Holy Beach House, Batman!

Can I just start this post of by saying, "Wow!"? This was the beach house Jim, Susan and I got to spend some time at on Saturday. HOW did we get to spend time there??? Well sit right back and let me tell you. Many of you will remember that each May, Jim and I go to Denver to run a family law program for a week. Well, one of our most favorite faculty members from that program said she and her significant other were going to be in Galveston for the weekend and the three of us should come see them in their beach house. When she said beach house, I pictured one of the older, littler, beat-up beach houses I associate with Galveston. I had NO idea this palacial little number is what awaited us. The three of us were beaming ear to ear as we pulled in the driveway!

And here is the amazing and generous host herself, Kathy. She is such a riot! And as I said earlier, one of our absolutely favorite facutly members. She is so real, so down to earth and so not like many of the other attorneys we all know. As Jim and I often would comment to each other, "she's one of the fun ones".

You know me and flowers, so I felt the compulsion to photograph the flowers we brought her. They turned out great cause they wound up complementing her color scheme.

This is Mr. Big. As soon as we arrived and Jim and Susan set down their bag, Mr. Big walked right over to it, sniffed it and then promptly climbed up on it and sat down. HA!

It was a stormy day in Galveston (sadly, no beach time for us) as some of the outerbands of Hurrican Karl hit pretty hard. But during a break in the rain, Jim and I took the short walk to the beach to take in some of the sights and sounds of the angry sea. And we ended up not missing the missed beach time cause we had such a great time in the house laughing, eating, telling stories and catching up on each other's lives. The weather ended up really adding to the whole ambiance.

As usual, the picture just doesn't do it justice. But the meloncholy of the gray and wave after crashing wave made for a pretty neat mood.

A view of Kathy's street as it dead ends at the beach. We will be back to enjoy it again! She gave us keys ;-)

And a view up the street towards her house as we walked back from the beach. It's in a housing development with Ken Lay's old beach house. I shoulda taken a picture of it. It's so garish it's totally out of place. Oh well. Maybe the next trip.

And a nice picture of Susan as we sat around and drank our margaritas.

Here's a shot of the great room and kitchen. I'm standing down by the t.v. and in the next shot you'll see the opposite view. I told Kathy that my entire apartment could fit in her great room alone, excluding her kitchen! There are doors just behind the palm tree on the right that lead out to the front deck. Amazing.

And here's the opposite view. That's Jim coming out of the bathroom (HA! Sorry, Jim!) and there's a bedroom just to the right of it. Then there's three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs. The couch folds out to sleeper, so the whole house can sleep 12. Not to mention the gourmet kitchen in which Kathy made an amazing Chicken and Artichoke pasta dish that she copied the recipe from her favorite Dallas Italian restaurant. It was delicious!

A good portion of the evening was spent on what I'm certain will become my new addiction. (That's Raymond there on the right at the computer). Family Feud on Facebook. Oh Lord save me now.

Raymond kindly took Susan and I for a quick tour through the develpment on their golf cart. This was another beach house in the development, and no, that is not the garish one I was mentioning earlier.

On the tour, we passed a grove of live oaks that miraculously were not killed off by the salt water during Hurricane Ike two years ago that I loved the look of, so Susan and I took the golf cart back out to get a few photos of it. It was so moody and had such a sense of "place" that the camera just can't picture. Yes, I'll blame it on the camera cause I'm certain that it was not the photographers fault ;-)

It almost had a haunted feel to it on this grey and wet day.

Thanks again, Kathy, for a wonderful, wonderful day. Your generosity and kindness are appreciated more than you can possibly know. And we're still talking of coming to see you in Dallas!