Unusually Quiet

I haven’t written much the last few weeks.  We were both very tired once we returned from our whirlwind 3,000 miles.  

We did have to make another trip back to Livingston to retrieve the newly found primers.  Then Ted delivered John’s articles to him at the gun club and Don stopped on his way home to Nacadoches for his part of the loot.  I don’t know if Ted checked with Brenda about how it went with the dealer Ted sent to buy everything else.

Thanksgiving was fast approaching so some cleaning and shopping needed to be done.  Kristin arrived on Tuesday before.  I had the table set already and the groceries in so we didn’t need to do that.  We were going ”informal” this year.  We started out with just us three but ended up with six!

We had dinner at Joe’s that evening then drove to Hockley to visit the Gullo Family lights.  It is 5 acres of  beautiful lighted displays with lovely Christmas music playing.  

Wednesday we did our meal prep.  We were in great shape Thursday morning and just stayed out of the way of Emeril aka Ted as he prepared the previously dry brined turkey headed to the oven.  It was excellent.

Our Israeli neighbors joined us for their first authentic American Thanksgiving turkey dinner.  And our neighbor Nancy, whose husband had been in the hospital and chose not to come, filled our table.  All was terrific except the part where I knocked the bottle of red wine off kilter!  The tablecloth, a napkin, a chair seat and the rug all got hit.  We cleaned up a bit and then earnestly worked on it after dinner.  The linens came perfectly clean.  The carpet mostly but the chair seat did not fare so well.  It will all be ok until spring when I will decide what if anything more can be done.  

Kristin and I chose to see the Van Gogh Immersion production while she was here.  Ted and I visited Arles, France in 2012 and stood right where Van Gogh would have to paint so many of his famous paintings.  His 15 months there were the most prolific of his life they said.  It was awe inspiring to see these creations come to life in such dramatic fashion. I took several short videos but I can’t get them to load so here are some photos.  It was a great girls day out.  I

Off to the airport we went on Saturday and what a mess outside though Kristin said it was not bad inside.  She was through Security and enjoying a massage chair outside her gate before we ever made it home.

I had to return for a magnification mammogram due to calcification deposits.  They show up as little white dots on the X-ray and are not uncommon in older women but they wanted a closer look.   

The rest of the week I spent burning up my credit card getting all the Christmas gifts to Kara’s.  I am not sure where she will go with all of it but they have a huge basement.  It can all sit there until I arrive to wrap them.  

Our Giving Tree at church had a list of general items to be distributed through Catholic Charities.  I ordered four girls’ puff jackets, 4 hooded sweatshirts and 3 dozen pair of men’s white socks for the prison ministry.  When two huge boxes arrived, I determined the order had been duplicated!  I put all I really wanted in one box and took the rest back to Macy’s.  Then a few days later two more sweatshirts arrived in separate packages.  Off we went to Macy’s again.  I hope they are done sending me things now.   We also stopped at the post office to mail Kristin’s two make up bags back to her.  Some things never change.

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