Christmas Vacation

Most of our vacation was spent not dying in a blizzard, this is harder than it may appear. Houston got a very rare half-inch of snow before we left, which shut the whole city down. About an hour after we landed in NJ, it began snowing there, and stopped a day later after dropping 20 inches of fluffy snow, which is about a 10-year occurrence there, not exactly common. It continued to snow in Omaha, NE, they got more snow on top of the 2.5 feet they already had lying around. So I am now COMPLETELY SICK of the cold and snow and boots and hats and gloves and coats and my hair exploding from static and dryness!

I HATE the cold anyway, it makes me sad and lonely to be cold, there is a reason I moved to Florida and then Texas! I have never been so happy to come back to Houston, it was glorious to see blue skies and palm trees and a complete lack of 3 foot snow drifts about. Of course the Houstonian lack of awareness that other people do in fact exist is made much more obvious after being in places where people actually realize that you are a human being and treat you as such, but you know.

Christmas loot lists seem to be the thing to do, so here is mine! First is a framed photo of B. and me from his cousin's wedding we went to last year, taken sneakily by his parents, and vying for my favorite present ever. That smile on his face makes me want to cry and sing and laugh and dance all at once, and when I am too blinded by it I look at his hands, holding me close, and oh I am going to marry him so hard!


Love love love.

The only possible contender is a letter written by my sister. This year she wrote each person in our family letters telling us how thankful she is know us, she made us all cry, especially my mom.

I got so much love for Christmas, it was more awesome than I can say.

I also got stuff though! More stuff than I can remember, actually, we shipped most of it so I get a second (actually like 14th by now) Christmas when it gets here.

But including:
Lots of pretty socks! I love socks.
A really pretty glass candle holder, like a hurricane lamp almost, with birch trees on it and a metal base in the shape of leaves.
Pottery from North Carolina, from my sister who lives there
A wedding frame for our wedding pictures, awww
Books about knitting!
A hand-made dice bag from my mom, it's really cool looking, I'll post pics
A signed copy of Storm Front, the Dresden Files book by Jim Butcher, signed with my name and a exclamation point! From our best man and his wife, who got it when Jim Butcher did a signing in Omaha. So cool!

And speaking of socks (I was, really!) I turned the heel on my knitted sock somewhere over Virginia, and picked up stitches for the gusset at my parents' house! It was surprisingly not as hard as I expected, I watched the sock videos on KnittingHelp about 10 times before I left, which really helped. The bottom of the sock is now 6 inches long, and I am almost to the toe! It fits on me now, though it's tight, and I will take pics but I need a pedi first :) It's soooo pretty, I love the yarn, I love the sock, and I am blown away that I fiddled with string for a while and now I can keep my heel warm with it!

I'm planning to get a pedicure and a haircut with Christmas monies, I think it's been about a year since I got a haircut. My hair is really long, longer than it's been since high school, but the ends need to be trimmed and evened out. I'm not sure how long I want it for the wedding, so I'll keep the length until I decide.

Overall it was an awesome vacation, though we were both glad to be back in our own homes and beds and once again be in charge of what we do and when. Travel is nice, not least when you come back.

Christmas photologue - Nebraska

We baked 18 dozen cookies!


It snowed and was very cold (like 6 degrees!) This is the view from Boyfriend's parents' balcony.


His parents had a very pretty tree.


For some reason, they like to open presents at 6 am. I'm not sure why.

This is Boyfriend's surprise face!


This is my trying-to-be-surprised-and-not-fall-asleep face!

Evacuation

So, since Hurricane Ike is apparently going to roll right over Houston, Boyfriend and Kitten and I evacuated,... to Nebraska. We wanted to be sure to be out of the way, but the hurricane actually looks like it will end up following us here. By then it will be mostly rain though, so we should be good. It looks like there will be a lot of flooding where we we live, but we both live on upper stories and Boyfriend moved his car to outside a friend's house which shouldn't flood too badly. We're keeping an eye on the Weather Channel, but we are extremely glad to be at Boyfriend's parents', safe and warm and full of his mom's meatloaf, which is second only to my own mother's :)

Getting out of Houston was orders of magnitude better than for Rita. We went around most of the city on Highway 6, which was not very crowded at all. We left at 10 am, stopped by our friends' to drop off the car and help them move some plywood around, and then left and were at the border of Texas by about 10 pm. We made pretty good time until shortly after we entered Kansas. It started to rain, and it rained like there was already a hurricane on top of us. Also, apparently the last one to leave Kansas at night turns off the lights, so it was dark, darker than I think I've ever seen. Add that to the fact that reflective paint hasn't made its way there yet, and I could see about 3 of the dashed lines from the median ahead at any time, so we lost our 70 mph average (that was actually the speed limit there). We switched off driving and the one not driving tried to get some sleep, but after straining our eyes for hours neither of us could take it anymore, so we pulled over to a rest stop and got a few hours sleep before we continued.

The Kitten was amazingly good the entire time. She spent most of the trip on the floor behind the passenger seat, and when we checked on her (about every 10 min the entire trip) she meeped at us and butted against out hands.

But almost exactly 24 hours after we left home, we finally made it to Boyfriend's parents' house! Kitten went under the bed at first, but soon emerged to eat and use her litterbox, and when I came to bed she crawled in under the covers with me and we slept for a few hours. It
was a very long journey, but I'm very glad to watch Ike do his damage from a safe haven.