Thursday 12-27-12 through New Years day 2013.

After I got off work on Thursday my Dad called to say that everyone was at his home visiting him and that they were going to IHOP for dinner and could I join them.  So I hooked up with everyone at IHOP and got to see Ruth, John and Sarah one more time before they left Friday.  And Edward before he left Friday (Jill and Samantha went to Cheddar's for dinner, they had to go before they left Texas!!)  My beautiful sister Elizabeth, whom I get to see all the time, but still nice when we can all be together.....never get tired of being all together!  And it was fun that Logan, Lauren, and Taylor were there too.  I had been kind of bummed out that I hadn't gotten to see them more with Alan working such long hours everyday through the holiday it seemed we were always the last ones there and the first to leave....while everyone stayed and played.....so I was happy for the opportunity to meet up one last time.  Thanks Dad and Logan for calling me and making sure I was included!!


Logan, Elizabeth, Dad, Barbara, Sarah, and Taylor

I was sitting on this side next to John....but I was taking the picture so not in it!
Lauren, Edward, Ruth, and John

Friday and Saturday we just tried to get caught up on sleep and work and kind of take it easy until we were going to go to a Party Saturday night....but then We were so excited because our kids surprised us by coming back to Ft. Worth for New Years!!  What a great surprise!!  We played Monopoly and some kind of cards I'm sure and talked about how much we wished we had "Risk" to play.

Sunday, I had my final lesson of the Book of Mormon, a review, a Family Feud Game.  Everyone seemed to have a really good time and we had a lot of high scores....so that's always nice.  And I decorated my room with all the Hero's of the Book of Mormon posters it was a nice ending to a great year!

We invited Dad and Barbara and Tootie over for dinner with us so that they got to visit with John and Allison some more.  We had Italian this night - lasagna and french bread and fresh fruit, and pies.

Then we played cards.

New Years Eve, I had to work morning only and when I got off we went to Barnes and Nobles to see Dad and look for some new games....we found "Bang" which we really like, but no Risk, at least not the style of Risk that we wanted....so we went to Target and found it.  Yay!!

Logan and his friend Snyder game to join us for Dinner at "The Cotton Patch" then we went to see the new "Jack Reacher" movie which I have read all of the books (Lee Child's Jack Reacher books) so I was excited to see how Tom Cruise did as he was the movie star playing Jack Reacher, and he is not the big guy the book describes, but he got the job done.  I really enjoyed the movie and thought it followed the book as good as any movie can.  Then you guessed it we played cards and "Risk" until way past the New Year.



Alan, Aileen, my empty seat, Snyder, Logan, John and Allison
 

New Years day, we slept in then went to lunch at Chili's then to the movie "Parental Guidance" loved it.  It was great and better than the previews made it look....and I thought the previews made it look pretty darn good.

We took Logan and Snyder to meet up with his Dad and then we played more cards.  I think we went to bed kind of early this night....too many late nights.  After Alan and I went to work Wednesday the kids left for Tyler.  We were sad to see them go....but we really had, had so much fun we couldn't really complain!

It was an awesome holiday!!