However, it is a beautiful blue sky morning and I can’t let the weekend pass without publicly giving thanks for the grace that has been extended to me as a daughter of the King. I couldn’t face the future without the assurance that God’s love never fails and His grace is sufficient to see me through, no matter what may come. God is good!
Now to catch up…I have been off the whole week, which has been a welcome respite from a very busy fall at work. My job entails training secondary social studies teachers for the new and much more rigorous end-of-course state exams we will be administering next year. I could write a whole post on this subject alone. Let me just say that this is probably why I’ve not posted in so long.
Monday Amy brought the girls over and we went shopping at the outlet mall. We didn’t buy much, but learned that Katie takes after her Grammy and loves to shop. However, she is either very opinionated for a two and a half year old, or her favorite word is no! She loves to try on ladies’ shoes and pretty much anything that is hanging on a rack. Ha! Hannah just enjoyed being along for the ride.
Tuesday and Wednesday morning I began my Christmas decorating. We left Wednesday afternoon for the Hill Country. Every other year (whenever the UT/A&M game is in Austin) we have Thanksgiving up in the Austin area so we can go to the game. This year Judy and family rented a house in Wimberley for the week. Dan and I stayed in the San Marcos Embassy Suites next to the outlet mall. The San Marcos Outlet Mall is probably one of the biggest attractions in Texas.
Everything was so nice and calm there when we arrived that we decided to stroll around on Wednesday night. I was even able to rack up bargains for next Thanksgiving at the Pottery Barn outlet. But, oh my goodness, what a difference a day made…more on that later.
We got to Wimberley about 11:00 in the morning and spent several hours rocking on the porch and enjoying the view. When I retire I want to move to a house with a front and back porch with a rocker and a swing.
Dan decided he’d just take a little nap before lunch. After all, there was a nice breeze…
Others of us decided the swing was perfect…
This was the view… The windmill in the distance was going strong. The cold front had not made it through yet.
Who said Texas doesn’t have mountains??
I’ll take that little ranch. I wonder how much they want for it?
The house had a pool and hot tub.
Sawyer was enjoying his time on the porch as well. We missed having the rest of our family there. Amy and Chris had Thanksgiving with his family. Erin and Lucas weren’t able to be here either. (They are coming in for Christmas!)
So did Mr. Darcy…
Lunch on the porch…
After lunch relaxation
Judy lovin’ on her daughter-in-laws… They cleaned up after lunch so us “mature” folks could stay out on the porch.
Sawyer was playing peek-a-boo with his great-uncle Dan.
So was Mr. Darcy… (That’s a pretty satisfied face he’s leaning against!)
Speaking of Bevo, it was time to head to the game.
By this time in the afternoon the cold front had arrived and the temperature had dropped significantly. The wind chill was between 26 and 29 degrees…a very cold night for the longhorns. Oh well…there’s always next year.
The best parts of the game…
We left about 10:30 with 2 minutes left in the game. There was a lot of traffic that we attributed to the football game. We were wrong. It was people going to the outlet mall. When we got back at the hotel it was full of people checking in and leaving for the mall that opened at midnight. Whole families were packed into cars heading out for the mall. It was amazing! When we went down to breakfast on Friday morning people were coming back from their “midnight madness” shopping. There must have been some great bargains!
We steered clear of the outlet mall but did take in a few of the shops in Wimberley.
I hope that you have a blessed Thanksgiving weekend and a wonderful Christmas season!
No comments:
Post a Comment