Hello, 2021

We spent a couple days at the lake after Christmas to check on things, take the boat for a spin and pack away the santa decor. As you can imagine, it was nice and quiet up there. We did spy two separate jet skiers on the water, but that was it. Literally smooth boating on a mostly cloudy day.

As you can see in the pic above, some of the die hard conservatives in the lakes region haven't resigned themselves to the results of the 2020 presidential race. We're stuck with Joe and Kamala for the next four years and their brand of semi-socialism, whether you want to face this truth or not.

Like every other sporting event in this age of covid, we attended a unique bowl game on the 29th. There were two things that struck me in a stadium that holds over 60K fans, with only about 11K in attendance. First was all of the elbow room. No lines for the toilets. No feeling like you were infringing on the personal space of the folks in the chairs next to you... because there weren't any. Oh sure, the seat jumpers behind us were a nuisance, but were asked to leave pretty quickly by an usher wielding the large sign telling folks to keep their masks in place throughout the game. But yeah, all that extra breathing room was nice. The weird part was the lack of fan noise. Neither band attended. Maybe half of the Longhorn cheerleaders. However, Bevo made it for some pigskin!

In the endzone area above, you can see the decorated cutouts placed in every other row, left empty throughout the stadium to create some social distancing. They were kinda cute. In the pic below, it seemed as if the entire team dropped to a knee for a quick prayer as they were introduced and ran across the field before heading to their benches. Or at least I like to think they were all offering up a prayer for safety throughout the game.

 

It was another great Alamo Bowl in the books despite their year of pandemic, the husband's Texas Longhorns soundly defeating the Colorado Buffs 55-23.

Christmas 2020

The most wonderful time of the year has come and gone. I'll be busy counting down the next 320ish days until it's time to pull out my santas and deck the halls once again. This time last year, none of us could have guessed the crazy year 2020 would be for our world. And yet God knew. We've all weathered the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic with equal parts steely patience and immense frustration. God's grace has brought our family through to see another Christmas, and we are tremendously thankful for His strength and renewing of our faith.

 

As always, I was so busy hosting my favorite celebration of the year, Christmas Eve, that I didn't get even one picture. My good friend gave me this one above that she snapped of our girls. It's hard to believe we met 19 years ago and we've watched these four grow up to become beautiful young women on the inside and outside. That's a whole lotta long hair and white teeth, lol!

 

 

The husband and younger daughter worked on a 1000 piece Christmas puzzle. The older daughter and her ten pound beast lounged on the sofa. We cooked a huge pot of shrimp and crab gumbo on Christmas Day, with plenty of leftovers. After all of the prep for our evening appetizer palooza with friends/family on the 24th, we enjoyed a low key 25th.

I've been burning all of our Christmas candles, a la seance style, to get them gone by new years. The whole family helped me pack up my santa collection, so it was all put away by noontime on the 26th. I had enjoyed it for a bit more than six weeks and was sad to see it go, as usual. 

The younger daughter's boyfriend flew in for a visit from Charlotte yesterday, so we're hosting him through new years. He's getting entertained Texas style - hog and turkey hunting today, a visit to the lake house for a couple days, attending the game to watch the husband's precious Longhorns play in the Alamo Bowl, and then ending the week in Austin to ring in 2021. I pray it's a fresh start for us all, that God will bring an end to the pandemic and we can get back to a more normal existence. The girls want to take a family trip to Alaska this next summer - sounds like fun to me. I'm ready to get back to my travel bucket list.

I pray God meets you wherever you are in the new year. That you turn to His words in the Bible for guidance and strength. I re-read the book of Luke in December and I was reminded of God's amazing gift to humanity that ensured our salvation, Jesus Christ. I fervently hope you feel His presence, the Holy Spirit, in your life. May you be blessed with health, peace and strengthening faith in all the Lord offers for His glory, both in this life and the next. Oh come let us adore Him, indeed, for He is good and His faithfulness and love endures forever.

Fun with filters

Since the girls won't cooperate, and who can blame them at their age, our dogs bore the brunt of my snapchat filter fun recently. 

 

The college coed and I made a visit to our local fancy seafood market to get some fresh crab and shrimp for our annual Christmas Day gumbo. While we were waiting for our order, we cruised up and down the aisles to check out the rest of their offerings. That's when we spied these humongous frog legs, seen below. According to my mother, fried frog legs are delicious - tastes like chicken. Her daddy would go frog gigging back in the day, while her mom would batter them up for dinner. 

 

As you can see below, we've all been doing a lot of lounging since our holiday week kicked off on Sunday. Our furry family members are either in the midst of us, or milling around mooching for a handout. The husband is loathe to share the homemade Chex Mix my mother whips up in big roasting pans at this time very year, but he has been known to toss them the occasional Cheerio. 

Grand doggie weekend

Our older daughter, the career woman who lives about a 1.5 hr drive from our home in another major Texas city, had a couple social commitments over the next few days. So I volunteered to meet her halfway to fetch her chorkie, Dewey, to stay the weekend with us. He's a rotten little rodent of a dog, who certainly deserves the nickname Sir Humpsalot. Dewey finds everybody sexy - bahaha! Our girl cairn Pepper. Mother's old female pug Ruby. And Ruby's brother Max. Dewey is all about equal opportunity. The only dog he doesn't bother in that way is our male Cairn Ollie, who growls like he means it any time Dewey gets that twinkle in his eye.

Last night I was lounging in bed when Dewey and Pepper decided to curl up on/next to me for some cuddling. The catch is that you can't pet Dewey once he falls asleep. For some reason, he awakens to the belief that he's somehow under attack and will bite the crap out of you. We've decided it's little man chihuahua syndrome.

Lake house holiday edit

The husband and I went to our lake house last weekend to clean up from the ladies trip I hosted for mother. I snapped a couple pics of the edits I made to my holiday decor - mostly Santas, of course. As much as I love Christmas, I may need to begin extending my celebration of all things St Nick to more than six weeks before Dec 25 in the coming years, just to get some extra mileage out of my collection. And also because I just adore this time of year like no other and want to enjoy the spirit of Christmas for as long as possible.

Two of my new favorites for the lake house are the Santa in the vintage wooden boat print and the fun coordinating Radko ornament I found to display alongside it. I'm also digging the early 1900s postcard I framed in the picture above. It's on the console table right inside the front door, a bright little pop of Santa color to welcome visitors to Lake LBJ.

Road(kill) Warrior

When I made a trip earlier this week to take the dogs to the groomer for a bath, I was sitting at a major intersection on the way home and looked up to see a buzzard perched atop the traffic light camera.

He was just chilling there, on the lookout for some recent roadkill, I assume. I often spy these carrion clean up critters perched on street lights in my part of town. Which seems kinda strange in a city with a population of over a million, but there you have it. I guess there are always sufficiently slow possums, squirrels, raccoons, skunks and deer in this area of Texas who can't outrun the automobiles, even in the city, to keep the vultures well fed.

Kicking off the Christmas season

Last weekend I hosted mother and some of her friends at the lake house. That's right, y'all, I'm the BEST daughter! I can only hope one day our girls will be kind enough to include me in their lives like I do with my own mother, even though I'll undoubtedly be a picky old woman who makes them kinda crazy at times. 

We enjoyed visiting several hill country towns, all decked out in their holiday lights. Mother was thrilled with all of the good food she got to enjoy while visiting with long time friends. It even felt like Christmastime, with temps getting pretty chilly at night and us being able to wear long sleeves and jeans, with nary a flip flop in sight.

The BBQ line, pictured above, really cracked us up. Its names deserve a PG 13 rating, but we were told by the shop owner that it's pretty tasty and is a good seller.