A Kiki Christmas / Shopping for Suits, CoinStar and Tommy

Monday, December 26, 2011

A Kiki Christmas
While the kids had Christmas at home and at Grandma and Papa's on December 25th, today they traveled down to Katy, TX to see Kiki at her home (last time X and A saw Kiki it was at her lake house on Lake Livingston, so it was a bit of confusion for them).

Nanny, Melinda, X and A all crammed themselves into a present-filled car and drove down for the annual celebration with Kiki and the Rickels. Chance, Courtney and Cory (along with Kiki) were all there to celebrate the holiday.

After the big present unwrapping, the group played the round-robin, present-swapping, "Twas the Night RIGHT Before Christmas" game mentioned in an earlier blog.

Melinda, Nanny, X and A re-packed the car and headed back late to Nacogodoches. They all were happy, but exhausted from a day of travel and frivolity. 

Shopping for Suits / CoinStar / Tommy
Jack stayed at Papa's Farm to spend some much-needed time with Erich (who we saw for a short time recently) and Alex (who we have not seen since July). Papa, Alex and Jack spent the morning shopping at a variety of stores in Nacogodoches to get Alex some suits for law school. There were some great post-Christmas, early-bird sales and Alex got a gift card for just this occasion. By noon, Alex has everything he needed.

Erich was getting a little antsy (since he had been on the farm for awhile anyway) so Jack and Erich made a run back into town to dump a bunch of coins into a "CoinStar" machine in Walmart. It took 25 minutes to dump it all in and the lady at the Customer Service window (who took the receipt to give the cash) had to do a double-take when she saw the total. Way to go Grandma and Papa and the coin jar! It was just a meaningless task to give Erich something to do, but it got the two of us out together for a few hours to talk.

In the afternoon Jack's uncle (Grandma's brother), Tommy came to the farm and we got to spend some great time with him. Jack spent a second night at the Farm.

Another fun, but long Christmas-season day!