Sangria

All of our trekking across Texas for 2011 has come to a close. 

After moving-in and spending our anniversary in DFW, we headed to Austin for a final farewell with our small group. The six couples planned a rendezvous at Chuys restaurant and enjoyed awfully delicious Mexican grub. I even snagged a strawberry margarita and a sangria for myself! 

My girl Kali surprised us with some of the best caramel popcorn I've ever had as an early Christmas present. I'm hoping this blog will nudge her to post the homemade recipe on her own site.

Then we were off to Corpus Christi to spend a few days with our besties, the Lutz' duo. Aubri is getting ready to take her nursing board exams in a few weeks so we are sending a lot of prayers her way! We exchanged gifts, which oddly enough also included sangria, and they upgraded our Keurig! Aubri got me hooked on ABC's Once Upon A Time. 

It's hard to fight off childhood fairy tales depicted via the talents of Ginnifer Goodwin & Jennifer Morrison. Love them! Now I just need to trade her Hulu account info for my Netflix so we can share!

After a quick few days in the city, we ventured out to the tiny town of OG where Aaron grew up. The brother-in-law fired up a couple of bonfires for his friends, warmth we happily mooched. I got to spend time with my sister-in-law, who we never get to see enough, and meet her new squeeze. Unfortunately, when it came time to cook up Christmas Eve dinner, Aaron and I completely botched our mac-n-cheese recipe. We forgot to turn the oven down, which was set at 425 for the stuffing, and our super-delicious-delicacy-turned-mushy-gloop was affectionately named "Prison Mac." 

Christmas Day we resisted the adolescent urge to dump out our freshly-filled stockings and tear apart the perfectly-placed packages under the tree and went to church first. Aaron's dad was beaming as all of his children, sans the eldest, filed in to the Cowboy Church of OG. It's always interesting to see how different communities of believers choose to worship; whether or not their music falls pleasant upon my mortal ears, it's sweet to know it's like honey to God.

Finally we were able to exchange gifts!

 

Despite that the hubby accidentally found out what he was getting, I was still able to surprise him with a Remington 770 .30-06 in full camo with scope, strap, case and a box of ammo to boot. He loves it! We took it outside to shoot several mags at cans of Keystone, because we're in the middle of nowhere. 

I shot several rounds through it and am proud to say that I was the only one to twice, explode two cans with one bullet. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but I'll gladly attribute it to my dead eye. ;)

Now for my gift, my honey got me this pretty little number:

I love it! Aaron told me though he determined long-ago that he was going to get for me a new wedding band, our anniversary visit to the museum confirmed his decision. While there, I had put my ring underneath a microscope intended to show bacteria growth and he saw how broken and misaligned the diamonds in my original band were. 

When we got married, we spent all of our money on our honeymoon so Aaron wasn't able to get my wedding ring till after we'd returned home. I picked out the little guy on the bottom, the product of an after-Christmas sale. When we bought it, we knew it was all we could afford but I loved it and didn't care if it was comprised of larger-cut diamond left-overs.

Well apparently he cared and wanted me to have an upgrade. I can't bring myself to not wear them both, though I know they clearly don't match. Maybe if I have an anniversary band to match the new one, I'll have to graduate the original band to my other hand. 

Christmas Day also took us to San Antonio to visit my family and drop off Aaron's brothers at the mother-in-law's apartment. My grandparents were in town so it was a lot of fun to hang out with them and the boxed-wine that's always in tow. We got a lot of sweet gifts from our family and spent a lot of time playing the game we got them: Wits & Wagers. Super fun, great group game!

My sister and I even got our hair did!

Blonde once-again. What do you think?? 

And finally, after we'd spent time enjoying all the festivities, we still had to pack up the other 3/5ths of our apartment. It took forever but everything is now settled into our storage unit or unpacked into our new space. Moving was not fun. I was so stressed and irritated, I definitely needed to treat myself afterward. 

Which I did.... with a glass of Sangria.

Merry Merry Christmas to All and Happy New Year!