Happy New Year!

Hello, friends around the world! Did you think I had evaporated? Really, two separate times I had a blog post almost entirely written, and then an interruption came and I unthinkingly closed the magnetic cover on my iPad. With that almost-inaudible click, POOF! All my words and pictures disappeared! Talk about discouraging! So today I'm playing it smart. I took the cover off my iPad and put it across the room. If I get interrupted I won't accidentally erase my labors by automatically clicking it shut. Maybe today you'll actually get to hear from me!

It's a cool, cloudy day, but I'm as cozy as can be. In the sunroom, overlooking the bay, snuggled up in my favorite blanket. What a way to spend the morning!

Here's the view I get to enjoy with just a slight turn of my head:

Not trying to make you jealous, I'm just setting the scene....

First order of business: HAPPY NEW YEAR! I've written that to you several times now, but THIS time you're actually going to get to read it and receive our sincerest wishes for a New Year filled with joy and peace.

Curt felt I should give a recap of the blog this past year. I won't go through all our adventures again...you can read about those in detail if you want to scroll back through the previous posts. But I will say that between June 10 when we set off from Kerrville, Texas and November 10 when we moved into our rented beach cottage in Rockport-Fulton, Texas, we covered over 11,000 miles in 5 months. We visited family and old friends along the way, made some wonderful new friends, found some new favorite places, saw some breathtaking scenery all up and down the Eastern part of the U.S. and Maritime Provinces of Canada. We loved every bit of our trip, and we want to do it again. But first, this coming summer, we plan to take a similar trip up the western side of the U.S. and Canada.

We started out in our pop-up tent camper...

...and returned to Texas in Lucy, our new 23' travel trailer.

I had a wonderful time most evenings (and often very late into the night or wee morning hours!) chronicling our adventures on the blog. And I want to thank all you faithful readers for visiting it, and recommending it to your friends. I'm thrilled with all the visitors and "regulars" who have come to read about our travels. Just a few stats about the blog itself:

We've had almost 6300 visits from more than countries 22 countries....the ones listed below, plus a few others I can remember: Bulgaria, Japan, Estonia, United Kingdom, Spain, and more.

And many friends have come back again and again. I've visited via email with old friends as they've commented on various blog posts (I think it's still a difficult process to actually place a comment on the blog and I apologize for that...but I'm not tech savvy enough to figure out how to make it easier!). And I've made some new email friends as a result of the blog...someone has shared the address with them, thinking they might be interested in one post or another. I've visited with quilters, knitters, musicians, painters, and travel enthusiasts whom I've never met, and have enjoyed every contact and conversation. Thank you all so much for your support! Without the encouragement of knowing that someone was actually reading the blog, I'm sure I would have quit long ago, as each post takes 2-3 hours to do!

But now, to begin catching you up on the past month, as I haven't been overly diligent with the blog. I'll start with a little bit of backtracking here and will continue in future posts as I get more photos...because lots of writing without something to look at makes for a dull blog!

Here's a view from our yard looking our toward Lamar, a peninsula to the north of Fulton. It's where Goose Island State Park is found, the campground where we stayed for a few impatient days in early November while we waited to be able to move into our cottage. I caught this photo one evening as the setting sun glinted off the windows of a Catholic Convent there. A few days later we headed over to Lamar to see the Convent, and we spent a lovely hour strolling around the peaceful grounds.

The chapel...outside and inside.

We attended a Naturalist-led bird walk/watch at Goose Island State Park. It was a cloudy, drizzly morning, but that made for some beautiful skies and some great birdwatching!

Most of the birds were not close enough to see without binoculars...hence, the photos of the birders rather than the birds!!

Afterward, Curt and I drove around the peninsula, and we did find a pair of whooping cranes with one immature young (the one in the middle). Again, the distance was great, but because the cranes are so endangered, we'd rather give you a less-than-optimal photo than approach too closely and risk scaring the cranes from their comfortable spot.

Speaking of birds, another day Curt handed me the bag of bread crumbs and announced that today I would be the ones to feed the seagulls. Hmmmm...I'm more comfortable with taking the photos of that particular activity than actually participating in it. But I was game to try. 

What may appear at first glance to be a smile was actually a grimace. Just as I had thought, being surrounded by dozens (felt like hundreds!) of flapping, screaming birds was not my idea of fun!

So I handed the bag back to Curt, and he embraced them fully! To each his own!

I have mentioned that I joined the choir at the First United Methodist Church in Rockport. Our choir director, Ouida Richardson, had us all over to her house for an Epiphany Party. In the invitation, she mentioned that she would serve Kings Bread. Not being from south Texas, I'd never heard of that, so I was interested to see what she meant. I was in for a treat to experience a long-standing tradition. For those of you who, like me, are in the dark, I'll enlighten you.

Kings Bread, or Rosca de Reyes, is a bread that is baked especially to commemorate the journey of the Wise Men to find the Infant Jesus. It is baked fresh daily in bakeries all over Mexico and south Texas, and it sells out almost the moment it is packaged in the specially decorated boxes. Ouida had to beg on the phone in order to get the bakery to hold back a loaf for her until she could pick it up an hour later!

Here's the loaf, or ring, uncovered. We put a choir member's hand in the photo so you can see how big it actually is. Definitely wouldn't fit in your average home oven!

I'm sure there's some significance to the colors and placement of the mounds and stripes of frosting, but I don't know what they signify. However, there is a tiny plastic "Baby Jesus" baked somewhere inside the loaf, to signify the flight of the Holy Family to escape Herod's massacre of all infant children under the age of two. Tradition says that whoever gets the Baby in their piece of bread is responsible to host and provide the tamales for a party in February.

Ouida brought out a wonderful collection of keepsakes given to her by a dear friend, as she told the story of the Magi. In this beautiful box...

...were a scroll telling the story...

And velvet pouches of gold, frankincense and myrrh:

Then the excitement began, to see who would get the Baby in their piece of bread. Ouida told us that we could choose our piece from anywhere on the ring we wanted...no need for adjacent slices. So everyone started sizing up the loaf and figuring whether we'd take a piece with or without icing, and where on the loaf we'd make our cuts. Who would be hosting next month's tamale party??

The suspense ended quickly when Dennis, Ouida's husband, cut the first slice for himself, and the Baby fell right into his hand! We all laughed to think that they have to go through all the preparations for a party again so soon! Curt and I are thinking, however, that we might spare them the trouble. We've been wanting to open our home to a group, and perhaps we can take that responsibility from the Richardsons!

Curt always finds someone to talk with...especially over a pot of delicious meatballs!

Toward the end of the evening, their son Stephen, who is a music major at Texas State University in San Marcos, treated us to some beautiful piano music. 

What a lovely evening spent with new friends!

That's enough for now. Have to get ready to go to work. Oh, you didn't know that I'm a working girl again? Well, you'll just have to check back in a few days to find out more about that, and the other things we've been doing. See you soon!