Port Isabel Lighthouse, Turtles & New Years Eve with the girls

Tuesday December 30th, 2014

We decided to go to Port Isabel today to look at and show Brenda, LeeAnn & Aimee the lighthouse.  We were going to take our car but decided to take Brenda's van as there is more room and it would be more comfortable.  It is quite a drive and took over two hours but the girls did well.  Aimee and I played "Guess Who" for part of the way.

They are renovating the lighthouse keepers cottage, so we were unable to go inside it but the lighthouse was open for climbing.

Port Isabel Lighthouse

This interesting tree was in the grounds by the lighthouse.  Would be a good climbing tree.

This bird was hidden in the branches and making quite a noise.  He made me search for him.  We always seem to have a black bird wherever we go and it always makes a lot of noise.  We think it is Sue's dad.  Sometimes there is a white one, which always seems to be in appropriate places for Bryan's dad.

I decided I wasn't going to climb this lighthouse as my back has been hurting a bit recently and I didn't want to make it any worse, so I stayed at the bottom and took pictures.

Bryan took this picture of me, as I was getting ready to take the next picture of him and the girls at the top of the lighthouse

Bryan, LeeAnn & Aimee looking down from the top of the lighthouse.  Brenda was up there as well but I didn't manage to get a picture of her looking down at me.

Only six people were allowed up at a time and there were soon more people waiting to go up but I managed to get this picture of them as they came out at the bottom after coming back down.  Brenda's at the edge of the picture.

Bryan, LeeAnn & Brenda at the end of their lighthouse tour.

We had to go to the Chamber of Commerce across the road to get our lighthouse passport book stamped.  These statues were on the way.

Aimee & I found this ape to sit on.

We decided to look around the Treasures of the Gulf Museum.  It was free to military, which was a plus. They still had their Christmas tree and nativity up.

There was a children's area there and the girls had fun with a puppet theatre.  They both put on a show which I unfortunately missed as I was in the gift shop but arrived just as LeeAnn was starting a second show and Aimee decided to dance on the stage.  I took this VIDEO mostly of the puppet show.

After looking around the museum we were feeling a bit hungry and decided to have lunch at Pirates Landing

Aimee posed as the pirate!!!

And we all had fun with this one.

After a nice lunch where we sat at a table looking out over the water we went over the bridge to South Padre Island 

where we visited Sea Turtle Inc., a volunteer place that works on turtle conservation.  There are turtle cams on the website where you can watch the turtles, although they are not always working.

Sue, LeeAnn & Aimee by the sea turtle sand sculpture

 

This turtle was waving at us

This was the view of the lighthouse on the way back over the bridge. 

The back of Pirates Landing restaurant with the water view from the bridge. This picture shows the World's Largest Fly Road and Reel but you will have trouble seeing it.  It is the yellow pole in front of the third tree from the right.  If you look closely you can see the top of the rod above the tree. I got this piece of information from Roadside America, which is a website that people use to list attractions that they have found in different places that you might otherwise not find out about.  

We headed back home after a fun day out with the girls and they slept on the way home.

Wednesday December 31st, 2014

New Years Eve - Another year has flown by.  The days have long gone when we went out and partied the New Year in but we still have fond memories of them.  Sorry about the blurry picture but I had to restore it from our scanned pictures and it was the best I could do.

Our first New Years Eve 1987-88 with best friend Chrissie.  Look at my glasses, oh my!!!!

Nowadays we have just as much fun staying in and avoiding the crowds.  This year we looked after LeeAnn and Aimee so Brenda, John & Collette could go out.  We had so much fun, watching movies and eating popcorn and no alcohol.  We didn't realize until we were discussing it later that we didn't even have a drink to toast the New Year, ha!! ha!! 

We watched Planes, Frozen and Country Bears.  It was the first time we had seen Planes and Frozen and we both enjoyed them.  Listen to this VIDEO of the girls singing.  Did you recognize the song?

Aimee's impression of a monster worm using her sleeping bag

LeeAnn was enjoying herself

but she tired herself out and was asleep before midnight

Aimee stayed awake and we took a selfie at midnight.  We still look remarkably awake!!

Bryan & Sue's New Year picture

We managed to stay awake until midnight but it wasn't long after that and we were all asleep in our beds.

See you next year………….