Flooring

Think we found some good flooring!  We took down one package and put it down - so much more comfy than plywood.  Now we are super excited to get it put down all over.  Everyone like the color?!

Goodbye Beach View

We knew it would happen eventually, but we only have one house to go before we lose our unobstructed view of the water!

Happy 4th of July

It was exciting to be back at the beach for the 4th of July!  Saw some great firework shows and fortunately the rain we'd had the week before from hurricane Alex was gone and the weather was dry, cooler than it had been, and nice and sunny.  And even more importantly hurricane Alex went into Mexico and not at the beach.  Let's hope we have the same luck the rest of hurricane season!  There was much more play than work this trip, but thanks to the hard work of our handyman/carpenter/contractor Drew we have a beautiful ceiling on the covered part of the deck and he corrected the structural mess that the previous contractor had made.  Looks great!

Michael did make more progress on the paneling...still just a bit more to put up, but we are almost done in the family room! 

Oil Reaches Texas

As a kid I remember always ending up with tar on things when we went down to the beach. It has been a long time since we've spent as much time at the water as we have in recent months, but we hadn't encountered any tar in recent history. Well, thanks to the little oil spill in the Gulf, the tar was back this 4th of July weekend. Until I saw this article I didn't think that the tar we got on us was from the oil spill, but guess I was wrong. After getting a spot on my new swimsuit I now remember why we always wore our older suits to the beach when I was a kid - better come out of my new suit or I might have to send BP the bill for a new one!

Tar balls from oil spill found on Bolivar coastline

Copyright 2010 HOUSTON CHRONICLE

July 5, 2010, 11:36PM

GALVESTON — About a dozen tar balls that washed ashore on Crystal Beach were identified Monday as oil from the BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the first evidence that oil from the spill has reached the Texas coastline.

But it was unclear whether the oil from the blowout dropped off a passing ship or drifted nearly 400 miles.

Laboratory tests showed that the tar balls came from the BP Macondo well that blew out April 20, killing 11 crew members on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, said Coast Guard Cpt. Marcus Woodring, commander of the Houston-Galveston sector.

The handful of tar balls came ashore Saturday and a second wave amounting to about 5 gallons of oil was found Sunday scattered along 1½ miles of beach on eastern Galveston Island and Crystal Beach on the Bolivar Peninsula, Woodring said. Laboratory results on the oil discovered Sunday are expected today, Woodring said.