Our Christmas Vacation

Our trip back home was great.  It was a long, but uneventful trip that lasted 16 1/2 hours.  We got to see all of our families and most of our friends.  It was extremely cold when we arrived plus there was still snow on the ground from an earlier snowfall. 

He's so cute in his new tartan coat.

The snow melted within a few days and I was able to rake up and bag all the leaves.  I filled 13 bags and 3 trashcans.  The recycle guys probably weren't real happy with us, but they've passed our house up for 3 months without having to stop.

One of the highlights while at home was the Ugly Christmas Sweater party at Dennis and Ann's. 

You wouldn't be smiling either if you were dressed like this!

The 5" of snow that fell on Christmas Eve was not what we wanted to see, but I must admit on Christmas morning, it was beautiful.  It didn't slow down any of the shoppers on Friday afternoon when we ventured out. (Yes, we braved the Galleria, just to watch since all of our shopping was done.)

After our family Christmas's on Friday night and again on Saturday, we took the tree and the few decorations down and packed the truck for our early morning start to get back to warmth and sunshine, and a chance to quit eating non-stop.  I think all we did was eat and drink while home, without one iota of exercise.

At 3:15am Sunday morning, we started our very long trip back to Victoria, TX.  We took a shorter route (by 100 miles) from the route we took home.  When we first started, our new GPS had us arriving at  6:15pm - plenty of time to make Sunday night ice cream.  Little did we know that half the people in Texas would be traveling on I35 south of Dallas.  We came to a screeching halt and crawled for almost 100 miles at no more than 30mph.  Soon our GPS had us arriving at 7:45pm.  It took just shy of 18 hours to go the shorter distance on much worse roads.  Not one of our best decisions, but at least we didn't have to pay the $18 tolls in Oklahoma. 

We actually arrived at 8:00pm, safe and sound with no problems along the way.  After walking a very excited Butch, we dumped all of our stuff into the trailer and headed off to bed.

Monday morning we discovered that our electric hot water heater was no longer working.  Once you open up the hot water heater compartment outside, every guy within 10 spots shows up to see what's wrong and to offer advice. After a few false starts Mark found a drawing for the heater and determined what was probably the defective part. The local RV dealer agreed and sold us a replacement part. We are now back to making hot water with electricity instead of propane. This is good since we get electricity free.

J.C., our neighbor from just south of Springfield MO, was an engineer for the MO Highway Department so he had lots of useful advice. Mike is standing around with his hands in his pockets, and Dave - not sure what had his eye.

Tonight we played Canasta and once again the men beat the women. Tomorrow we start a stretch of four days in a row running the RV park. It seems as if everyone waited until Christmas to head out this year and they are passing through Victoria in record numbers. We should be very busy. We also have to set up for the New Years Eve party since it falls on one of our work days. This should provide good stories for the next Blog entry.