With the Thanksgiving week off, Wade and I headed off to Texas to spend time with family and friends. Monday we met Brad in College Station for lunch. Brad and Wade met in seminary, and Brad actually married us. It was good seeing him again. We also drove through the Texas A&M campus while there so Wade could add to his collection of mugs. For those of you who don't know, Wade collects mugs from colleges, but his rule is he has to be on campus in order to have that school's mug.
On Tuesday, we went to Temple and met up with Susan. She was a church member when Wade was on staff at the church in Temple and actually introduced us. Susan and I taught 6th grade together in Academy, my first job. She's no longer in the classroom and was able to sneak away for a late lunch. We were very happy and surprised that Garland was able to meet us for lunch, too. And, we also were reminded that Andrew, their youngest, who was our ring bearer, is now a sophomore in high school. Where does the time go?
After driving aro
und Temple and noticing all of the changes, we met Jill, my friend from college, and Carly for dinner in Salado. We were sad Kyle couldn't make it down, but work called. The plan was to meet at The Salado Mansion, a great restaurant in an old house that served a lot of different food, I think, but we always went there for the fajitas and fire roasted tomato salsa. To our great dissappointment, the Mansion was not only closed but had a huge for sale sign on it. So, we met at the Stagecoach Inn, which I'm sure is good, at least that's what everyone always says, but the disappointment of no Mansion didn't make the Inn very impressive! We were, however, happy to see Jill again after all of these years and meet Carly for the first time. She and Wade share a birthday, and she will be 3 in just a few short weeks.
Wednesday morning we got up and drove to Waco. We drove through the Baylor campus, noticing all of the new building and then met Jeff and Laura and their kids
Mallory, Will and baby Charlie for lunch at Magic China. Jeff and Wade were also in seminary together, and Jeff was best man in our wedding. When Wade was in seminary, the guy that owned and operated Magic China was also his landlord, so Wade found his restaurant and went there all of the time. When I came along, we made lots of trips there too. Well, to our disappointment, not only was the owner not there, we were told he had retired. And, after having in our mind how great the food was going to be for so long, we were a little disappointed. Jeff gave us the heads up prior, but it was still disappointing. However, the company once again was not. How nice it was to drive all around Central Texas visiting with friends we haven't seen in about 4 years and picking right up where we left off. We certainly hope our next visit with our Texas friends won't be that long, though.
And, after driving all over Central Texas, it was nice to not get in the car on Thanksgiving! My brother, BL, Rene and Myles came over to my parents for lunch. And then we saw Myles and BL again that night to watch the Longhorns play the "boos" (that's Myles for Aggies! All of my family are BIG Longhorn fans so I'm sure yesterday's BCS rankings made no one there happy.) We never got a picture of everyone together, but here's a picture of Myles showing his basketball skills. My parents will be bringing him Friday to Natchitoches for the Christmas festival. I'll have a new post of that next week.
We enjoyed having both sets of parents here for Christmas. My parents came on Tuesday and then Wade's parents arrived on Christmas Eve. We played lots of games...Train, UNO Attack (Wade's Christmas present), Phase 10, and Singapore Rummy. It was nice spending Christmas with both sets of parents for the first time in our 8 years of marriage. We hope we will be able to do this more now that everyone's closer. Wade's parents will actually be moving to Springfield, MO in March for a new job for Wade's dad, so they will even be closer!
