Just kidding. Well, I hope. But my sister, Rebecca, fed us very well. There were cookies, eggnog, cinnamon rolls, turkey with all the fixings, hamburgers, Japanese curry, and some green drinks and juice to keep us from exploding.
And Christmas, it was so super fun.
It was even worth the drive down, which was a bit on the painful side. I'm old enough to know it could have been worse. We could have been in an accident. There could have been snow. Construction. Puking kids. Hysterical baby. As it was, there were simply bathroom breaks every 45 minutes or so. That's not the best thing when you're driving over 1000 miles. There was also a slightly malfunctioning DVD player. By slightly malfunctioning I mean that the battery could not be charged. So every time we stopped, so did the movie, which then had to be painstakingly fast-forwarded (it wasn't that fast) to the sort of right spot. That might not sound too painful, but when you add a lot of whining, it just was. I was ready to throw it out the window and make everybody play license plate games by the end.
Anyway, after a very long 1st day that ended in me threatening to put a diaper on the next person who said they needed to go to the bathroom, we found a hotel and went to sleep without too much trouble.
The next day was much better and we managed to make it to San Antonio.
Where it was warm. Which isn't so Christmas-y, but when your kids can all go play outside with their cousins, who really cares. I think the warmer weather really helped the visit as the kids were often outside or could be sent outside.
We went to the gym, where the yoga teacher wasn't there and the gym nazis told Rebecca she couldn't work out in the weight room in her non-lace-up shoes. We went for walks. We went to a birthday party. We went to church. We cooked. Rebecca and I went to Sea World on our last night there and even though it was just a couple hours, I thought it was really fun just to do something as sisters.
Christmas morning was great. The presents were fairly equally distributed, which with younger kids matters. And I thought the kids had the perfect amount--enough to enjoy the opening, but not so many that they couldn't relax and play with many of them that morning. It was nice.
Bec and I spent the rest of the morning cooking (I was the helper). We ate and played and then got off our cans a little bit that night for walks or runs.
The kids slept pretty well, although after the first couple nights, Emma realized I was in the same room with her and she started waking every few hours in order to take advantage of that, which was a little painful.
And then we went home. That trip went much better. We actually made it in one day--leaving at 8 and getting in around 1am. I didn't think we'd do it, but the kids managed to control their bladders and then fell asleep. I was glad to be back in our own beds. And safe. And happy.
Thanks, Bec and Troy, for such a fun vacation.
And now, a few highlights about Texas.
Where everything is, as stated above, bigger.
Texans are very proud of that, it seems.
They have their flag all over the place (not just in actual flag form, but it's drawn, painted, mosiaced and whatever all over the place--under words, above images).
They have large boots in front of the mall.
They have cowboys. Or people who wish they were cowboys. Or people who think women like cowboys. Or something.
They have much road construction and curiously shorter trees.
But my favorite of all, they have buxom women on all kinds of billboards where it seems buxom women have nothing to do with anything at all. My favorite one was a billboard for tractor repair. To advertise the tractor repair, they didn't show a lame picture of a tractor or a mechanic or even something more manly like a big wrench or tractor tire. They showed large image of a blond woman with a very large bosom wearing a cowboy hat and a tank top. Do you think she will be repairing your tractor. Well, let's hope so. Or perhaps they Hooters billboard and Jim's Tractor Repair just got mixed up, though I never saw the one for Hooter's with a big green tractor underneath. Let me know if you do.
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