Houston from the plane ...

This post is of course waaaayyy overdue, but here you have it!
A lot has happened in the last 2 months. We went to Europe for 7 weeks, came back (already for 3), and we moved to a different location, so I've got a lot of ground to cover!
To not make you fall asleep of boredom, I've compromised everything a little, pictures as well as the story, so I hope I've not left too much out altogether. Here we go!

Since we're always tight on funds, I'd usually go back home by myself over the recent years, but when we realized that James hadn't been there in 11 years (!), we figured it was time for both of us to go this time around.
That, and the fact that my mother pitched in for my ticket, and my aunt and niece for nearly half of James'! How awesome is that?!

The two of us leaving caused a lot more plotting and planning than usual, (pet-sitter, truck and RV storage), but the day finally arrived!

Since James was all done with his current job, we decided to leave Hammond 2 days earlier than planned and set up at the Farr equestrian Park in Baton Rouge, at a nice site overlooking an equestrian center with some pretty meadows and horses.






We dropped off Merlin at our cat-sitter Trudy and her daughter Elisabeth, whom we had found through Craigslist, and had met already a couple of weeks ago for a meet and greet.
For the next  couple of days, we drove over in the mornings and evenings to to their home, to teach them how to test Merlin and shoot his insulin.

The weather was beautiful so we also did some golfing at two very nice city parks, and just took it easy for a few days.

At one of the parks, a bunch of guys played cricket. Definitely a first for us, I thought that kind of activity was extinct!

 

We took a stroll through the 'Bluebonnet Swamp', a pretty little city swamp that was saved from being totally wiped out and build up during the building frenzy of the last couple of years.

No alligators here, and because it was the middle of the day not too much wildlife was stirring at all, but we met a few tiny lizards and turtles and as always, there were birds ...

     

                             White Ibis (left) and Cattle Egret

This Little Blue Heron (I think) hang out in front of us on the fence around the meadow ... pretty little dude!

It was tough to leave our precious boy behind, but we felt he was in good hands, so on Sunday we drove to Egan, 140 miles to the west to the Cajun Haven RV Park..

Although we'd planned to store the RV a little further down the road in Lake St Charles, we realized that we probably might as well leave it there in Egan, if they had space to do so. Turned out they did, and for pretty cheap too!

So the next morning we left for Houston, after filling up the gas tanks and setting up the little solar panel we had acquired, in the hope to keep the fridge running while we were gone (little did we know!).

We arrived in Houston around 1 pm and played some golf at the nearby municipal course, until we met with James' cousin Cheri at her house in Galveston, the southern part of Houston, where we stayed for the next 2 nights and days.

We went for a drive to Galveston, a nice little beach town, just an hour south of Houston.

            

Pretty summer houses line parts of the long, wide beaches and several 'pleasure' piers are jutting out into the ocean ...

You can pay for your parking by phone ?!

                          

It was a beautiful day, although windy, and lots of pelicans soared overhead ...

Well, time for us to 'soar' too ... although we had to use one of United's planes to do so.
Fortunately the weather was fine (Houston has it's share of big bad thunderstorms in the summer) and the rest of the 9 hour flight was also rather uneventful.

The yellow in the pictures are actually some late tulip fields near Amsterdam, as seen from our window during landing ...

As planned, I applied immediately after landing at Schiphol for a new passport at a recently opened counter of the city of Hoofddorp, established especially for people who live abroad (previously I'd had to go to The Hague for that). Cool beans!
Right after that we took the train north to Den Helder, where we were welcomed by my entire family who seemed to be happy to see us .... (so far ...).



We went for a celebratory dinner to the Italian restaurant that, as long as I remember, we always visit when we have anything to celebrate, Costa Smeralda.
For the next 7 weeks we stayed at my Mom's 3d story apartment, which is right in the middle of town, on top of James favorite store the HEMA, and from which you have a great view over the city.

OK, first things first (right?), we checked out the local golf course and ended up buying a few 10-round (9 hole) passes over the next weeks.

It's a nice little course, and we enjoyed playing 9 holes together in the evenings. James had fun with the men's 'league' on Monday and Wednesday mornings, they even made him an 'honorary member' in the end!

                                       

But one of the main reasons to go to Holland for 7 weeks this time, instead of the usual 3-4, was to help my Mom spruce up the new garden-plot and 'house' she bought recently. 

Most of the cleaning up and tearing down of the badly overgrown grounds and neglected little cabin had already been done by my sister and nieces in the weeks prior to us arriving.

Now it was time to re-landscape, renovate and paint!
So, the front door got glass:

    

... one of the windows was repaired and the other taken out entirely and replaced by a much larger one!

James did a lot of re-paving:

While my sister Monique and myself successfully put together a little IKEA cabinet!

And than we did a LOT of painting!

I didn't take any pictures while working on it (I know, shame on me) but the end result was just beautiful ...we even put carpet inside!

                                 

We re-designed (and added to) the grass area, put up a trellis and also happened to pick up a discarded little pond that was just the perfect size for one of the borders next to the little patio area ...

In the meantime we battled some serious weeds in the borders and between the pavers, that kept on growing as soon as we turned our backs ...

After most of the work in the garden was done, we worked on a project my sister needed some help with. She has a corner row-house, and the outside wall of what was going to be her 'new' bedroom needed some insulation before winter.

So, James put up Styrofoam and new drywall, eliminating the little window in that wall altogether, painted the ceilings and prepped the walls for new paint as well.
Another project done!

OK, so far about the ‘working’ part of this trip but of course we had some badly needed R&R too.  Since this post is getting a little on the long side, I’ll start a new one and will talk a little about what we did for ‘fun’ (although we really enjoyed the ‘creative’ part too).

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Ahwww, how sweet! I guess it's that time of the year  ...

Well, we've settled in once again and are 'sort-of happy' with our new spot.

It's roomy and shady and quiet, but when it rains ... it turns out we're in another low spot.... and yes, it did rain! A lot! Again!

Can you believe it?! I'm so done with this rain!

Fortunately, we 'only' got a few inches and it drained pretty fast but Houston, on the other hand, flooded completely this time!

Again, properties were lost and people drowned ... this is a horrible year for weather so far!

At our park, people are slowly cleaning up their sites from the 'big one' a few weeks ago. 

Many of the regular/permanent people that have RV's parked here, had build some kind of a deck around them, and although most of the RV's were pulled out during the evacuation, many of these structures have been destroyed.

There are quite some people who have given up and are bailing out ...

                                                              

The owners of the campground, Nita and Roy, are still working on their structures, cabins and bathrooms, and after that they still have the grounds to clean up  ....

Lot's of stuff got caught up in the swamp/bayou. What a mess ...

OK, time for some fun!
We arrived back in the area just in time for the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival.

 

A tell-tale sign of the sub-tropical climate here is the fact that this strawberry festival takes place annually on the second weekend in April. There's places in other states that are still dealing with snow on the ground!
Ponchatoula is known as the "Strawberry Capital of the World". At the turn of the 20th century the local area changed its chief industry from lumber to commercial farming and the main produce was the strawberry.

So, despite the recent floods, this little town set up to party! 
We went early, warned by locals that the crowds and roads were going to be crazy later in the day, and walked the fair grounds.
We watched a game of egg-throwing. This one even involved the 'Strawberry King' himself:

Being the area's major charity funding event, churches, clubs and service organizations had set up shop on the festival grounds to raise money.
This year, some of the profits were going to the victims of the floods.



Unfortunately, this means that everything is waaay over-prized! 

It didn't hold us back from buying a strawberry/chocolate funnel cake though. We had our mind set on 'something strawberry' for coffee, so we went for it. 

Unfortunately it was a disappointment. Although I liked the funnel cake, I really didn't care for the canned (!) gooey strawberry stuff on top. Bleh! You'd think they use fresh strawberries at a strawberry festival?!

Let me see, what else did we do?
Oh, well, we played golf, of course! We checked off three (!) courses of our 'Golf Crescent City' card!
The first one was Oak Harbor in Slidell, about an hour to the east of us.

It was a rather grey day, but without wind, and the temperatures were perfect.




This links-type course is very nice, although water comes into play on 12 holes (sigh), and it's nicely maintained.
We had a good time and a pretty good round also, for a change!

We played the next course  a couple of days later, since James finished one job and had to wait a day to start the next.

This one was in La Place, about 45 minutes south-west of us.

Another beautiful course, although, as a reminder of the latest floods, a few of the fairways and cart-paths still had some water on it ...

I especially liked this course since there were 'pink' tees, which were placed waaaay forward, so even a short hitter like me could be on the green in regulation!

James had a lot of 'fun' in the sand-traps ....

And last weekend we went back to Slidell to play another course there, the Pinewood Country Club. 

 

The thick trees that line some of the narrow fairways can make for tricky shots and many of the greens are small and fast.
It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and the course was pretty much full, which unfortunately made for very slow play ...

Other than that, I've got not much else to rapport, other than a few shots of our campground's resident Peacocks ...

Yes, you're a stud!

Because of spring, the two males are constantly calling out (have you ever hear a Peacock scream? It's LOUD!) and occasionally there's some fighting!

Merl' thinks they're too big to be bothered looking at them, and of course he can't hear them anyway ...
He has a new favorite sleeping space ... an old box, under the front of the RV. 
If you have a cat you know how this goes; you buy them an expensive fluffy bed and than they choose a cardboard box ...

Oh, I almost forgot, (and guess who else?), it was my birthday yesterday!
James 'surprised' me on this day with coming home early and taking me golfing, when I discovered he had Kim, the golf-pro re-grip my clubs, besides also getting me some new balls. 
Which in itself was very nice, but also really hilarious, because he'd totally forgotten it was my birthday, didn't congratulate me, it was just pure coincidence he did all this.
I didn't say anything, waited it out, and it took until 4pm, after some careful hints, that he saw the light!


Any-who, as a present to myself, I'd gotten me some new (golf) shoes too!

These are so cool! They're Dawgs, 'the world's lightest' golf shoes, and look basically like a sort of Crocs with spikes. 
Now, I know not everybody wants to be seen in Crocs, but I happen to love them, and I like these a lot. Super-light and airy!

We went out to dinner at a neighborhood cafe, just around the corner from the campground.

James was very happy with his mega-pile of fried onion-rings ...

And I was very happy to discover they had fresh boiled Crawfish that on the menu for the day!

A lot of work, but yumm!