It's Gearing Up to the Holidays

We didn't even put our suitcases away when we arrived home from Cincinnati. On Wednesday Ted headed to Beaumont after his men's neighborhood luncheon and that morning I headed to Austin. His was a routine business call; mine was a 10 girls getaway that had been planned since last May.

We all gathered at my house putting one car in the garage and one in the driveway so no one had to stay parked on the street. Loading up five in one car and five in the other, off we went with a stop at Starbuck's first on the agenda. A pit stop at Buckee's was the only other stop we made before making our way to the Caswell House in Austin. This mansion is owned by the Austin Junior Forum. They decorate it for Christmas with everything for sale and they serve lunch in the upstairs. After doing some browsing, and a little buying, we took our places for a very nice lunch. We were met by our two hostesses for our trip, Gail and Shirley.

We headed to Point Venture on Lake Travis about an hour NW of Austin in Leander, TX. Half of us were staying at Gail's beautiful home and the other half at Shirley's great condo. We spent the remainder of the afternoon on the porch of Gail's house overlooking the lake.


Then we all made our way to Shirley's for Happy Hour. She has deer running around in herds! They are very tame and aren't spooked by humans at all.

Then it was back to Gail's for dinner. We were served chicken and salmon that Shirley caught on vacation. I think she said it weighed 35 lbs.! Since we had all been dressed all day with the long ride, we decided to have dinner in our PJs and have a pajama party. The CMA awards were on the TV so we had music and a little dancing from some of the attendees. What a fun night it was.

Donna Marie and I took the twin bedroom on the lower level. We both slept soundly through the night. The next morning our hostesses cooked a wonderful breakfast before we departed.


One car was driving straight home, the other (mine) was stopping to shop. Since we realized we were now 1.5 hours away from the San Marcos outlets, we opted to hit the antique shops along 290 instead. We all gathered on the steps of Gail's house before saying goodbye to some great gals who were superb hostesses.


We stopped at several little towns along the way and before we knew it, we had the entire back of the Expedition loaded down with birdhouses, wind chimes, planters, decorative items, metal pumpkins, velvet pumpkins not to mention our luggage. We had a very late lunch in Carmine at the JW Steakhouse. We had the place to ourselves and it took awhile for our food to come out but it was well worth it. We had another fun time trying to sort out all the purchases when we got home in the dark.

Just to be sure I didn't get too much rest, I was up bright and early on Friday to work at the Children's Festival at the pavilion. We had to be there at 7:30 for our instructions on how to herd 4200 children from school buses to their seats. Some groups had to move to different venues but ours stayed in one spot for all three shows on the main stage so that made our job easier. We had one bloody nose and a poked eye but the group had their own nurse so we didn't have to take anyone to First Aid. Once the third show began we were able to go eat our catered luncheon. The school I was assigned to had 640 children on 12 buses and they were the last to leave. It was 2 o'clock before I headed home.

But wait ... it wasn't over yet. We were invited to a birthday party at the country club for Maria, one of the gals from Junior Forum who was on the trip. Husbands were invited so at 5 o'clock we arrived for some more festivities. It was a great get together and she got some funny gifts including a foul-mouthed talking parrot! It was over at 8 and by 10 I was in bed.

Tonight we'll go to church and then we play Canasta. I hope to put my feet up tomorrow but with shopping, baking, cleaning, wrapping, etc. staring me in the face, I doubt I'll stay in that position too long.