Friday, January 09, 2009
Christmas
We had a very wonderful Christmas this year. We got to have my Mom the whole time everyone was here. We got to have Michelle and her family for the whole week of Christmas. That is rare and very special. We got to have Jon here for 4 days, which is rare and also very special too. Thankfully Jay and Danielle live very close and they got to take the whole week off too. I believe that is the first time in forever we got to have our whole family together for Christmas and for so long. You know Mike didn't get to come home from Doha one year either. We did it this year though.
This first picture is of Nanny rocking Preston to sleep. This was the day after they got here and he was so excited to be here, but was just so tired he couldn't stand it. Nanny was able to get him asleep quickly while we did other stuff. Thankfully he slept for a while. He is one busy little boy. You know there are Christmas trees to look at, birds the back yard, upstairs, downstairs, toys to play with, things to get into and Clint's most favorite thing was to take bows off of the packages. He had so much fun. I don't think 
any of us got a picture of him doing it though. He just loved them.
This next picture is of Mom and Michelle putting the icing on the Christmas cookies. They did a great job. When Preston got up from his nap he got to put icing on some too. He did a really good job. Not sure who told Michelle to mix red and green to get purple, but she was crazy. That makes black or other
really dark color that looks like black. Preston didn't seem to mind though. Of course, I thought it was great. I was that crazy person at the time. LOL! I even convinced Michelle till she mixed it up.
One day the guys went to a gun shop. I believe it was a collector's gun shop. Mike called to tell me a cute story that happened while they
while they were there. Preston went with them and he was amazed at all of the guns there. He looked up at his Pop and said, "Can we take one home?" Now that was just too cute. Now of course, Michelle and I thought they could have told him to say that, but they all say they didn't. Needless to say the answer was no, but it was just precious. We had our Christmas eve meal at Jay and Danielle's before church services that night. It was very nice and they have more room than we do. I believe Preston could have explored for a while. We came back after church and visited for a bit and took some family photos. I don't have them though. Danielle has, of course, all of the really good pictures since she took them.
Christmas morning we opened gifts at our house. In this next picture, Danielle is opening her bag of coal from us. Mike thought the bag was
just too cute to pass up. We put a small gift of hers in it...not coal. She is too good to us. Don't you love her antlers?
We had tons of packages. I still don't know what everyone got and we were very organized or at least we started out that way. I got to see Preston open most of his gifts and Clint open a few of his gifts. I had one more picture to put on here of Jon and I opening gifts, since we sat side by side. I am so sad. I just deleted it accidentally. It has been a long blog day. Anyway, I think everyone like everything they got and then some.
Pam and Gerald went to have Christmas with Sophie and her family. We got Nate and Kristin to come for Christmas lunch and they brought some of that wonderful bread! It was really good. I almost ruined it warming it up, but not quite. Almost burned the bottom of it. We all ate and then cleaned up the dishes and by then it was almost time to head out for Moody Gardens.
We were supposed to go to Moody Gardens in Galveston on Tuesday, but we had to rearrange because of weather. Kind of funny though. We canceled on Tuesday because of rain. Decided we don't do anything on Christmas evening except for play games so we will go then. Well, as we got there the fog started rolling in and by the time we actually got to Moody Gardens to see the lights the fog was so thick we were amazed we could actually see them. Can you believe it we still had bad weather. We all had a good time anyway. I think each car load of us had a good time going down or at least we know for sure the car that Jay, Nate, Kristin and Jon were in had fun. Going and coming back. We were going to eat while in Galveston, but we decided to eat somewhere on the way home and that was a mistake. Every single place that was open had a wait of an hour or more. We ended eating at a place Nate know of as "Casa de Chisler". He jokingly said that just out of Galveston and it was the most accommodating place we came across. We ended up eating leftover or sandwiches and visiting. We had a great time.
The day after Christmas my cousins Buddy and Becky and as much of their families that could come over did. We wish Nate and Kristin had come over again, because we could have had even more people here and more fun. It was great visiting with Becky, Keith, Buddy, Luz, Sarah and Harley Man by themselves. Christmas was great!!!! We had so much family present it was great.
Well, I better end this. I asked Michelle not to update her blog till I got mine done, because so many people shame since she does her way more often. Thanks Michelle!
Debbie
This first picture is of Nanny rocking Preston to sleep. This was the day after they got here and he was so excited to be here, but was just so tired he couldn't stand it. Nanny was able to get him asleep quickly while we did other stuff. Thankfully he slept for a while. He is one busy little boy. You know there are Christmas trees to look at, birds the back yard, upstairs, downstairs, toys to play with, things to get into and Clint's most favorite thing was to take bows off of the packages. He had so much fun. I don't think 
any of us got a picture of him doing it though. He just loved them.This next picture is of Mom and Michelle putting the icing on the Christmas cookies. They did a great job. When Preston got up from his nap he got to put icing on some too. He did a really good job. Not sure who told Michelle to mix red and green to get purple, but she was crazy. That makes black or other
really dark color that looks like black. Preston didn't seem to mind though. Of course, I thought it was great. I was that crazy person at the time. LOL! I even convinced Michelle till she mixed it up.One day the guys went to a gun shop. I believe it was a collector's gun shop. Mike called to tell me a cute story that happened while they
while they were there. Preston went with them and he was amazed at all of the guns there. He looked up at his Pop and said, "Can we take one home?" Now that was just too cute. Now of course, Michelle and I thought they could have told him to say that, but they all say they didn't. Needless to say the answer was no, but it was just precious. We had our Christmas eve meal at Jay and Danielle's before church services that night. It was very nice and they have more room than we do. I believe Preston could have explored for a while. We came back after church and visited for a bit and took some family photos. I don't have them though. Danielle has, of course, all of the really good pictures since she took them. Christmas morning we opened gifts at our house. In this next picture, Danielle is opening her bag of coal from us. Mike thought the bag was
just too cute to pass up. We put a small gift of hers in it...not coal. She is too good to us. Don't you love her antlers?We had tons of packages. I still don't know what everyone got and we were very organized or at least we started out that way. I got to see Preston open most of his gifts and Clint open a few of his gifts. I had one more picture to put on here of Jon and I opening gifts, since we sat side by side. I am so sad. I just deleted it accidentally. It has been a long blog day. Anyway, I think everyone like everything they got and then some.
Pam and Gerald went to have Christmas with Sophie and her family. We got Nate and Kristin to come for Christmas lunch and they brought some of that wonderful bread! It was really good. I almost ruined it warming it up, but not quite. Almost burned the bottom of it. We all ate and then cleaned up the dishes and by then it was almost time to head out for Moody Gardens.
We were supposed to go to Moody Gardens in Galveston on Tuesday, but we had to rearrange because of weather. Kind of funny though. We canceled on Tuesday because of rain. Decided we don't do anything on Christmas evening except for play games so we will go then. Well, as we got there the fog started rolling in and by the time we actually got to Moody Gardens to see the lights the fog was so thick we were amazed we could actually see them. Can you believe it we still had bad weather. We all had a good time anyway. I think each car load of us had a good time going down or at least we know for sure the car that Jay, Nate, Kristin and Jon were in had fun. Going and coming back. We were going to eat while in Galveston, but we decided to eat somewhere on the way home and that was a mistake. Every single place that was open had a wait of an hour or more. We ended eating at a place Nate know of as "Casa de Chisler". He jokingly said that just out of Galveston and it was the most accommodating place we came across. We ended up eating leftover or sandwiches and visiting. We had a great time.
The day after Christmas my cousins Buddy and Becky and as much of their families that could come over did. We wish Nate and Kristin had come over again, because we could have had even more people here and more fun. It was great visiting with Becky, Keith, Buddy, Luz, Sarah and Harley Man by themselves. Christmas was great!!!! We had so much family present it was great.
Well, I better end this. I asked Michelle not to update her blog till I got mine done, because so many people shame since she does her way more often. Thanks Michelle!
Debbie
Roaring River trip
In early October we went on a trip to Roaring River. Mike's parents go there every year to fish in the spring fed river for rainbow trout. They have a blast every year. We finally went an joined them for a few days this year. We were meeting Steve and Deborah at their new house first. We wanted to see the new house and we needed to get all of 
our stuff together. We both were taking food and stuff up for us to have and share in the cabin we were renting together. I didn't get any pictures while we were at their house, but it sure is nice. We had a great time watching football, visiting while Deborah made some cookies for the trip and supper too. We had a great time visiting while she 
cooked. We got up the next morning and loaded everything up, ate breakfast and got on the road to Roaring River. As you can see from the few pictures that I got that came out fairly well it is beautiful there.
I better explain the pictures since they are all mixed up this time. The first picture is from left to right,
Mike's Mom, the edge of Mike's Dad in the orange hat, a stranger, Deborah, and Steve all trying to catch some trout. As you can it is cool of a morning. The next picture is Mike taking a fish I caught off the hook for me. He is a good man.The 3rd picture is of Mike's Mom and Deborah. Next is one of the huge rainbow trout everyone would
have loved to catch. I am not sure I could have gotten it in though. We watched a few people reel or try to reel in a couple of those. It takes forever. They are beautiful though.This next one is of where the spring comes out of the ground to form the river. It is so crystal blue and totally amazing. This spring is stocked with rainbow trout daily during a certain time of the year. It was Mike's Mom's birthday right after we were there, so we kind of were celebrating her birthday too. I think we all had a good time. I know Deborah and I did cooking and doing dishes in the cabin. We learned you can chop carrots up for salad in a coffee grinder and you can also use a light that is used like a hard hat with a light attached in the kitchen for light over the sink so you can see what you are doing. If I was to have a chance to give ideas when planning cabins like this my main thing to suggest would be LIGHTS over the sink in the kitchen!!!!! It is really dark after the sun goes down. Anyway, it made for lots of laughs and I never would have thought of chopping carrots in a coffee grinder, but my sweet sister-in-law was trying to help me out. I was trying to cut carrots really small for cole slaw and she kept thinking and finally came up with that idea. It really works and the coffee grinder wasn't ruined and the coffee that was ground didn't have a carrot taste to it after that either. Amazing what you can think of when you have to.
By the way, we didn't leave Mike's parents out in the cold they take their trailer every year and go up there for a month. We even got them to come to the cabin every now and then. They were at the top of a long flight of stairs. Our cabin kind of overlooked the river. Long ways up there to our cabin.
Well, that is a short version of all of the fun we had up there. Mike and I still laugh at some of the things we did and all of the fun we had with everyone. Hope you enjoyed the pics!
Debbie
October visit
I know, I know, I know it has been forever since I updated the blog. It has taken me almost 2 hours to get the pictures on here this morning. Persistence is definitely how to get it done. Anyway, I am now on the move.Since we weren't going to get to see the kids at Thanksgiving we decided we would make a trip to Lafayette to
visit. I went and picked up Mom and we made a trip of it. We went to the Pumpkin Patch and the boys really enjoyed it. Got this great picture of Clint and Preston in the swing. I am guessing you can tell neither of them wanted to pose. Clint wanted to get on the pumpkin and Preston just wanted to do his own thing. Mom had a good time pushing Clint around while were looking at all of the 
animals and checking out the fun jump and things like that. The little hayride thingy wasn't really running while we were there, but that was ok.Mom, Michelle, the boys and I went shopping and got them their cowboy outfits for Halloween. Preston got guns, spurs, a hat, cowboy shirt and boots. He already had the jeans, so he was in good shape. We got Clint jeans and shirt. They also wore bandannas. They had fun trying on their clothes. At least Preston really enjoyed it.
We got to visit with Jon some, but he was busy with school and work so it was a bit limited time wise. Mom enjoyed getting to visit with
all of thekids.
When we left we thought I would go get Preston some time during November for a weekend, but that didn't pan out. Hope you guys enjoy the short blog and the pictures. They really were a problem to get on here.
Debbie
