Snowbird Extravaganza

Today Anna and I took in the Snowbird Extravaganza at the  McAllan Convention Centre. The show was sponsored by Medipac Travel Insurance and in a small part of the room there were booths set up for Canadians to browse and learn about travel insurance.

The show was made up of strictly Canadian performers and all the entertainers were excellent. We watched Sean Emery, who is not only a comic but a great juggler as well. He is juggling a number of things in this picture, some of which are knives.

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Then we were treated to some Mediteranean style music by Pavlo. They are an amazing band of four who play a combination of latin, classical, and flamenco music with a touch of Greek. Their fingers are lightning fast and the music they make together is beautiful.

After the lunch break we were entertained by Jimmy Flynn. He is a singer and comic who really got the crowd going and before his show was over everyone was singing along.

My favorite of the day was Michelle Wright.  She put on an excellent show.  Anna and I spoke  with her after her show and got her autograph. She is as nice as she is beautiful and talented.

 The last act was Bowser and Blue from Quebec. They are known for their TV special called "Two nuts roasting on an open fire". They did a comic routine and some singing. They got a lot of laughs from the audience.

It was a great day. All of the entertainment was free and it was a wonderful way so spend the day. It is 31C today.

Keep warm.

Trip to South Padre Island

We just returned from a couple days on South Padre Island where we took in Winterfest and spent sometime with friends. We got a good deal at a nice hotel right on the beach.

 

 

Unfortunately, the day of Winterfest turned out to be terribly windy and quite chilly so we only stayed for half the day.  We did get to listen to some  good entertainment while we were there.

 The tickets also included a  shrimp and crab cakes meal with trimmings which was served outside and was very tasty.






As I have been a bit under the weather with this cough/allergy?,  I decided to spend the rest of the day luxuriating in the hotel room, just enjoying all the space and luxury while Anna went out with some friends who were also staying at the hotel.

  Yesterday we spent at the swimming pool and the beach. It was an absolutely perfect day. No wind, and a beautiful bright sun. Nothing to do but just lie on a lounge chair and listen to the waves come in.

 I got a lovely sunburn to mark the occasion. It was worth it.

 

Later in the day we went to  Louies where we sat on the deck and had drinks and snacks while enjoying the ocean view. To the left is a picture of our friend Carol on the deck. We went  on to Palm Street Pier for shrimp dinner and ended the evening at Padre Bar listening to Leslie sing. A perfect ending to a lovely day.

We all went to Pier 19 for breakfast this morning.There were a group of pelicans sitting on the dock below the restaurant and I couldn't resist taking their picture.

It was a wonderful couple of days. It is always nice to have a change of scenery.

Keep warm.

A Birthday Party for Pockets

Today was Pockets birthday and  nearly the entire Park gathered at Wes and Jude’s place for a Doggie Birthday Party.

 

 

Pockets is the unofficial mascot of our Park. She was attacked by a dog last year and nearly died so  she is somewhat of a walking miracle. Everyone at the Park knows and loves Pockets as Wes or Jude are always taking her for walks around the Park. As you can see from the picture, she is a very snappy dresser.

Many of the dogs from the Park came to help her celebrate her birthday and  they were all dressed up in their finest.

 

All the dogs were served ice cream and ice cream. Of course, there was a special cake for the dogs.

 

 

When the dogs were finished eating, we all  got treated to cake and ice cream as well.

And after the treats, came gift opening time. There were a LOT of gifts, mostly doggie treats.

It was a very fun day.

Tomorrow we are off to Harlingen for Harlingen days. Should be fun.

Keep warm.

Down in Mexico

 

Yesterday  some of the RV Park gang decided to go to Mexico. Lonnie and Janie invited me to come with them so I jumped at the chance. I love Mexico.  Also,  I had been wanting to get a pedicure for some time and it is so cheap in Mexico to have anything like that done. Once down there, I decided to go for the works and get  a manicure, a pedicure and also have my eyebrows done. Or I should say what I have LEFT of my eyebrows done since I seem to be losing eyebrows and eyelashes on a consistent basis since I left Vancouver.  Anyway, it was a great relaxing experience and very cheap. I got it all done for $22.00( plus tip of course). The young Mexican girl that did it all was very good and I was very pleased with the end result. It is so nice to get pampered once in a while!

When I was finished with the “spa treatments”, I joined the girls at a table set up on the street beside a street vendor and we all had longes before starting to shop. It was a beautiful sunny day and we all enjoyed soaking up the sunshine.

Mexico has so many in interesting places and the store sings are all painted in very vibrant colors.

 

The sidewalks are lined on both sides with street vendors selling all kinds of jewellery, clothes and just about anything else you can imagine. Janie ask a fellow if he could fix her watch band and when he said that he could she ask him how much he would charge. He told her that she could pay him whatever she wanted. He did a good job and as Janie has a big heart  he got got paid a fair price. These people have so little and none of our group takes advantage of them.

When we finished  shopping, we  met up with the men and went to listen to some very good Mexican music and did some dancing. The singer was very good and did a lot of requests from the audience.

For some reason we decided that we should all eat AGAIN, so off we went to another street vendor who sold baked potatoes. These were no ordinary baked potatoes. First of all, they were HUGE!

Inside the baked potato were onions, some kind of meat, cheese, and lots of spices. And on the side of course were nachos and chile sauce. They were very delicious but even though Janie and I split one it was still more than we could eat. 

We headed home from Mexico all feeling very stuffed but happy. I caught this sunset through the truck window on the way home. I have tried to enlarge it but I am still using windows writer as the blog problem still hasn’t been resolved so this is all I could do. Hopefully, you may be able to click on it and make it enlarge once I get this published.

Keep warm.

What a week!

I have not fallen off the face of the earth. Just taking a break.

This has been an interesting week. The fridge broke down again and Anna decided it was time to get a new one. That meant tearing out the old one. While Anna went out for parts, George and I started taking out the zillion screws required for removal of the fridge. It wasn’t long before the guys from the park started drifting over to help. There was much consultation as to how the job should be done.

Anna found many of the necessary tools and also did her part in the installation.

Everyone had a hand in it. By the end of the day we had it all tore out and the new one put in. It sure was good to have lots of help. What a great bunch of guys!
Anna and I went to a line dancing class at the Rec Hall. I actually learned how to do a couple line dances and found it to be great fun.

Anna taught an orgami class at the Rec Hall and had a very large turn-out. Everyone really enjoys her classes.  The Rec Hall was a busy place. There were also a couple of ladies doing some sewing there.
Here is Phyllis and Sharon working on some pants.

And as usual, there were a  couple people working on a  puzzle  at the end of the Hall-I was one of them.  It is such a warm, family atmosphere at the Hall and I always enjoy going over there to see what is happening.

Tonight a bunch of us from the Park went to a dinner theatre. We had a nice dinner and then were entertained by the Halbrook family which consisted of two brothers- one on the guitar and  one on the banjo, a son of the banjo player on  bass,  his wife on mandolin and another fellow played the drums. The mother, who was 84 also played and sang a few tunes. One guy did an Elvis act and got down into the audience and put on quite a show.


Besides singing and playing, they did a comedy routine which was hilarious. During the intermission, they sold raffle tickets on free meals at the restaurant  and tickets for their  dinner theatre. The proceeds went into their daughter’s college fund.The daughter was there also and  she was a lovely young lady. Lots of prizes were given away. My friend George won a dinner theatre ticket. Everyone went home happy.

The weather was much warmer today and I even got to sit out in the sun this afternoon and soak up the rays. After all the cold weather we have been having it sure did feel good. I am looking forward to several more days of sunshine and warmth.

Keep warm.

Entertainment

I walked down the highway to the Market today and spent a couple of  hours  listening  to some entertainment there. It was a warm, although very windy, day and a good day to just sit outside, soak up some sunshine, and listen to some nice music. In the afternoon, I caught a ride with a friend out to Mercedes. We discovered a Drive-In while we were out and about so one night we will go out to the Drive-In to watch movies. I haven’t  been to a drive–in movie for decades so I am very much looking forward to it. I checked it out on the internet and on Tuesday nights there is only a $5.00 charge per car to see 2 movies. A very good deal.
This evening we walked over to the Rec Hall to listen to  Michael J.Thoma. Michael is from Iowa and is currently doing a tour down here.

He played a mixture of music by popular artists and then played a few of his own songs. He had a John Denver type style and my favorite of the evening  was the John Denver song," It’s Good to Be Back Home Again”.  Unfortunately, there was a football game on tonight and many of  the people here at the Park chose the football game over a couple hours of music. For those of us who came out it was nice to have some entertainment within a few minutes walk rather than having to drive somewhere.

A cold front is supposed to move in tomorrow so we will be looking at cold weather again for most of this  week with overnight temperatures going down to as low as 2 C. Brrrr!  Anna had a repairman here today to check out our furnace and our hot water tank as both need fixing. Unfortunately, it is going to be very costly.

Keep warm.

McAllen Travel Show

 

Today our friends Wes and Jude took us to McAllen to the Travel Show. The Travel Show was held in the new Convention Centre which was a massive building surrounded on each side by arches, palm trees and lots of shrubs. As you can see from the picture on the left, there was even a waterfall and large pond.

Inside the Centre there  was a very wide selection of booths set up that represented  much of the local  area and many of the nearby states. We picked up a lot  of information  about things to see and do at various places and nearly all of the booths gave us free stuff which consisted of everything from fridge magnets to sunglasses. We also managed to pick up some coupon books.

They even had a mermaid there who looked like she was having a whole lot of fun playing the role. It brought a lot of attention to the booth behind her that was promoting all sorts of cruises and fishing expeditions.

 

There was a  Mexican Artisan Expo happening there also  and there were rows of tables set up displaying many different types of art from Mexican artists that were both local and from other states. I picked up a couple of things for my friends and a pair of earrings for myself. Some of the bead work and needle work was very beautiful. They also had demonstrations where we watched people make pictures and bookmarks out of small colored straws that were some kind of grain or grass.

On display at the far end of the room were many travel trailers and motor homes. We toured them all and decided that any of them would do us quite nicely if they happened to be giving them away. Unfortunately, they were for display only so we had to leave without one. We did do some dreaming about what it would be like to have one. There certainly was lots of room in them. Some of them had three slide-outs and came complete with  a fireplace.

 

I think a person could live very comfortably in most of the ones we looked at. They ranged in price from about $32,000 for a trailer to $125,000 for the largest motorhome.

Stay warm.