Welcome to Carol's and Jim's website.
Designed for family and friends.

This page may sometimes be a Christmas newsletter, and othertimes a catch-you-up newsletter.   We have to be careful what we post here because of the wierd Internet world we live in.   Just sayin'.

We still see Dr. Rick Royston, who runs a clinic associated with Maximized Living, on a regular basis.   This is a national organization whose goal is to educate people on how to live a healthy lifestyle so they live a long time and have quality of life.   The nutrition and exercise plan have Carol and Jim feeling great. That picture in the heading, by the way, was taken December 2015.

We haven't spent a lot of time at White Bluff during the past couple of years because the POA has been in a constant law suit with the original property developers (Double Diamond).   There was, evidently, supposed to be an end to Double Diamond's involvement whereby they turn over the property and management to the POA.   They, however, didn't want to honor that part of the bargain.   Double Diamond also quit maintaining the hotel, condos, pools, tennis courts, and golf courses and, now that the law suit has settled in favor of the POA, things are being refurbished.   We'll probably start spending time there once again. The property is right on Lake Whitney just west of Hillsboro, TX.   Here are a few pictures taken from our condo balcony, which faces west, and property.

We've done some major projects around the house and here's a couple of them.   Jim tore out the 22" straight sidewalk, expanded the bed beside the garage and added a curved flagstone walk.   He also took down the old, old wooden fence and built a new red cedar fence.   Yes, the new one has steel posts and, as you can see, has been stained.   We plan to add a 12'x15' patio in the back corner of the yard and add a flagstone walk from this one to the patio.

Landscaping continues to be a challenge.   We can't tell you how many times we've made major changes/additions and then had one catastrophy or another.   We've added numerous shrubs to the front bed and had them die, yet unexplained.   We just added two distyliums in the fall and so far so good.   They have started to bud.   Here's hoping.   We also had to replace two Chinese Pistacio trees that had been in the ground about 13 years.   A major rain/hail storm with terrific wind bursts snapped the one in front off right at the ground.   We learned that, as a large container grown plant, it suffered from root girdling.   Caused by the roots growing in a circle in the container and when we paid to have them planted the people doing it didn't see the issue.   The same kind of tree in the back yard had the same issue and we had to have it cut down.   So, last fall we planted two Chinquapin Oaks.   Thankfully, they are also starting to sprout leaves.   The Shumard Red Oak we planted 13 years ago didn't have any problems.   Just think, when we look at these trees 50 years from now...

OK.   I guess we should include at least a couple family pictures from recent months.   How about one from a few weeks ago?   Son Bob and his wife Megan treated us to a night of wine and food tasting at the Dallas Arboretum.   No, we haven't reached our 50th wedding anniversary yet, but we can sure see it from here!   And then we have a few from last Thanksgiving and Christmas.   Those two grown up young girls are our youngest granddaughters Kendall and Cassidy.   Seems like they were toddlers just a few years ago.

Well, we think that's it for now.   The web pages have been rebuilt on our new hosting site, we've updated a whole lot of the content, and all is pretty current.   Travel plans this year include a trip to White Bluff, a trip to Tim and Eva Dorsey's 50th wedding anniversary celebration, and a trip to Fredericksburg.   Oh yeah, and a day trip to Ennis in a couple of weeks to see fields and fields of Bluebonnets.

To contact us send an email to Jim & Carol.

Last updated: 4-3-2019