Christmas in Amarillo 2010

This has been an eventful Christmas. Not exactly according to plans with Jay being in Afghanistan and his family taking care of business elsewhere. The last minute cancellation of Mike & family was a disappointment as well but glad they stayed safe and warm at home rather than stuck in an airport. And we certainly missed Jay, Rosario, Todd and Russ and family (Jessica, Amorina, Ryan and Brianna) this year. We hope that next year we will have the whole family together.

We had Christmas in Flower Mound on the 22nd and drove to Amarillo on the 23rd. The weather was nice so we took our little car since it gets great mileage. We watched the weather closely to decide which vehicle to take. If snow was in the forecast, we would have had to take our truck since the car has very low clearance.

Mom with her sling on.

The morning of Christmas Eve we spend time at the hospital emergency room. Mom had a fall when she stepped down from a porch. She suffered a small cut on the back of her head but it bled a lot due to blood thinners. She also bruised her upper arm, her head below the cut and I won't tell you where else!! They checked her out good with xrays and catscan - nothing broken, thank goodness - just bruised and sore.

There were lots of packages for the kids and a lot of kids there. They grow so fast that it is hard to keep up with their names and who they belong to, but big families are really nice.  I try to take lots of pictures hoping it will help me figure out who is who.

We had a really nice time at Barbara & John's home Christmas Eve along with about 53 other family members. Our Chinese gift exchange is always lots of fun, stealing gifts from each other - all in fun. I didn't realize the men's exchange was happening at the same time as the ladies so I didn't get pictures of it. As always there was plenty of good food too.

 John's  hair  flower!

 I liked this fragrance set but someone took it from me.

So I took Yvonne's towels!

 June didn't get to keep this either!

Christmas Day dinner was at Mom's and we did not have the big crowd that Barbara had but a nice dinner and nice company. We all enjoyed watching our Daisy play with Dozer, June's dog. He's a bit bigger than Daisy but I felt really sorry for him after our hyper dog ran him ragged!! She also played some with Teresa's two dogs -Halley and Comet. Daisy had fun combing Santa's (Fred) beard.

 Teresa's lap dog (Comet)!

June is the referee!

 Jerry and his neck warmer

 Daisy and Dozer

Halley and Comet

My pictures this year didn't turn out well. I think I had the setting on my camera set wrong and many turned out fuzzy.

Sometime in the wee hours Sunday morning, vandals were out with BB or pellet guns. Mom's paper carrier knocked on the door very early to tell us that Barbara & John's truck (parked in Mom's driveway) had the back window shattered with glass all over the driveway. The police were called, then after daylight we discovered that our car, backed in behind the truck had two quarter size places in the windshield so we called the police back out to report that. Our insurance company arranged for a glass place to repair it Monday morning and we drove home after that.

I think many kids think it is fun to vandalize that way but as they grow up and this is done to them, it will not be so much fun!

But this did not spoil a very nice Christmas with family there.