On the morning of December 19th we pulled into Buda, Texas, to the house of Kathleen's Aunt Julie and Uncle Chuck. It is also where her cousin Aubrie, and Aubrie's husband Ben P, live in another house on the property. Half the family was at work when we arrived so we had the chance to take showers and hang out for a little while. That evening Kathleen's parents, John and Leslie, also flew down. Aubrie and Ben were so welcoming that they actually moved out of their house and into the big house, giving their space to us and Kathleen's parents. They even let our kids hang out inside, which made the kids very happy!
Aunt Julie is a super host! She had everything ready for us, including a drafted out schedule for a week of festivities.
The first two days were super relaxed as we were still waiting for Kathleen's other cousins, Allie and Ben D, to arrive from Portland. It was great to have down time, talking with family, using the internet and showering whenever we wanted to. Saturday evening we drove to northern San Antonio to get dinner with a former co-worker of Kathleen's mom. It was a nice drive down, and a lovely dinner, but we didn't see much of San Antonio.
Allie and Ben arrived late on Saturday night and then the party really started. We began with breakfast tacos at Valentina's food truck. They were so good we had to go back another day!
Then we spent Sunday driving out to Fredricksburg, Texas, to look at the holiday lights. On the way we stopped and went wine tasting, which was fun. We didn't know that Texas had a "wine scene." Fredricksburg is a "Germantown" but it wasn't played up as much as we were expecting. The lights were fun though. And they did have a giant Christmas Pyramid.
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| Photo Credit: Cousin Allie |
On the way back to Buda we also stopped in Johnson City for more lights. It was a super cold night, but we found a Glüwien stand so that helped warm people up. The lights in Johnson City were incredible, especially this display put on by the electric company.
On the 23rd, Aubrie, Uncle Chuck and Ben D had to work. So we had another fairly quiet day. Sugar cookies are a Conery family tradition so we baked those as well as made challah and latkes which is also something we like to do every December. It was nice to be able to contribute by being responsible for making everyone dinner one night. Cooking in a real, big, spacious kitchen with all of the necessary utensils was a nice change.
On the 24th we spent several hours decorating the cookies we had baked on the 23rd. This is by far the most time-consuming, but also enjoyable part of cookie making.
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| Photo Credit: Cousin Allie |
Christmas Eve also involved a trip to our very first Texas Mega Church. It was definitely an experience. The church had a dog park, an amphitheater and a disk golf course on site. For the service we were seated in the over flow of the over flow where we watched the service on a TV at the front of the chapel. The music was absolutely amazing and and the chapel was beautiful but it was very different from the small Portland church where we have attended Christmas Eve service in in the past. They even had prepackage communion and electric candles.
After church we ate John's traditional Christmas Eve Paella and then had a game of high stakes Texas Hold Em Poker for a Texas prize pack. A lot of us had no idea what we were doing and it was a lot of fun. Kathleen ended up taking home the prize pack, mostly in a win of attrition. We played until after midnight at which point there were three players left in the game. The three didn't have time to restart the game before John flew out, leaving Kathleen as the winner.
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| Photo Credit: Cousin Allie |
Throughout the trip we also participated in another Gatewood family tradition of Pickle hiding. Hiding the pickle is a tradition that started in the American Midwest but is widely attributed to Germany and has, to some degree migrated back. The Gatewoods picked up the tradition while they were living in Amsterdam in the 90s. The tradition involves hiding various sized pickle ornaments in the tree. When someone finds the pickle they get to pick a small wrapped gift from the "pickle prizes." It always leads to some good family competition and everyone participates.
On Christmas Day we opened stockings, but had all agreed that we didn't want to do gifts this year. Instead of gifts we all made the effort to come together in Texas and spent money on activities we did together. It worked well for us, since we don't have room for more stuff. Most of Christmas was spent participating in amazing games that Aunt Julie had found, making us do some crazy things. It was a ton of fun.
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| Photo Credit: Cousin Allie |
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| Photo Credit: Cousin Allie |
This was the perfect way for us to spend Christmas! As different as it was from previous Christmases, it had the normalcy of hanging out with family, and several Gatewood/Conery family traditions. While our Thanksgiving this year was nice, it didn't feel like Thanksgiving. This felt like Christmas. And the fun family times didn't end with holiday!
