SATURDAY NIGHT DANCING

The Cruisers were playing a Mission Bell last night.  They are one of our favorite live bands down here, so we and two other couples went there for the evening.  

Good Music

Good Company

And a good time was had by all. 

 

This is my favorite activity here in Texas.  You can go dancing almost every night all over the Valley.  It's, BYOB, and the cost is minimal.  Gotta love it. 

 

 

 

 

LETS GO FLY A KITE.

This weekend was the S.P.I.K.E. Kite Festival. 

 

 

 

That's the South Padre Island Kite Enthusiasts that put of a kite flying demo on the beach in South Padre Island. 







    

 There was such an assembly of kites the sky was full of them and it was hard to know where to look, and that built during the day

 

There were so many awesome individual kites that people had brought and put up. 

 

Then there are the EXTRA LARGE blow up type kites that have to be anchored to a vehicle or a huge land anchor.  They are enormous. 

 

 

 Then last, but certainly not least, there was a display of synchronized kite flying, by teams of flyers, that were absolutely AMAZING. 

 

The first was a team of 4 men with 4 kites that zoomed them around and in a out, over and under each other, with me constantly saying, "How the heck do they do that, without getting them all tangled up in each other."  

 

 

 

And here are some of the fliers that accomplish these amazing feats. 

 

They not only watch there kites but they have to kinda dance around to avoid bumping into each other. 

 

Then there was a 6 kite, 6 flyer team, that also did more AMAZING kite flying. 

 

Oh, and by the way, I forgot to mention,

 

THEY DO IT ALL SYNCHRONIZED TO MUSIC!!!

 

I have never done this before but I took a couple of little video clips of these performances, but I can't figure out how to down load them to this Blog.  I will do some research and see if there is some way to post them, and maybe post them at a later date, because still photos certainly do not do them justice. 

 

 

ALL IN ALL IT WAS A FACINATING AND AMAZING DAY. 

.   

 

 

THE NEW WINDOW HAS BEEN INSTALLED

When we came to Texas, we knew we had a broken window to deal with.  Our friends had put a plastic covered cardboard over it to protect the interior from the rain, but once we arrived we knew we had to deal with it.   On January 24th Dan removed the damaged window and took it in to be repaired. 

 

The damaged window has finally been repaired.  They called and we picked it up yesterday, and Dan installed it today.  So, that is the last of the repairs we had to do, from the severe storm that went through here a few days after we left last spring. 

GLAD THAT CHORE IS OVER. 

 

 

Tomorrow is a fun day. 

 

Stay tuned. 

A BREAK FROM THE HEAT

We have been suffering through quite a few days of 85/90 F  28/32 C days here with very high humidity.  So, it's been very hot and muggy.  This week we are looking forward to mid 70s F  24C and dry. 


 On Monday it was hot and windy and we had our first lesson, on how to play shuffle board.  Parts of it is like Curling, but without having to handle those heavy stones.  It was fun, so I think we will continue with this. 

When it gets hot and muggy, like it was last week, you start to think about closing everything up and putting on the air conditioning.  But, I hate doing that.  If I'm going to stay indoors all the time because of the weather I might as well have stayed at home in Manitoba.  So, we suffered through it and now are enjoying this break in the weather.  It's supposed to stay moderate right through until next Monday, when it's back up to mid 80s, but I don't see how they can predict that far in advance, so we will wait and see. 

 

 

 

 

OFF TO THE RODEO

This was our first experience going to a Rodeo type of competition.     The Bull in this picture was quite agitated and was put in with these little calves.  We were told it was to calm him down.  And it seemed to work. 

 



The rest of the bulls seemed quite calm.  I was quite fascinated with how they moved them through the complicated system of chutes to sort them into the right chute for the next cowboys ride. 

 

 
Then came a lot of flag waving for Texas, all the sponsors, then the National Anthem.

Then the real action started.

It was oibvious that technology has also caught up with the Cowboys, after a successful or unsuccessful ride, you have to send a text about it. 

And before their ride you see most of these boys saying a little prayer. 

The thing I found to be the most fun to watch was the calf scramble. They invited all the children under 10 to come into the ring.  Then they released those three little calves that were calming that bull earlier.  All the calves had red ribbons tied to their tails and whichever of the children was able to grab a ribbon got a prize. 


 

It was kayos but really comical to watch. 

Then of course it was back to the professionals again. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All in all it was "Interesting", and certainly something I have never experienced before.  Dan has been watching this kind of thing on TV for years, but I don't think I will be interested in seeing it again.