With this being the holidays, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated. Even if you don’t read the update itself, stay tuned. There will be another Calvin & Hobbs cartoon at the end; despite our 80 degree Austin weather!
Christmas was wonderful. I got down to my parents’ house and Trish was there so we were ready to go. We opened our gifts (we do very few gifts because of the tradition) and got packed in my car to head to The Four Seasons for the annual Christmas morning brunch (that’s the tradition). I guess almost 10 years ago, my parents decided that we were all too difficult to buy gifts for so they suggested that we do a lovely (my dad’s word) Christmas brunch at a hotel to keep my mom from having to cook and to keep us all from having to stress over figuring out what to get each other. For the most part, it’s been a lot of fun these past 10 years. This year, I was a little under the weather, though. My sinuses were on overload and it just wouldn’t stop. It was still a lot of fun, even though I didn’t eat nearly as much as I normally do. I did have some champagne and caviar and such so it was worth it.
After we ate, we wandered the grounds behind The Four Seasons by Lake Austin. It was a beautiful day and we had given mom a camera (so some gifts have come back into the tradition) so we had to take the opportunity to take pictures of, well, EVERYTHING! My sister & I both had our cameras as well so literally everything got photographed. 
My pictures can be seen by clicking on the picture of my dancing mom and my sister’s and mom’s pictures can be seen by clicking on what looks like my dad whistling. Actually, she had to put her pics in 3 albums so the 3 thumbprints after mom dancing would be her 3 albums. I think some pictures are a bit redundant but taking lots of pictures are always fun. Oh, I forgot to mention that we met some folks my mom knows (go figure) and they had 4 1/2 year old twins — Luke & Katie — and Katie wanted to take pictures. Trish lent Katie her camera and Katie went to work. Many of the pictures from Trish’s 2nd album were taken by Katie, 4 1/2 year old!
Monday morning, the sinus thing turned fever. 😦 I sat at home for two days and finally made a trip to HEB on Tuesday afternoon. It had felt like I’d been sitting in my apartment for so long, I thought it was Wednesday. I was so pissed that I had wasted 3 days of my holidays being sick until I realized it was only Tuesday. Ah, relief. I did re-watch Oceans Twelve yesterday. I need to re-review it soon.
So, today, I’m much better. I’m gonna head to the mall and exchange one thing (wrong size) and maybe check out a sale or two. I think mom & I are going to head to IKEA on Monday, although going to Houston is NOT on any priority list. Maybe I’ll go down HWY 71 so it’s not the same stupid memories for me to have to suffer through. Eh, enough of that.
I’m not 100% sure what my plans for New Years Eve are yet. I’ve got a few choices, all of them are just easy going gatherings. Unfortunately, they aren’t very close to each other so “party hopping” probably isn’t going to happen. What are your plans?
Here are the pictures:
And now for a bit of C & H:
Once the game was over, I hadn’t even killed the engine (I actually had to pull over to just listen, the game was THAT intense at the end) and I headed over to Academy ’cause I heard they were going to sell Champions stuff 
Benford's Musings 
You must be logged in to post a comment.