A Texan Christmas

So I've been catching a bit of flack for misleading our faithful readers and so I looked at our last post and realized there was an error in the typing....when I said to check back tomorrow, I meant to say check back quattuordecamorrow. See? Simple mistake.

So now that that is cleared up, on to Christmas (only a month or so late). This year was a Gasser year, but instead of making the pilgrimage out to Michigan and my parents homestead (the most accurate term for where they live) we instead flew South and ended up in Dallas at my sister's house. And although there ended up being 9 adults and 4 kids (you figure out who the 4th kid is, i'll give you a hint, he has less hair than Liam) I don't think it was too crowded....although we did end up all sharing our assorted illnesses. Denise and I were there for about 10 days - first ones in, first ones out - and I have to say it was pretty darn fun. We went to dinner, stayed up late, made ginger bread houses, went to the park, saw Christmas lights, watched a ton of movies....exactly the kind of things you want to do on vacation.

But let me go back to the beginning. The flight to Texas was a little over four hours, and on the left is what we thought the flight was going to be like....but on the right is what it actually was.

 

We originally were quite prepared for a packed flight, but about five minutes to take off, the flight attendant comes up to us and says we can move to the row of empty seats behind us so we will have more room. Great right? Wrong, just as we got situated in our new accommodations, she comes back up to us and says, "I'm sorry, as it turns out, those are someone else's seats." How nice of her to uproot us and give us the hope of something better...only to rip it from our tired, trembling fingers so amicably.

We hung out at my sisters place for a few days, but then we drove down to Houston to meet up with my best friend from college. He put us up in a pretty swank hotel, took us out to dinner and (his idea) took us to the childrens museum just outside of the downtown. Liam had a blast, as did Kenny and I. I would upload more pictures from that part of the trip, but we forgot our camera and so had to use Kenny's iPhone...and he has yet to send me any of the pictures but this....

Liam is actually trying to take the glasses off, and the lab coat tripped him a few times...but hey, what is the point of having kids if you can't put them in big people clothes. The museum was really great, and it helped me realize that one of the best perks about having a kid is that now I get to go to all those discovery museums geared towards children that adults secretly wish were for them.

One of the really nice things about Texas was simply that Liam got to interact with his cousins. Kristy's baby girl Abby is slightly older (about 4-6 months?) than Liam...but insanely talkative, and smart about her words too. We think Liam took some lessons from her while we were there because it seems like over the course of our vacation his ability to repeat things we say quadrupled. The other funny thing about Liam and Abby was that Liam is bigger than Abby...so there was a little competition between them, but for the most part they got along swimmingly. Megan too. Both of Kristy's girls were really great with Liam and we know that Liam loved having similar-sized buddies to play with.

I mentioned that we built ginger bread houses...it is a tradition started by Kristy, Chopper and me back when I was in school at Utah State and they were living in Idaho. I went up to their place for Thanksgiving one year and we made a ginger bread house, did the same the following few years and have all made ginger bread houses ever since. This year the whole family got involved and if you want to see the results, check out Kristy's post, but we'll leave you with a few pictures anyway. By the way, yes Denise and my house was the best, and Liam is annoyed because we wouldn't let him eat all the candy.

 

Christmas morning was quite the event. There were tons of presents, the most I've seen at a Gasser gathering in a long time. Although for some of us, the amount of presents was a source of anxiety. To quote Jeff, and I have to put this in writing because I don't want this to ever be forgotten; "Every year I tell myself that I am not going to be disappointed about how many presents I get...but I can already feel the disappointment creeping up." Ironically, Jeff ended up with almost the most presents out of anyone. Denise and I only got Liam a few things, with his favorite things being a) the balloons, and b) a magna-doodle. He still draws on his magna-doodle about 5 times a day, and still obsesses over trains, especially when he see Thomas. In fact, on the way home, there was a little boy in the airport with a Thomas the Train Engine backpack and Liam kept saying "choo-chooooo" and pumping his fist whenever the boy was within eye-sight.

Oh, and a quick aside to explain the next picture. While we were down in Texas we got to see Mary! Jim and Ria live in the area and moved her into an excellent care facility minutes away from their house so they can see her on a regular basis a look after her. We met up with them and they took us to see Mary and also took us out to dinner, they were very generous. Well Ria makes a fantastic lemon pound cake, and she gave us a whole loaf when we parted ways....and as it turns out, Liam loves lemon pound cake as well. Well we are all sitting around opening presents and just letting the kids wander. All the sudden Liam pops around the corner with the entire loaf of pound cake in his hands. From our sleuthing, we figure there was just enough foil sticking out over the edge of the counter and Liam must have known what that meant. He somehow reached the foil, pulled down the entire pound cake off the shelf and then had himself a little treat. We have since learned that anything we don't want Liam to have has to go at the back of the counter, just being out of sight wont deter him because he has been known to reach over things blindly and wave his hand until he touches something to grab.

And finally, as promised in our last post....more pictures of Liam being carried around in things.

Wait, I changed my mind....it wouldn't be a Gasser family gathering without goofing off for a family portrait. There is just something hard wired in our brains that keeps us from ever being serious for a picture. I would blame it on the Goodman blood in us, but as you can see, my Dad feeds into the frenzy just as much.