ended up talking to the volunteer there. While we were petting the baby alligator (if you can call it petting when you touch an animal that in a year or two will outweigh your daughter) she told us that this particular brood of alligators came from a nest here in the park. The nest had been raided by the staff because it was infested with fire ants. While the alligators were still in their shells, they were safe. As soon as they hatched, however, the ants would swarm the hatchlings and probably kill them all. Everyone down here takes fire ants very seriously and I am beginning to understand why. If baby alligators can’t survive them, I’m going to give them a wide berth!



Once Elise had become a Brazos Bend Junior Naturalist, we were free to explore the rest of the park. In addition to the Brazos River that runs through the park, there are four sizeable lakes and three others that are smaller. We walked around one of the smaller lakes when we were getting Elise’s badge. On our bikes, we now rode around one of the large lakes, over another and to the edge of a third.


Taking a clementine break during the bike ride.

To our delight, we saw another alligator sunning itself in the water, on the edge of the lake. This one was only four feet long but he was the closest one we have seen in the wild. We watched him for a good five minutes and he never moved – never.



During our walk today, I came upon this writing on a plaque along one of the trails.

In the end . . .

And we will understand
Only what we are taught.

I love this. I have gained such a respect for nature on this trip and Elise is fascinated by all this nature around her and keeps saying things like, “This is so cool!” when we are out and about. I hope that all of us continue to be awed by God’s creation when we get back home and return to the grind.

Last night, as we were coming home from the Embrees’ we came upon our first armadillos. Snarfling around near our campsite, there were three of them completely oblivious to us. I had our highbeams on them and they didn’t seem to notice. Their sight must be extremely poor. Maybe that’s why we see so many of them on the side of the road, no longer living.



Oh! And here is the picture of our homemade Holy Family that I promised to post. Cute, huh?!

Some of you have asked how we have decorated the trailer for Christmas and the answer is, pretty simply. Last Christmas, knowing (hoping!) we were going to be taking this trip, we packed up a few of our smaller decorations to bring with us. Our friends the Iekels had given us some Airstream lights last year so we were sure to pack those (see photo above). We also packed an extra strand of lights, an angel, a very small nativity scene given to me by a priest I know and a few other items we wanted to have with us. My parents shipped the box to us in November and right after Thanksgiving we started decorating.



We obtained our Christmas “tree” in Weatherford, Texas. It is a combination of a rosemary bush, some kind of succulent and an ornamental grass or two. I’ll try to take a close-up picture of the Holy Family that we made and put it on our next post. You can kind of see it in front of the Advent candles. I found the idea for this in Family Fun magazine and we adapted it slightly so it would be a better fit for the trailer. Elise made Mary, Bobby and I made Joseph and between me and Elise, we got Baby Jesus done. It is a cheerful addition to our decorations and something I don’t mind Elise playing with.



The balloon wreath was made for Elise by the Ballooniac in Austin. He lives in the RV park where we were staying and stopped by the morning we were leaving to create some masterpieces for Elise. He was such a nice guy, as were all in that park.



We bought the hanging garland of boots and mittens at the Seafood, Arts and Crafts Festival in Homasassa Springs, Florida. The two snowmen ornaments that are on the Christmas bush came from there, too. The couple running the booth were lovely. They made all of the crafts and traveled around to different fairs in Florida selling what they had.


We very luckily found our Advent calendar on November 30th and Elise made the pine branch decoration and the elf.


The Gingerbread Man is on Elise’s window.

Everyone got in on the action with the suncatchers and we have them on various windows around the trailer.





It has been fun to decorate and remember that even though we are not “home” this year, we can make the home we are in beautiful, festive and cozy.