Texas Trip

This Christmas we had the opportunity to fly out to see my family in Texas. We flew out Friday the 18th of December from Salt Lake after having left Otis (our truck) in the care of Diamond parking (Which we highly recommend! They were great!). We were on a plane with only like 72 seats on it, two rows of two. Needless to say we were very cramped. We arrived in Texas after almost three hrs. It was really great to see the fam! My mom and little brother picked us up. In my mom's truck we got our first close up of San Antonio Texas, while also getting our ears chatted off by my little brother talking about his most recent Nintendo game. Texas is very flat.... I am sure it is very pretty in the spring though. My parents actually live outside of San Antonio in a city called Boerne (pronounced bernie). They live on Katie ct.! Isn't that great!? My dad got home from work that evening and then my older sister's family came that evening. My little sis came late that night and then my older brother actually wasn't able to come until the next tues. that first weekend was nice, it felt so good outside and we had a lot of fun with the fam. We made gingerbread houses, played Nert and watched Star Trek. Saturday we made our potato soup and everyone loved it!
Monday we went to some local caves that were supposed to have a 120 ft waterfall. Total waist of money really, there was no waterfall, the tour included a water damaged building... yup.. pretty much a huge thumbs down! that evening we decided to take a little tour of downtown Boerne. Very cute and old. Boerne was established a very long time ago by a group of Germans and so many of it's main streets have fun unpronounceable names, it made it fun. They had a bunch of cute little antique shops but sadly, most of them were closed when we made it to them (at 5 pm).
Tuesday Erik and I went to downtown San Antonio, walked along the river walk and saw the sights. We spent six hours walking around and saw some pretty interesting things. It was really pretty, there wasn't a lot to do but it was still enjoyable. We saw the Alamo. We saw our first display of public urination (pretty traumatizing..). We ate dinner at a little Texas style restaurant.
Wednesday we drove to Lizi's home down in Big Spring. We were there through Christmas. We played a lot of games and ate a lot of very nummy food. On Christmas Eve, Santa came to visit. My niece was very excited! My dad, as part of marketing his company and had been going around the hospitals as Santa so he brought the suit home and dressed up for Kyleena.
Christmas was exciting. It is always fun opening presents, no matter how old you are.
On the 26th, we had a girls/boys day. The girls went out shopping, looking for Christmas decor sales. As part of a girls day tradition we went to Olive Garden for their endless soup and salad and had a waitress through water and soda all over everything on accident. The boys went to gamestop and played golf on the wii.
We drove back to my parents house on Sunday the 27th. We watched some more star treck, caught up on some sleep lost at Lizi's and then on Monday we flew home.
It was a great trip and I am very grateful that we were able to go. Next year we are planning on going to Erik's parent's home and can't wait! Hope everyone had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Katie's Family

The River Walk at night.

Katie Remembering the Alamo.