and it is really good in large
Here is the pool from the other direction (opposite from my first entry). I took this from the water slide platform. We hung out at the farthest pool. Because of the way they are connected with waterfalls, we were at the lowest one in elevation. We always got a good table with a nice umbrella for shade. On the last day, we got one next to the music speakers, which was really great, since the music list they were playing was perfect.
That is Munchie, Trainwreck, and Dad hanging out by the bar stools as they watch the kids jumping off of and playing around the waterfall.
That would be Texas Seestor, Munchie, and Trainwreck hanging out in the pool.
A little out of order, but that is the sunrise photo I shot on the first morning. I walked out on the balcony, was pleasantly surprised at the humidity and the sound of the ocean, and was joyous that I caught the sunrise.
And speaking of mornings, this next pic is one of Munchie licking the cream cheese off of her breakfast bagel.
I guess she really loves cream cheese, as it turns out. And the funny thing is that the first thing she does when she gets a piece of bread, is licks it to see if there is cream cheese or butter on it. It almost breaks your heart when she gets just plain bread and you see her lick it and lick it, trying to find the cream cheese or butter. But it is so dang cute, you don't feel sorry for her for long.
Let's see, what other pics can I put up here...
This is a photo that Dad took of me watching the waves the night before the hurricane hit the area south of us.
And here is a photo that Texas Seestor took with her camera of the waves that night. My photos don't look very good. I was so busy taking these wide shots to encompass the feeling of seeing such a large stretch of rough surf, that I didn't really get good close-ups.
We hung out on the balcony for a while that night. I like this one of Munchie because of the railing, I think.
And here I am playing Super Mario Galaxy (at least I think that is what it was called) with the Wii on our one rainy day.
We didn't go to the aquarium, because there were tornado warnings around the area, but we stayed in and had a lot of fun playing games. I also played a lot of Mario Kart, which is a driving game. I really love driving games.
And while I am on the topic of our rainy day, I will mention that we really lucked out and our next day (which was our last full day) was nice enough that we hung out at the pool again all day. It was really terrific.
On our last morning, we walked down the boardwalk to the beach to see the state of the waves and beach. And then Texas Seestor and I went down the water slide 6 or 7 times! It was a blast and a great way to end our time there.
I know I'm skipping around some, but here are a couple shots of us playing.
And here was a moment when Munchie got so close when we were playing that she was standing on my hand. ;-) Actually, I think she might've been coming for my camera.
And I think I will end with this photo. In this one, Munchie is pointing out at the ocean and the birds and saying "See!" It is one of her favorite things to do.
All in all, it was a wonderfully fantastical fabuloso vacation. :-D
Posted by danielle at 02:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
We made it to Port Aransas and are having a wonderful time.
The day we arrived, we had time to go to this pool and check out 4 of the 5 pools. I also went down the 2 slides. The closed one is kind of spooky because it was black inside, but the open one was a lot of fun.
That first night, we went to the hot tub too. It felt sooooooooooooo good. And they have so many hot tubs that we almost got to have it all to ourselves!
We've spent most of the time at the pool. Specifically the one that is on the lower part of the picture. I took that picture from the restaurant, BTW. I am unable to upload more than one or two pictures while I am here at the condo. It took at least 20 min, if not more, in order to just do that one photo. I'll have to do more once we get back to Texas Seestor's place.
We went to the beach a couple of times. Most recently, we went to the beach to see the crazy surf that is stirred up because of hurricane Dolly. I don't know if anyone has put 2 and 2 together, but at one point, we were predicted to be in the northern part of the potential path. Now, it is south of here, and we are just getting rain. So, we are glad we had a few really good weather days. And really more pleased that we aren't in the path and had to evacuate.
I've been having a ton of fun with my niece. I've played with her a lot, but most noteworthy is that we played in the pool for a really long time yesterday. Well, long for her. She usually only makes it about 30 min before getting too tired. And we were out 40 min and I had her for most of that time. It was really a great time.
I also played with her for a couple of hours this morning. She really likes to play chase or follow. Fortunately, there is a really good loop of hallways around the condo, which is just perfect.
The best part is when she reaches for me to hold her. She really adjusted to me on the 2nd day. I don't know how much she remembers and how much she is just comfortable with new people (or if I remind her of my seestor), but it makes me really happy.
I've been so busy with her, or with just laying around in the pool, that I've barely been online and haven't read my book at all. But I Have taken lots of pictures (of course). I'm looking forward to uploading them.
It looks like with today's rain, we are going to go to a local aquarium. I always love aquariums and evidently my niece really likes to look at the fishies too. She is really into pointing and saying "see!" ;-)
Can you tell I'm enamored? :-D
Talk to you later!
Posted by danielle at 11:23 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Betcha can't guess where we all went while we were visiting Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, and Munchie (formerly Baby Texas Bunny) in Texas!
That's right! The fair and rodeo!
uh oh. That would be three statements using exclamation points. hmmm... well, I guess I'm in a good mood thinking about our time in Texas.
So, where was I?
Oh yes.
One of the first things we saw when we walked in were the looooooooonghorns, as Sheryl says (in a comment on Flickr).
Yes, very long.
And just in case you decided to get too close and get stabbed by one of the horns, they had their safety disclaimer.
Note the Texas flags in the distance in the photo.
As we headed toward the livestock, we saw some guys doing rope tricks.
Then we were off to see the livestock! We walked in the barn, saw about 3 things of interest and couldn't decide which direction to go. Well, I knew where I wanted to go, and that was toward more longhorns.
Most of them were only a year or two old, so their horns were still pretty short. But boy did they have impressive coats.
Isn't the baby just adorable? So precious.
After walking through the longhorns, we wandered through the goats. After a while, it had that "you've seen one goat, you've seen them all" sort of feel to it. Boy were there a lot of goats.
That was one of the recalcitrant goats. That would be one of two we saw that day that did Not want to go where their handler wanted to take them.
"grumble, grumble, stubborn ol' things"
We watched the showing of the longhorns in the arena for a while and saw the judges doing their judging from horseback - which was unexpected, but made sense once you thought about it since the longhorns had to cover a lot of ground to show off their stride, etc.
And we headed to the mini herfordshires. Mini Herfords? Mini Herfordshires? one or the other. We'll just call them The Mini Cool Brown Cows with the White Head and Feet. Cattle, technically, but I didn't grow up around cattle, so I tend to say cows without thinking. Must've been all those "A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is for Cow" books when I was growing up.
They had the longest, whitest eyelashes. I wish I'd been able to get a good photo of them, but it is one of those things I'll just have to tuck away in my memory since I don't have a picture.
so cute. I love their big white heads. I call that one patterns II. (roman numeral 2, of course)
Do you see the pattern?
I called this next one patterns I.
Those are actually longhorns, by the way, so I'm skipping around a bit. But I liked the pattern of the spots on their BEhinds, their tails and legs.
I got to pet one of the Mini Cool Brown Cows with the White Head and Feet. Dad has the photo of that. Maybe one day he'll put it on Flickr (hint, hint, Dad). Its hair was very coarse and scratchy. Not soft at all, like it looks. But it did have a bit of a wave of curl in it, which was very cute close up.
We headed to the petting (zoo) part of the building and lo' and behold!
What's a kangaroo doing at a Texas Fair!?
Who knows. But it was interesting to see. Very skittish. I didn't get to touch it, like I'd hoped. It seemed mostly interested in the people who had the little cups of food to give them.
That was the case with most of the animals in the petting area. They only wanted to see you if you had food.
The goat, evidently, thought my camera could substitute for food.
The deer didn't seem to care either way.
Aren't those deer kind of strange looking? They have such big heads. Almost like donkey heads.... very odd. But I guess they really are deer, as odd as they seem to me. I forget which kind of deer. Hmmm. This would be where the Texas folk could chime in, if they so desired, and show off their nature smarts.
We made one more pass through the longhorns and look what we found!
The mommy cow and the baby cow were standing up!
I love how their coats match so closely. I guess this is one baby that resembles its mommy.
Wait a minute. Is that really the same one as before? The mom has the same white blaze on her forehead, but their positions are backwards now. (before, they were tied to the railing with the baby on the left). Hmmm.... maybe they got shown in the arena in the meantime and got shifted around. That might explain why they are standing up now.
What do you think? Are they the same ones as in the earlier picture where they were lying down?
Either way, aren't they pretty?
We ended our trip by my listening to some music while the others looked at the 'fair' part of the locale.
And that was the finale to our day's adventure.
- The End -
;-)
P.S. Munchie slept through the whole thing. Can you believe she missed her first fair and rodeo?! No cows, no goats, no kangaroo...
.... no Mini Cool Brown Cows with the White Head and Feet.
Ah well, I know there will be a next time. Maybe if we're lucky in the petting area the goat will try to eat her dress. Tee hee, that happened to someone else I know when she was little...
... or was it her sandals? hmmm... maybe she'll tell us. hint, hint. ;-D
P.P.S.
Texas Seestor came through with the photo!
Posted by danielle at 06:59 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
I mentioned some time ago that once the baby announcements went out for Baby Texas Bunny I would post the photo here.
Well, the one sent to me took quite a bit longer to get here, and then I got involved in posting the flower and fuzzy friend photos. But here it is!
The lighting may look a little strange on a computer monitor, depending on what kind of screen you have, but printed out, it looks really nice. A bit unusual, but that is what makes it special.
Happy Friday, everyone. :-)
By the way, today is Texas Seestor's birthday! Happy Birthday, Seeeeeeeeeestor.
Posted by danielle at 02:13 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
I have so many pictures of Baby Texas Bunny that I like that I almost don't know where to start with posting them.
For now, I will post another one or two that I like a lot.
That one looks like she is floating in space doesn't it? But I like it because she looks kind of active in it, and she stands out pretty well on the black.
Oh, and Happy New Year to all of you too! I'm back in MN now, so I hope to be coming by everyone's blogs and catching up.
Posted by danielle at 09:10 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
I was amazed at how leetle Baby Texas Bunny looked as she was getting her bath.
And how cute she looked afterward wrapped up in her towel.
Posted by danielle at 11:02 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
This was the first that I got to hold my niece. See how she has ahold of my fingers. She is just too precious. It has been a lot of fun holding her and seeing her facial expressions. Or looking at her as other people hold her or she swings in her swing or plays on her mat. Heck, just about any time. ;-)
I'm starting to get quite a collection of pictures of Baby Texas Bunny and I've only been here for one full day!
Here is one with Grandma holding her in natural light.
I'm trying to take more photos with natural light, but sometimes the brightness makes her frown. So, I'll just be doing my best this week.
Posted by danielle at 12:02 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack