On Our Way To Crazy

Hello, internet. Nice to see you.

I have been gleefully unplugged for about a week now. I didn’t even have Blackberry service for a couple of days. Somehow I managed the jitters and cold sweats. I think all the food and alcohol helped.

We were in Texas for eight crazy nights. It was glorious. We played the Wii my mom awesomely got my dad for Christmas, decorated mountains of cookies and stayed up til 3am with my parents listening to stories about hanging out backstage with Ted Nugent (the Nuge!) and watching my mom do the moonwalk of losers. We worked really hard to make Aaron’s dad’s grandpa name “Buckethead”.

We ate Whataburger, La Madeleine, Pappasitos, Pasados, Whataburger again, Corner Bakery, homemade tamales and a few chocolate pies. We dipped thousands of peanut butter crackers in chocolate. My aunt forced me to eat a cream cheese jalapeno jelly cracker thing and got mad when I didn’t like it. Aaron’s mom tried to burn the house down by cooking pizzas with the cardboard still on the bottom. We ate dozens of bowls of taco soup, the Official Meal of Friends Aaron and Brandi Go Visit.

I got to spend eight straight days with people I love. Texas people. Home people. I spent my 30th straight Christmas crammed into a house with fifty people yelling, eating, and unwrapping a tidal wave of gifts. The Wii golf team of Brandi and Papaw got two birdies in the same game and is poised to take over the world. I watched football and wrestled the kids of the guys Aaron went to middle school with. I shopped and wrapped and cooked with my parents, then lost to them at every game we played. I talked about marriage and depression and recipes and uncertainty and getting older with the same girls who were on my t-ball team.

We are really lucky to be in job situations that allow us to travel home for Christmas like we do. We got real, honest-to-goodness REST. And we are very, very thankful.