Thursday, December 31, 2009

Christmas Day

We had a really fun Christmas this year. We started out the festivities with church on Christmas Eve, and dinner at Jennifer's. It was crazy trying to get from church to her house with the icy roads.

It was a long day. I woke up at 4:30 and decided to get up and get a head start on the day. I had the stockings in my room with the "stuff" out, but had not filled them, so that was my first motivation. It was so cool to have a white Christmas. My first ever. It was cold, so I turned on the fireplace.

The girls are so much fun. They came over about 9:30 and of course the first thing they did was get into the candy.

After about an hour, the living room looked pretty disastrous.

This year was also fun because we had someone else join us. Shannon. After our Christmas, Pop's mother came over and we had our annual breakfast (the only day of the year I cook breakfast) and then had our Christmas with her. Shannon and Justin left to go have Christmas with her family in Bangs. Christmas afternoon, we went to my mother's house and had Christmas and dinner with my family.


It is great to have our family close so that we can spend the day with them.


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Thursday, December 24, 2009

Tacky Christmas Party

My niece, had a Tacky Christmas Party on Sunday night. She let a few of the old folks crash her party. I hope it becomes an annual event and I get to go again. She threw this together at the last minute and did a great job. We had a blast!

Since we were out of town when this party was planned, we didn't have much time to get our outfits together. We found some hats, but next year we will do much better. I am already planning what I am wearing.

One rule that has been implemented is that you can not wear the same outfit. That will really change my shopping for next Christmas.

In good Tacky fashion, we had casseroles. I brought mine in aluminum foil pans since I don't like to have to wash dishes when I get home. That was another rule that was implemented for next year. All disposable pan.


We had a contest for the best outfit, and Leasha won. The pictures just don't do her lovely dress justice. It was a beautiful gold sequin number with a silver poinsettia in the middle. Her hair was 1980's style.

While I loved Leasha's outfit, I voted for my sister because I couldn't believe that she actually went to the store and bought this and WORE IT. That is not her nature. She made sure that she had earrings and a necklace to match.
She and Tim worked hard to get to the party. His shirt took lots of sewing and they even made a homemade ornament out of tensil and a toilet paper roll. They were classy enough to nicely wrap it in a Jared's bag.



I wish this was a full view of Whitney because she had it going on. 1980's hair. All that was missing was the "baked potato bangs".


Gifts ranged from singing lobsters, singing nativity animals (in their original voices), a tacky roller (it was supposed to be a tacky gift), used VHS tapes, crazy socks, ceramic frog and lots more fun stuff.
Can't wait for next year. I have a long time to plan for this.


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Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Weekend in San Antonio

After much begging from Pops, we made an impromptu trip to San Antonio for the weekend. That is not a big deal since we are very flexible, adventurous people. The real issue here is that I cannot sit in car for more than 2 hours. I hate riding in a car. I check all kinds of flight schedules, even thinking if I could fly at least one way, I could make it. Unfortunately, nothing would work out, so I sucked it up and went anyway.

The other huge issue was that it is the weekend before Christmas. Let me repeat, the weekend before Christmas. I am doing okay, but I still have lots to do, but it was for a good cause. This is why I went.



Our plan was that we would leave early and break up the trip. We left about 9:30 and made our first stop for breakfast in Hillsboro at Whataburger. Next we stopped in Salado for Pops to go to the bathroom. Our next stop was in Round Rock to go to Salt Lick BBQ. My navigation skills were not too good. After driving around for 30 minutes on the west side of the freeway, we did the OnStar thing and realized we should be on the east side.


Our original plan was to go to the Salt Lick in Driftwood, but when we realized we could shave an hour off of the trip by going to the new one in Round Rock, that changed the plans. It was so worth it. I had the beef ribs and they were delicious.


6 hours later, we were in San Antonio. We stayed on the Riverwalk and had a fantastic view. Our first stop was Water Street Seafood. That was our favorite restaurant in Ft. Worth. It closed about 10 years ago. Every time we go to San Antonio, that is our first stop. It has changed names, but it didn’t disappoint! The crawfish chicken and wedge salad with creamy walnut dressing were delicious. So delicious, that we went back for dinner on Saturday night and took the rest of the family with us.


For breakfast, we went to Mi Tierra. It was great. So great in fact, that we went back for breakfast on Sunday.


On the way home, we were supposed to stop at Saltlick again, but we were too full from breakfast. We stopped and did a little shopping. We had a couple of gifts to get and had to get some clothes to wear to our Tacky Christmas Party.

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Monday, December 7, 2009

Cookies With Karsyn

Today is a "Lolly Day". That is what we call it when I babysit the girls. Karsyn gets "Lolly Day" on Monday and Wednesdays.

Here she is changing the ornaments on the Countdown to Christmas Calendar.


Since it is a cold and gloomy day outside, I decided to make cookies. Karsyn loves to be a helper. She had a lot of fun playing with the dough.

She gave up and decided to watch Dora instead. She knows she is not supposed to sit on the coffee table, but she likes to do things her way.

Here is our finished project. We made Pecan Sandies, for Pops, and Spritz Christmas trees.



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Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Lolly Meets The Pioneer Woman

One of the first blogs that I ever read 3 1/2 years ago, was the blog of Ree Drummond, also known as "The Pioneer Woman." She is a great photographer, cook and writer, and she is so funny.

She started a story three years ago about how she and her husband met. She did it in such a creative way. She had several parts to it and she stretched the story out for 3 years. At first, she posted about every other week, then she stretched to about a month, and finally she was writing every couple of months. She is such a great writer, you checked her blog every day to read the latest installment.

At the same time, she was posting pictures and stories about her family and her cooking. When she posts a recipe, she has a ton of pictures. She first posts a picture with all of her ingredients and then she posts step by step instructions, even boiling water.

When she announced she was publishing a cookbook, I pre-ordered on Amazon and could not wait to get it. I read it like a book the day I got it. Lots of great stories, recipes and pictures. I also saw that she would be in Dallas in 6 weeks and I immediately put it on my calendar.



Janelle and I headed to Dallas yesterday around 4:00 p.m. We knew it would be crowded, but never dream it would be SO crowded. They were giving armbands out and we secured our place in line at around 212 and 213. There were almost 500 people behind us. Yes, you read it right, 500!!! The staff said she is running about 1,000 per signing all over the country.


She is such a kind person, that she gave everyone in line her undivided attention (and a cute t-shirt). We got our books signed at 10:00 p.m. I can't imagine how long she stayed. At 10:00 p.m. there were still several hundred people in line. She was smiling the entire time. When I was getting mine signed, I heard one of her staff tell her that she had to be at the TV studio at 8:00 a.m. and she said, "That's okay."


Oh, I looked like CR**, but I would not miss posting my picture with her. By that time, the hair was disastrous, the makeup gone and my feet were KILLING me.


So glad I did it and was so happy to get in the hot bathtub at 11:30. I just saw Ree on Good Morning Texas and I am guessing she was really tired. She said she left Borders at 2:00 a.m. What a trooper!

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