It is Done!

Our blog is done changing. It started with my lasted idea of additional revenue. I wanted to add a left sidebar to the blog so that I could display the new page element nicely. How hard can it be to change a layout??? Well, it is a lot harder than you would think. I looked at the HTML code for about an hour and even though I can identify the page elements in it, that does not mean I know how to change or add one.

A friend of mine had given me the link to a web page maker. Now when any program asks you to install something and your spyware program says "be careful", listen to your spyware program. It took me 24 hours to undo what had all installed on my hard drive and my computer at one point did not even want to start anymore. So I became more careful and searched blogger websites for a template that would look nice. I found the first one, installed it on the our site to find out after recreating all the features of the two sidebars that the background motive was now covered up by the left sidebar. To make a long story short, it took me six hours to get our website to look good again. The experience gave me a few new gray hairs and a newly found respect for the people that create all these templates that work so easily when it is all setup for you already.

It is good to have friends. The website was finally done again and I told my girlfriend to go and check it out. She looked at the website, left a nice little comment and nothing happened with my new page element. The lesson of that day was that you have to actually interact with the page element for it to have any effect. I have seen the same kind of page element on other peoples sites and I will make it a point to interact with them to recognize the effort that the author has put into making the page element.

When traveling in a RV it seems that birthdays and anniversaries are just not that big of a deal anymore. Well, I just had by 49th (watch out for the big one next year!!!) on Friday and we had a great day. Doug and I went to the opening of an animated movie matinee in the afternoon and we went out for dinner with three of our neighbors. We had a great time and Donna served us sugar-free popsicle for desert at their site. We sat around talking till almost 8 pm. It is nice to have good friends.

Well, we have been here since the end of October 2008 and it is time to get moving again. Time really flew this season and we are a little slow in getting our butts in gear, but we should be off by the middle of the month. That means that the posts should come more frequently. Our first adventure will be "digging for diamonds" in Arkansas. I can start see myself in a pile of dirt digging like crazy and Doug looking at me in total disbelieve. I just know that it will be totally cool. See you all later!

Our Blog is changing

I have added a new feature to our blog and there is a little story that goes with it. About a year ago I started looking for a small supplemental income. Being new at this I did a lot of research on the Internet and got pretty frustrated with all the scams that are out there. I settled on reading e-mails for money to realize that I should have done the math before signing up for that. The company pays you once you have earned $30, okay. They pay $0.01 per read e-mail, which means you have to read 3000 e-mails. No big deal I thought and I can tell you that after doing it for one year, I am up to $21, since there was some small fine print and you don't always get paid until you take the offer, which I don't do. At this time I am stubborn and not willing to give them my $21 and will continue until I can cash out at $30.

So next I tried the survey route and signed up with about 10 different survey sites, which came highly recommended. What nobody tells you that you don't get surveys on a daily basis and you have to qualify first before you can start the survey. That means that you can spend up to 5 minutes trying to qualify and be told that you don't meet their criteria. I have pretty much given up on this. Only one survey site left until I can cash out their minimum cash requirement.

So now I am checking out Goggle Adsense. I am not 100% sure how this works and had a hard enough time getting the ad block to show up on the website. At this point I am not happy with the ads that it is showing and will have to do a lot more reading to fine tune this "bright" idea of mine. All I know at this point is that I am not allowed to click on the ads myself. However, my spirit has not been broken and maybe this idea will actually work.

So please bear with me and if you have any ideas on how I can make some spending money give me a shout. All comments posted on our website are approved by me first so anything that I consider confidential will not get posted.

Back home

Well, we left Orlando on Monday morning and drove all the way to Gulfport, MS in one day. We were going to take our time getting back to Mission, but after we broke even again in the third casino in Louisiana and thought we were so close to home, we kept driving. We were 60 miles out of Houston at 5 pm. It really should have not taken as that long if we had not gotten into a complete stand still on the highway for about 45 minutes. We finally pulled in at 1:30 am Wednesday morning in our lot and my throat was hurting bad.

Well, to make a long story short, I apparently caught something in the last hotel we stayed at and was out for the next two days. Feeling much better today and we might actually go to the Rio Grande Valley livestock show tonight. So now I am finally all caught up with the blog again and can stop cheating on the posting dates as some of you might have noticed :-)

Magic Kingdom

You can't go to Orlando and not visit Magic Kingdom while you are there. Well, we went on Sunday and that was a big mistake. The parks were not to crowded during the week, but Sunday was just brutal. First of all it was hot, no breeze to speak of and lots of people. We walked around for a short while and got lucky to see the afternoon parade.






As you can see, I am and always will be a kid at heart and as long as I can see Mickey Mouse and friends when we are in Orlando, I am a happy trooper. We left Magic Kingdom as soon as the parade was over and went back to Epcot for some fun.

Epcot

We have been in Orlando at least three times and yet we still manage to find new things to do at Epcot. There will be a flower show next week and they started already on some of the plant arrangements.

We went to the Land Pavilion, since it has a pretty cool boat ride through some interesting plant growing techniques.


We decided to take the back lot tour to get a closer look at how the grow vegetables here, since Michele works in a nursery. I have to say it was more interesting than I thought. Have you ever seen tomatoes grow on a tree?


And of course who could pass up the fruit grown in Mickey Mouse shape :-)


What impressed me the most was the bloom at the end of a banana stalk.

Watch out alligator!!!!

We visited Gatorland a few years ago and were thoroughly disappointed. So this time Michele suggested we go for a ride on an air boat. I always thought that the gators are more in the swamps further south, but I could have not been more wrong. We drove to the address on the coupon without making a reservations and got really lucky!! We arrived at the lake and there was nothing but a public boat ramp. No store, no gift shop, no person to talk to. Well we were looking at a pretty bird as an air boat came back from the lake and guess what, it was the company we were looking for. How lucky can you get?? The guy was more than happy to take us out on the lake for a hour and show us around.


We had a fantastic time. I was not aware that there are so many alligators just in the surrounding lakes in Orlando and they are really not that easy to spot, since you really only see their head and back while the rest is under water. You will see!!


One of these alligators was over 10 feet long.

There was so much wildlife to see, it was breath taking. All the blue herring and then there was these small birds that kept literally running on the water as they were running away from the air boat, creating little water fountains in their wake. It was just to funny!



And then we got a rare treat. Our guide new a place where a mama gator was with her 30 young ones. They are so cute!!



All in all we had a great afternoon and I would recommend an air boat ride to anyone.

On the road again ...

Well, sort of .. kind of... Doug and I and the little red car are back on the road, while our house stays in Mission. We are spending the week with Doug's brother Dave and his wife Michele in Orlando. It is all together 1347 miles and that means a lot of driving. We left Mission on Sunday morning at 8 am and drove, and drove, and drove. Highway 10 after Houston is just a big mess, between the road construction and the poor road conditions it sure was no fun. I am so glad that we did not bring the rig with us this way. We are thinking already on how to avoid this area this spring when we head up towards Arkansas. We drove in two hour shifts and by 8 pm we had made it all the way to Biloxi, MS. As further east we are heading as more greener it gets. It is so nice to see the grass and trees blooming again compared to our brown and dried out grass in Texas. Spanish moss is hanging of the trees and it is really pretty. We left Biloxi at 7 am the next morning in a wall of fog and really did not get to see to much from Alabama, but at least we really did not have much traffic to deal with. I did not realize how long Florida is; almost as bad as Texas. You drive and drive and drive and then we finally arrived in Orlando around 5 pm that day. Our two bedroom apartment is just fine and we should have a good time here.

Talk of the Town

Well, today we did something that will be not seen to soon again in our village. Want to know how "Hillbillies" move furniture?

We bought two chairs for our coach house from somebody here that has sold there lot. Since we did not feel like carrying them back to our lot, we figured to load them onto the truck and drive them home. The safest way seemed to be by me sitting in one and holding the other one. Luckily, the roads here are on private property and there is a speed limit of 10 mph. It sure turned some peoples heads as we were driving by. Now I am not to saying that we are "Hillbillies", but it sure was funny! Always happy to provide a good laugh.

South Padre Island

Last Sunday was a great day!. It had rained pretty much all day Saturday and by Sunday morning the sun finally came back out and there was a nice breeze going. A perfect day to go to South Padre Island and "Go Fly a Kite". I love to tell my husband that :-). First we went down a birding path by the convention center and saw some neat birds and swarm of fishes.

So after checking out the local wildlife we went on to go to the beach to fly our kite. I just love the beach and watching the waves. The wind was perfect and Doug did a great job handling the kite.


He was able to hold the kite in the wind about 10 feet of the ground. It was pretty cool to watch. I tried to hold on to the kite for a bit, but my arms got tired quickly and the wind really was tugging hard on the kite. I rather check out the sand dunes for some awesome pictures. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.