Whew!  The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity, with spending time with family and driving back and forth from Tyler, Tx to Austin, Tx a couple of times this week.  It’s about 4.5 hours each way!  On top of the driving, there’s been merry-making, visiting with family, playing with my new nephew, rough-housing with  the dogs, and doing lots of knitting.  I have a few minutes this evening now that the house is quiet and I’ll share a few pictures of how Christmas is celebrated in Texas with my family.  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones. On our first foray into Austin, we had our pre-Christmas dinner at my favorite Mexican food restaurant, Tres Amigos.  This is my annual dinner and everyone in our family has gotten the same thing for about the last decade.  My meal is a cheese enchilada with poblano sauce, beans and rice, and a queso puffy shell, which I’m pretty sure we’ll be eating in heaven because it’s so delicious.  It was a lovely meal. After dinner, we braved downtown Austin traffic to go to Mozart’s Coffee Shop on the river.  This was a great idea that apparently half the city of Austin shared – it was very crowded and took quite a while to find a parking spot, walk to the shop, place our drink order, and receive said drinks.   We enjoyed peppermint hot chocolate as we watched a Christmas light show. The backdrop of lights was based on Austin’s skyline, with the capital and UT tower featured.  My favorite were the Christmas bats!  Austin is famous for their bat population which emerge out over the river each night to large crowds in the summer (crowds aren’t as large in the winter). Then we went back to Tyler to spend Christmas with my brother and his family.  We’ve enjoyed our visit together very much.  Here’s my nephew in his bunny hat that his Aunt Sarah knit for him.  I bought him a stuffed rabbit and a book called I’m a Bunny by Richard Scarry.  I loved Richard Scarry’s books as a child – especially the way he illustrates rabbits.  I took some pictures of the book which I’ll share in a separate post.

Well, another busy day of  visiting is coming tomorrow and then I’ll be journeying back to Indy.  I’ll try to post again soon.

Blessings to you,

Sarah