Texas Christmas

Well we are getting ready to leave tomorrow back to "sunny" California. We were hoping for a "White" or at least "Cold" Christmas here. Ha Ha Ha! It ended up being summer weather with a warm 75 degree day on Christmas and a thunderstorm a few days later and then nice warm breezes till today!! Only in Texas right?
Christmas was wonderful, we had a great spiritual Christmas and fun opening gifts and watching the kids reaction to everything. I love this holiday for so many reasons and enjoy looking forward to it all year. (I even play music during the year just to boost my spirits)

We did a lot of things and one of the highlights was a surprise Birthday/Anniversary Party for Grandma and Grandpa Poole on Friday night. It was quite an event trying to keep it a secret, even up to the last minute trying to figure out how to get Grandma there dressed up. The ploy was a temple trip with all of the adults. It was a brilliant plan...and Matt made it more believable (with his sisters and sister-in-law giving him looks that could kill) when he realized that our recommends expired on the 31st of December and we had only gotten one half of our interviews done with the bishop and we were missing the signature from the stake president. (I was laying down at the time because I had a headache so I am only envisioning this conversation) But things were remedied with some supposed phone calls to our stake president, ha ha ha. Then another kink in the plan came the next night trying to get Matt and Dad back in time to go to the "temple", because of our silly tv from the van, trying to get it fixed before we left on Saturday. They finally had to just leave, and they barely made it back in time. Well needless to say it went off beautifully. Grandma was totally surprised!Marcus, Anna, and Marie made some great food for the party (Michael particularly like the flower sandwiches, he ate 5 of them!) Marcy finished an awesome slide show of the last 40 years and had that playing during the party. We had a replica of the cake and flowers made for them. The cake topper was the original from the wedding cake so that was totally fun to do. We had a great time.

The kids and I also made a quick visit to Oklahoma on Saturday. We weren't able to see everyone like I had hoped. We just didn't have the time. I hope this summer we can get to see everyone and spend some time hanging out there. I am glad we did get to see Titia and her family. We had a really good visit and I think Mike and Dan got their Erin Elzeabet fix and Tyler fix, and Steph got her Mike fix. LOL! We drove through town and reminisced and looked at the Christmas lights on the main street. Stopped by Kaja's for a brief moment and then had to head back to Texas. We met up with the Brooks in Moore and drove home with them. We brought home some of the cold weather with us that was blowing in (yeah)

We got to also visit with our dog Gabbie. She is doing great, and has adapted VERY well to her new owner Terri, which is Grandma and Grandpa's neighbor. So every time we come to visit we get to see her too. We really miss her, but she absolutely loves playing with all of the other dogs and is totally spoiled rotten!

Well we will be off tomorrow back to California pending anymore technical delays (TV issues)!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year.