Six days apart!

Note: We're including some blogs from the month of March that were interrupted when we had to make a speedy trip to Oklahoma to help after Denisa's Mother's house burned. So we are catching up with "old blogs" while we are still helping out in Oklahoma.

It's that time of year when many of the people that make South Texas their winter home start migrating home to the north--just like the birds. 

We would normally be in that migration, but we first needed to take Denisa's Mother home. So we locked up her house in Texas, and Mark drove her and her car all the way to the panhandle of Oklahoma. Then he helped to unload her car and get her house opened up. (At the time, we didn't know that she wouldn't be living in that house in Oklahoma very long.) He also spent a few days visiting with his Mother before he flew back south to rejoin Denisa.

So what does Denisa do for six days without Mark? We're used to spending all our time together, usually with less than than 35 feet (the length of our  motor home) separating us. Well, she spent some time at the state park just four miles down the road, taking too many bird pictures. So she's going to use those pictures in this blog, whether that makes sense or not!

While she was hanging out at the state park, she sat in the bird blind with a couple of experienced birders that tried to teach her a thing or two. They told her that all these yellow birds that she thought were Altamira Orioles were not.

In fact, some of them were hooded orioles. The main way to tell the difference is that one has a white chevron on the top of the wing, and it has more black on its face. Denisa is a slow learner, as she still is confused on which is which.

But she can identify a green jay every time!

Besides watching the birds, Denisa spent some time playing pickleball, and hanging out at the pool. After all these weeks, she decided it was finally time to start on a tan.

She participated in some of her favorite activities at the resort, but many of them had already ended. While everything is in full swing in January and February, almost all organized activities are over by the end of March.

So Denisa spent most of her six days alone working on a project for her sister Debra, who will be staying at the hospital while her husband undergoes a stem cell transplant. Debra needs projects to keep her busy while they must be quarantined. So Denisa is making her kits to make greeting cards. Denisa enjoys making cards, using all the card-making stamps and dies at this resort.

So the motor home was a cluttered mess while Denisa cut and planned for 21 different greeting cards. It's a good thing that Mark was gone because there wasn't a place for him to sit down. Everything was covered with pieces of card-making supplies.

During those six days we had some very hot weather. We try to stay where temperatures are around 70 degrees. With highs in the 90s, we are anxious to start our trip north looking for cooler temperatures.

Meanwhile, Mark is enjoying that cool weather in Oklahoma. He got to visit with many relatives in the Oklahoma panhandle, our son and daughter-in-law in Oklahoma City, and then our brother-in-law took him to the airport for his return trip to rejoin Denisa in Texas.

The first flight was without incident, even though both flights were very full. He had an aisle seat for the second flight, and he was hoping for a friendly (and small) person to sit beside. But when he saw a basketball team loading onto the plane, he realized that he wasn't going to get a small seat mate. The Los Angeles Clippers G team was flying into McAllen to play the South Texas professional basketball team. There was no way that the center could get his very long legs into that window seat, so Mark had to change with him.

So Mark spent the next three hours crammed into a window seat, hemmed in by a basketball player that was almost seven feet tall. What a ride! Mark isn't a small person, but he looks like a kid next to his seat mate. He had to take a picture just to show Denisa.

He survived that flight, and Denisa was certainly glad to see him after being apart for six days! This might be the longest we have been apart since we started this full-time adventure. We're glad to be back together, and glad to get back on the road again! We spent the next morning packing up the things that accumulate when we stay in one place for two months. This year we don't have the big bags of citrus fruit that we usually take with us when we leave. But we did have someone offer us some grapefruit. Somehow this tree escaped the massive ice damage from last year, and the fruit was so thick it looked like grapes instead of grapefruit. We've never seen anything like that!

After picking some fruit, and saying some good-byes, we are ready to be on the road again. Many of our winter friends have already left for their homes in the north. Now that we are reunited after our six days apart, we are ready to wander more of God's wonders together as we head north as well.