Wow, we have had such a wonderful Christmas break, and the great part is I still have 6 days left!! We celebrated Christmas 4 days straight. It was great to be with so much family, but I'm glad the craziness is finally over! The Saturday before Christmas we went to Amarillo to celebrate with my grandparents and cousins that live there. My grandmother had a really bad stroke in August so it made Christmas at their house even more special this year. I have always had a very special relationship with my mom's parents; they are both such strong Christians and have always been a great example of seeking God in all circumstances. Sunday morning we got up and went to church and then headed to my other grandparents that live here in Lubbock for lunch. Here are a few pictures of our day over there:
My family has a Christmas Eve tradition of going to Christmas Eve service at our church and then my grandmother always takes us out to eat afterward. This year our church decided not to have a Christmas Eve service so we just went out to eat instead. We usually go to Friday's (because it's the only place open late on Christmas Eve) but decided to try Chili's this year instead. It was my parents, my grandmother and Brice and I this year. It's so strange how our traditions are changing as we get older. My dad absolutely loves Christmas time and the traditions that come along with it. And he doesn't handle changes well at all! But he was a trooper and had a good time even though our whole family wasn't present. After dinner that evening we headed to big LA (that would be the Lazbuddie Area). We woke up Christmas morning and had a wonderful Christmas morning breakfast with mimosas! After breakfast we headed for Hereford to have Christmas with Brice's grandparents and cousins. We played a great game of pictionary and had some wonderful food as usual! Here are a few pictures:
Tuesday we came home from Lazbuddie. We did stockings with the girls and then headed over to my parents house to wait for my sister and brother-in-law who were coming in from Houston. They didn't get off as soon as they had planned so we decided to go see Night at the Museum. (Very funny!!) When Stephanie and Aaron finally got into town we had leftover Christmas dinner and opened presents with my family. Christmas was finally over! We got WAY too much stuff, but loved everything that we got!!
Another tradition that my family started a couple of years ago was going to Ruidoso right after Christmas to stay in this great cabin up in the mountains that my parents found. Because Brice started work after the first of the year vacation times were already staked out so unfortunately he couldn't take off right after Christmas. :( It wasn't the same being there without Brice, but we still had a really great time. We all skiied Thursday and then just my dad and I skiied on Friday because everyone else wasn't feeling very well. The snow wasn't great, but we had a really good time anyway!! Then Saturday morning we woke up to a foot and a half of snow!! It was beautiful! But not great for driving. My sister and Aaron had planned on leaving at 6am to head back to College Station, but since the roads to get down the mountain were so steep they decided to wait until the snow let up. At 8:30 my dad decided that he would lead the way down the mountain in his truck and they would follow. An hour and a half later we were finally down the mountain only to find out that the highways out of Ruidoso were closed!! So they got back in the truck with us and headed back up the mountain to the cabin. We waited it out a couple of hours and the highways finally opened back up so we headed home.
New Year's Eve we went to Stella's with a couple of friends. We had dinner reservations at 8:45, we got there around 8:40 and saw several people we knew who had been waiting for almost an hour for their reservations!! This should have been a sign to us that we should just try to find somewhere else to eat instead, but we decided to stick it out. They finally called us at like 9:15, but when we were seated we realized that they didn't even have the full menu that night and there weren't very many things on the menu that looked good to us at all. When we finally decided on something that sounded ok the waiter told us that they were actually out of just about everything on the menu except really strange things like seared duck (which none of us really cared for....even Brice!) So we called Outback and luckily they were still open (by this point it was already almost 10:00!) We figured that when we told the waiter we were leaving he would just bring us the ticket for our appetizer and drinks and we would leave, but much to our surprise he sent the manager over and he told us they would take care of the drinks and appetizer and he even brought us a $40 gift certificate to come back later!! Although it started off a little rocky the night ended great!
Sorry this was a kind of long update...in fact I will be very surprised if anyone is even still reading at this point! Hopefully Christmas Break part 2 will be a little less eventful!!
Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!! (Wow, I just can't beleive it's already 2007!!!!!)
I have SO many more pictures to post, but blogger isn't cooperating right now...hopefully I will be able to post them later!
