Christmas 2008

This year Louie and I were able to spend Christmas in Texas. After spending about 15 hours in the Minneapolis airport we finally were able to finagle our way to Dallas and then eventually to San Antonio. Saturday night we met some friends at one of my favorite Mexican food restaurants, Rosarios. We had only had about 2hours of sleep (Louie was post call so, he had 4 over 2 nights) and Northwest Airlines had sent our luggage to Memphis so please excuse the pictures. I was sans make-up, but luckily Victoria had let me borrow some clothes. :) It was really good to see my friends and we were able to go to breakfast, just the six of us, the next morning. It's very rare for all of us to be able to get together so we ate up every minute of it.

Sunday for lunch we met my mom and family at Canyon Cafe for a birthday lunch. It was fun to visit with my mom, Marcus and Sarah. That evening we were off to dinner at Alamo Cafe to celebrate Andrew and Victoria's December birthdays. Andrew was very purposeful about everyone in the family being together to celebrate. My brother, John and his new wife Sarah were in from Germany so everyone really was there.

Monday, Louie and I headed to Houston to visit his family. They moved into a new condo and it is beautiful. We really enjoyed our stay there. Louie has some favorite meals that his parents make so he was excited to have some delicious home-cooked meals. Louie's sister, Sarah (we have 3 Sarah's in the family now) and her family came over for some Christmas fun. We decorated gingerbread houses and were highly entertained by JoAnna who is our 5 year old niece. She decided to put on a show for us and even Louie got to preform. He was a cheerleader!

We hit the Galleria on Tuesday and headed back to San Antonio on Christmas Eve morning. On our way out of town we were able to stop in Katy and say "hi" to our med. school buddies, Kris and Lisa. They have a little one on the way so it was fun to visit with the parents to be.
Unfortunately Louie caught a bad cold and spent all of Christmas Eve in bed. I brought him home some dinner before heading out for the Christmas Eve service.

Andrew was sure to set out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. Although he was pretty perplexed the next morning when he found Santa had brought him Rock Band for a Playstation 3. This was confusing to him because he doesn't own a Playstaion, he has a Wii. Needless to say, Dad and Andrew had to take the gift back and get a new one. Andrew thought it was a little strange that Dad had the receipt. He explained to Andrew that Santa is just very thorough and always gives the parents a gift receipt. Andrew's response was "yeah, right." So we will see if he leaves cookies out for Santa next year. :)

That afternoon we headed over to my mom's for some more Christmas celebrating and Christmas dinner. My grandmother, Grommie, was in town. So we had a really good visit with the whole family; Marcus, Mom, Luke & Emily, John & Sarah, Drew, Grommie, Sarah, Louie and me. The rest of our visit in San Antonio consisted of catching up with old friends and eating more Mexican food then a person should. :)

Louie and I were not looking forward to coming back to the cold. Luckily our flight home was smooth. We were upgraded to first class and everything ran on time. So no complaints here. There was a big melt the day before we came back so I was thrilled that our car wasn't covered in 8 inches of snow. Our puppies were happy to see us but probably not as happy as Sari and Rob. They were dog-sitting and they have 3 dogs of their own. 5 dogs in one house can be a little overwhelming.

We hope everyone had a wonderful New Years! Happy 2009!!

(If you would like to see this slide show a little larger, click in the middle of the picture once the slide show has begun. A new page will open up and you can click "slideshow" on the top left. Enjoy!)