Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! I hope you all enjoyed a warm, safe and blessed Christmas with your loved ones and are all geared up to welcome in 2012!
So, I know it’s been a while since I’ve blogged – 9 days – which is officially the longest length of time between posts since I started our little blog over 13 months ago. Though I love blogging, I love spending quality time with my family and friends more. We so rarely have the opportunity to all be together relaxing, adventuring, or simply catching up on chatter and hugs that I cherish those moments when I can get my hands on them. Frankly, as soon as Texas for Christmas was on the agenda, blogging over Christmas was off the agenda.
But I’m back, and with plenty of pictures to share! As always, click to enlarge the photos.
We had a deliciously wonderful time in Texas. It was utterly relaxing and fun and full of love and appreciation and it gave us the warm-fuzzies all over. Our family doctor gave Ted a steroid to help keep his Sancho allergy at bay, so he was able to actually enjoy his time in Texas with us instead of living in sniffly, sneezy, headachy, nose-blowing misery. My sister, brother-in-law, and two nephews made the drive down to San Antonio from Chicago for the week and we all loved being home with my parents for Christmas. Here were the highlights:
- Going out to PoPo’s for a big, long, down-home family dinner together on our first night in Texas.
- Lovin’ on and playing with my kitty.
- Catching up with my girlfriends.
- Scrabble marathons.
- Sleeping in and luxurious mid-day naps.
- Browsing the sweet little antiquey main street shops of Boerne with Ted and indulging in delicious FroYo.
- Mowing down on Texas BBQ (the only BBQ worth eating) and a magnificent lunch of sandwich croissants and creme puffs at French Sandwich, my all-time favorite lunch eatery in San Antonio.
- Introducing Ted to God’s gift to Texans – the almighty breakfast taco. It was a beautiful moment.
- Christmas morning breakfast of cheese grits, eggs, sausage, bacon, breakfast tacos, french toast, biscuits and gravy, pastries, orange juice, coffee, and more at The Hungry Horse in Boerne – our annual Christmas morning tradition where proceeds benefits the Boerne EMS, fire department and other emergency services.
- Mom’s home cooking – tortilla soup, French onion soup, white chili, queso dip, kiss cookies, guacamole, lasagna, broccoli cheese casserole, homemade meatballs and sausage, and lemon meringue pie made with lemons from mom’s lemon tree!
- A scorpion under the Christmas tree. Ted’s Christmas wish was to see a real, live Texas scorpion. Wish = granted. That scorp knew a thing or two about great timing and opportune placement. The sneak was hiding beneath the tree, under the last present.
- Our annual German firebowl party whereby our friends and family gather round for food and merriment while ladles full 100 proof southern comfort are set ablaze, poured over a cone of pure sugar, drizzled into a bowl of hot red wine mulled with oranges and cinnamon sticks, and served in sugar-rimmed glasses. Yeah, it really is just as awesome as it sounds.
- Getting in the Christmas spirit with old vintage children’s toys and classic model trains at an eagle rescue sanctuary in the Texas hill country before heading deep into the heart of Old San Antone to enjoy the lights on the ever-beautiful River Walk and pay our respects to the Alamo.
- Building a fire outside in the chiminea while downing mugs of hot mulled wine and watching Ted bound around the backyard with our neighbor’s long-legged, high-jumping, spirited, lab puppy Felix.
- Ted and my dad reconstructing a part of my dad’s old HO-scale childhood model train set. Those trains haven’t run in over 50 years, so it was really incredible to see them pulling the boxes down from the attic, sitting on the floor taking apart the engines to check the motors, cleaning the tracks with steel wool, hooking up the wires, and watching those trains take their first chugs in half a century. Our favorite was the train car that shoots a helicopter into the air!
- My mom and my nephew Lochlan baking Christmas cookies.
- Decorating the tree and the house for Christmas with dad.
- Christmas Eve mass.
Hope your Christmas was just as special!
In other news our upstairs neighbor was, apparently, gifted a BB gun for Christmas because he’s taken to hanging cheap silver ball ornaments from the bare trees outside and shooting at them and then not cleaning up the remnants. Super classy.
