We decided to drive down to Texas this year to spend Christmas with my family. It was a great plan! We loved the flexibility in travel times, the savings on airfare, the ability to pack whatever we could fit in the car, the chance driving gave us to stop and see friends and family we wouldn't have gotten to see if we flew, and the extra time together (we love roadtrips)! However, we did NOT love the fact that it was a 24 hour drive! The drive down went pretty fast because we were really excited. The drive home seemed to last forever, but we made it!
On our way down to Texas we stopped in Norman, OK to spend a couple days with our best friends the Gardners! They were our neighbors here in Provo until they moved so Jason could go to Law School at OU. It was so great to see them again. We ate way too much food (Shelly made us brisket plus 2 of their favorite dishes! It was amazing!), did some shopping, played lots of games, toured the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, drove around the OU campus, and enjoyed our time together.
Then we drove the rest of the way down to Houston to see my family. We spent the next couple days getting things ready for hunting, making gingerbread houses, and doing some last minute Christmas shopping. Making gingerbread houses has become a tradition in our family and my mom actually makes all of the pieces out of real gingerbread and cuts them out by hand. Homemade gingerbread is softer and more prone to bending and caving in than graham crackers, which always makes decorating it more difficult! Hahaha!
It's always fun to see whose house will make it and stay standing. Christmas Eve we had our traditional dinner of shrimp gumbo and potato salad. YUM! Then we sang Christmas songs and read some Christmas stories and shared our thoughts about Christ. It's something my parents started a few years ago and I love setting aside time to feel the true spirit of Christmas. After that we all helped get things ready for Santa, anxious to see what he would leave in our stockings!
Love the picture of Chris and Mathias! 2 cheeseballs!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you guys had a good trip. How fun that you got to stop off and visit friends too! Those are your friends from Provo like Glen and Kathryn are ours. :) Fun. Anyway, I've never made a gingerbread house out of homemade gingerbread, but I had a hard enough time getting my store-bought kit to not collapse, so I'm impressed. Glad you made it back to UT safely!
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