Hair

When the boys came home from college this semester, I noticed that their hair resembled some hair I had seen on some other characters before:

 

Christmas 2024

We had a Christmas party to go to, so we dressed up!

When the kids all got home, we went on our new annual Walmart junk food shopping spree.  We couldn't get all the kids together until Christmas eve at 3 pm, but we really wanted to do it, so that is when we did it!

Later that night, we had our annual Christmas eve dinner and nativity reenactment.

Then everyone got to open Christmas pj's and make fun of the pj's I picked.  They were good sports to put them on though!

The next morning, Adam and Macy came over to open Christmas presents together.  It was fun to have them there!

That evening, we gathered again to do a murder mystery dinner.  Everyone had a character and we raided the costume bin in order to dress up.  It was fun to do something a little different.

We actually forgot to take a picture when we were all dressed up, and everyone changed and I remembered and was really sad about it.  The kids went and put their costumes back on so I could get a couple of pictures.  That made me feel more loved than anything else that day!

Later that week, we took a chance to go to the Giving Machines and go out to dinner.  They were able to do the Giving Machines closer to us in the Woodlands, and that was a better experience than when they were downtown like the previous years.

We had a great Christmas break, and it was so nice to have the kids around.  We learned this year to make set activities so everyone could work their schedule around a few important things and we could maximize the time we got together.

 

Six Flags

We heard that the Wests (with Adam) were going to spend a few days in San Antonio and go to Six Flags.  Joe and Ellie thought it sounded fun to go to Six Flags, so we decided to go too.  We didn't want to crash their party, so we went on our own and didn't tell them, and only ran into them for a couple of minutes while we were there. We bought the super fast pass so that everyone could walk onto all the rides and we didn't have to wait for any ride.  That made everyone enjoy the park so much more.

 

Adam's Master's Graduation

Adam got his Masters of Financial Management from the College of Business at Texas A&M on December 13, 2024.  I was so proud of him, and I made him come into town to walk at graduation, even though he was living in Chicago at the time.  Macy was stuck behind in Chicago because she had her first semester of law school finals that she had to take and they were not willing to let her take them at any other time, even for his graduation.  Joe, Ellie and I went up to see him walk, and the West's also came.  Michael met us there, because he was already in College Station.  

After graduation, we told Adam we would take him out to eat anywhere that he wanted and he could pick where he wanted to go.  He chose a place called Hometown Chinese.  We called and made a reservation, however, it was a very small, hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and we were pretty much the only people there the whole time we had dinner.  The food was really good.

Adam had done several internships through his Trading, Risks and Investment Program at TAMU- he had internships at Cheniere, Exxon, Engie and Shell.  The people that he worked with all seemed to like him and were prepared to offer him a job after he finished, however he couldn't take any of the offers because he moved to Chicago for Macy to go to law school at University of Chicago.  He had to wait until the offers came and went and then he started applying for jobs in Chicago. He ended up applying to 150 jobs and had a ton of interviews, before he got a job that he could take.  His first job was at a chocolate company- Blommer's Chocolate.  

Adam's 

 

Thanksgiving 2024

Ellie and Michael only got Wednesday-Sunday off for Thanksgiving.  Ellie was basically done with classes after Friday, but she had to wait for Michael to be done to come home.  Adam and Macy were able to come for the whole week.  It was so nice to have everyone home for a few days. Adam and Macy stayed at our house.  It was different having the two of them sharing time between our two houses.  We decided the best thing to do was to plan big events and invite everyone to them so that we could make sure we got quality time with them.

The first big event was a family game of minute to win it games.  It was the lefties (me, Macy and Michael) against the boys.  Ellie ran the game.  There was a rousing game of balloon volleyball.

There was a game where you had to get letters out of whipped cream and assemble them.  Macy was a great team player about it, even though her word was ridiculously hard.

Then we had a big Thanksgiving dinner.  Nate cooked the turkey for us, and it was by far the best part of dinner, by a lot! He also made homemade stuffing using some sourdough bread that he had previously made and made red and green. It was weird looking, but it tasted good.

The kids then all hurried back to college because there was a big game between TAMU and UT.  (Although the aggies like to call it tu).  They had to get there the night before for the midnight yell pep rally and then be at the game super early. The weekend before, Ellie and Michael and Michael's roommates had taken turns staying out all night and weekend to be ready when the ticket line lined up on Monday morning.  Unfortunately, it was so cold and rainy and the students made such a mess of it, that after that ticket pull, they decided to end the in person ticket pull tradition.

The game was also a little disappointing for TAMU.  But there's always next year!

 

Girl's field trips, nights out and trips

Some of the fun things I've done with friends lately:

a charcuterie class:

A trip to a offshore rig museum...on shore.

A girls trip to Austin.  We went to an ice cream museum for fun.

And on a couple of hikes!