One more Rockport memory......

And then I think I've told you about everything we did.
I loved the Heritage district (what I would call their Main Street). Altho there is a shopping strip with all the regular today stores.... like Walmart, Sears, McDonalds etc. Rockport's downtown is so very quaint and charming.
One thing I did admire down there was their unabashed love of COLOR. They are certainly not shy about using it anywhere and everywhere. Not only do they paint their little stores in bright oranges and greens and purples....but many of the older small shanty homes boast the same wild shades. Sometimes we would be just driving around in the residential district and looking at all the regular homes.....then wham.... suddenly there sits *shartruse*!!
Or tourquoise! It was so fun.
Can you imagine living in one of those homes? I bet the people are a blast. haha

See the General Store? (purple with yellow posts by the tourquoise store) That's where I bought my Jim Shore figurines.

Don't forget you can click on the pics to enlarge them.

The day after Easter....

I hope you all had a good Easter. After church Dan, Gina and kids came for dinner and spent the day. Alivia modeled her prom dress. It is even prettier 'in person'. And Scotty surprised us by stopping by for a bit. It was so good to see him.

I've been putting the boarders on my Old World Santa's redwork. I know how I want to quilt the sashings and the background but still haven't settled on what to do with the outer border. I'll keep thinking and looking at it and It'll come to me.

I've got to start de-cluttering my sewing room. It seems like it has gotten much smaller since we came home. heehee I just have too much *other stuff* in there and I need to reorganize a bit.

Perhaps a Garage Sale. Maybe?

Maybe not?

Schoenstatt Shrine.

I thought I'd tell you about the Shrine we went to while we were gone.

Across the bridge from Rockport is the tiny town of Lamar. This is the place that has the huge tree that I told you about in an earlier post.

And... there is a 100 year old Catholic church and this Schoenstatt Shrine. (Schoenstatt translated from the German language means: beautiful place.) And it's setting is just that.

From the outside it looks like just a small little building. But the inside has this ornate wood carved altar and there are only about three pews on each side so it is very small. Just right for a quiet peaceful meditation.

This is where the Sisters come each day for their devotions. And if you notice (in the top pic) the door is open. They were there praying. They began to come in to pray just as we were leaving the building.

We walked to one of the quiet spots they have along a path. This is just one of the small areas they have scattered along the path.

This was just one of those small days that we had and quietly enjoyable. Just wanted to share with you.

Another memory....

As I've already told you.....one of our favorite things to do and places to go was to the Rockport harbor. There was a cement wall there and we could park along it and watch the fishermen and the far distant ships and even saw my first dolphin there.

And of course the GULLS!!

Loved feeding those birds. In this pic Don had just threw out a whole piece of bread and they were all after it. (click the pic to enlarge) See the closest bird to his knee? That's the first one to grab it. And then the fight ensued!! Talk about screeching and screaming. :)

When we first started feeding them we would just throw pieces of the bread out at them and they would dive for it. But finally, after several tries....I was able to hold the bread in my fingers and they would swoop in and grab it from me. Kinda scary at first!!

And then there's these two clowns.... I guess they wanted an up-close-and-personal look at what was going on inside. heehee They stayed there until we were ready to leave. The one on the right was really lazy tho. I would throw pieces toward him....and if the bread didn't land right by him so he could just reach out and get it....he didn't bother.
He sure didn't exert himself.

On our way home this foggy day we drove by this Great Blue Heron just hunkered down by the water. The fog was so thick that day and I missed getting a pic of the cluster of ducks that we saw. Looked like they were in the sky (we couldn't make out the water) :)

I'll post more later. Bye for now.

Texas State Aquarium

Thought I'd catch up on a few of the activities we did before we left Rockport. One day we drove to Corpus Cristi to the Aquarium. It was very easy to get to since it's right on the North side of Corpus (which is where we were coming from).

It is a very small .... but very well put together..... attraction. I was able to get a wheelchair to get around and there was an elevator to go to the lower level. They schedule several different presentations throughout the day.

One of the presentations was Dolphin training. There were three gals that demonstrated how they train them and we watched from the outside the pool. We later went down behind the 'rocks' where there was a huge underground viewing window.

This is before the show started and we were just waiting.

Here are a just a couple of the many many pics I took as we watched the 2nd show down below thru the big window.

There were three male dolphins and this pic was taken after the show was over and they were just swimming around.

This is one of the dolphins playing with a ball. He would grab this ball and lay it down on the bottom of the tank .... then roll his body along the ball all the way down to his tail till the ball would pop out and float to the top. Before it would get to the top he would turn around and grasp it again and start all over with his rolling the ball. He did this over and over again. Sometimes he wouldn't be fast enough and the ball would make it to the surface. Then he would grab it as he flew out of the water and zoomed back to the bottom. Fascinating. We stayed down there and watched them 'play' until they put them into the other pool for the night.

This was one of our memory highlights.

There was one section that had 7 to 10 tanks of different jellyfish. I tried to get pics but I couldn't take a clear one. I tried over and over and not one of the pics would turn out. See how blurry. They were ALL like that. I finally gave up and figured it must be because they give off an electrical current that disrupts the water. ???

Anyway.... each tank had a different kind of jellyfish. Some glowed different colors and they were all different sizes. Awesome!

Another tank we saw had these....

Seahorses! I was surprised how big they are. See Don's head?

And one more tank..... This pic is only of the far right side of the tank. This was huge tank and it was where another demonstration was given. A diver went in the water and hand fed the fish as a lady outside told what she was feeding and the type of food that each fish ate.

In this pic you can see the Sea Turtle, a Stingray and the very elusive Mora eel. They only come out to eat in the late afternoon. Otherwise they stay hidden in the rocks and caves.

We're home....

Seems like forever since I've posted. Of course I was without a computer!! And of course Paul didn't stand behind what he said he would do. He never did send the mother board. So I just had to shut down the puter and wait till I got home to post any more.

We left Rockport a day early to avoid the rain and pulled into Grand Prarie on Thursday evening. We spent 10 days at Loyd Park in Grand Prarie to visit with Deb, Jim and Jessi. Our campground was about 8 miles from their house and easy to get to. I'm starting to get around a bit better each time we go to DFW area and getting more familiar with the major roads.

We all went to see "The Bucket List" and ate popcorn and drank pop and loved the show.
During our whole stay we ate lots of good food (and some soup that was not so good) heehee.
One day for lunch Deb took us to the Cheesecake Factory. OMGosh!! Delicious!!
Don helped Deb put edging around her flower bed and lay in lava rock. I supervised. :) It looks nice. Jim drove us around to see some of the sites and we went to a small up-town grocery store. Not like our grocery stores around here. More like a bread-dessert bakery-deli -cheese and meat counter that sells wine and unusual condiments. Yum Yum Yum.

We started home on Sunday and stopped overnight at Newton. It feels so good to be home!! We've spent the last two days getting the camper emptied and things put away. Poor Don!! He has to do all the carrying since I can't do that much because of my knee.
So I'd better get back to organizing things again.
I'm off.