A FEW DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS

Kathy had tamales made by one of her co-workers at school and chili before we left. Christmas Eve services were great but for the first time I can remember I was unable join in the singing because when I tried to talk I started coughing. We enjoyed the trip to the church by viewing many streets of Christmas decorations. One of the winners had a helicopter on the roof, a teeter-totter with Santa Claus on one end and a bunch of deer on the other, plus a lot of other animated exhibits. Keith will try to duplicate that one next year.

Christmas morning we started by opening the stockings. Mine was filled with dark chocolate goodies like a can of chocolate pearls. My deer also got a deer block. We had breakfast and gift exchange with the packages under the tree. The tradition continues with Kathy giving me a Guideposts for next year. I got a lot of great gifts and enjoyed giving some. Valerie gave me an American Express gift card with instructions to take Nancy to a good restaurant. Kathy says she wants to come up to Granbury to meet her.

Later in the afternoon Jim and Mandi with their two sons and new daughter came in for another round of gift exchanges. They gave me a copy of Huckabee's Simple Christmas that I have started and it is a great book. I gave them a painting by Wyatt of a cowboy praying. Christopher got a Lego train set and had a great time setting it up and running the different car combinations. I got to hold my greatgranddaughter but I can't post any photos because I left my camera there.

I had a message from the church at Cross Plains that Christmas Eve services were cancelled due to slick roads. I called my neighbors to check and they said the roads were bad with a lot of snow and freezing temperatures. Saturday morning I left headed for Fort Worth. I called Mark and he took Kathy and her mother to visit an uncle in Paris who is in bad health. So I drove to Ashley's in FW. I was going to drive I-35 but the cops had it blocked. I turned back around and went 281 that Kathy had recommend to start with. Lost about 30 minutes there. Driving north I first saw the snow just south of Hamilton. And in trying to stay ahead of the slow drivers I was passing in a passing zone when a Highway Patrol car was coming from the other direction. I saw him turn around. He stopped me and explained that I was going 85 passing a car doing 79. I apologized and he gave me a warning ticket. When I told Nancy, who was driving down from Oklahoma, she said she also got a warning ticket for passing a car too fast. I got to FW a little after 2 to exchange gifts with Ash and Ross. They gave me a special bucket of home made candies that I am enjoying. They had taken other gifts to Mark's house. Mark called today to say he was going to have to mail them to me.

I went back to Granbury and visited with Nancy and her daughter for a few minutes, then headed home. It got dark as I got to Cisco and as I turned off of 206 onto the county roads the snow build-up was bad. It would push the car around. I almost got pushed into an oncoming pickup by the snow. The temperature was dropping below freezing and I was worried about ice building up. I took it easy and got my mail. I worry about getting stuck going up my road, but I was able to break the new snow and get enough traction to make it OK. I then only made one trip from the car to the house because of the snow on the walk.

Sunday Nancy drove from Granbury to meet me at church and got there before anyone else. She was one of four in SS and helped attendance at church. Today I finally got around to answering Christmas cards that were sent to Charles and Lou. I printed my Christmas letter and ran out of black ink in my printer, but got enough to finish the ones I needed to send. I am watching the Aggies get clobbered. They looked pretty good at the start of the second half but it has gone downhill by the last quarter.

Tomorrow they are predicting snow all day with 2-4 inches by the end of the day, so I have the fireplace going and will probably stay home all day.