Ice hockey, house crawls, Thanksgiving, roadtrippin' and Texas 'winter'...

I'm not very good at the old blogging thing, am I? Oh well, better late than never :)

Well, what's happened in the last month or so?....in no particular order (because my brain is random today)...

Since my first Dallas Stars game when Rich was here, I have another two under my belt. It's fun! Cold, especially now that it is actually cold in Dallas, but once I realised how many layers I need to wear to watch ice hockey, it's great! I'm even beginning to remember things and know what's happening....not like me when it comes to sport. I'm much more a of 'Who's winning?' kinda person. I love watching games against Canadian teams, they are brutal, makes for so many more fights which just adds to the overall fun! :P

My wonderful Chris rebuilt my bike for me, a fair task after it was entirely dismantled by the shipping company. Luckily there were no bits left over and I have safely used it for an hour or so straight with no mishaps or lost wheels. Thanks baby :D I was dreading doing it myself!

Part way into November Chris' birthday came around, the first I've ever been able to celebrate with him in person. To mark the occasion, we, along with our friends and neighblers, arranged a house crawl. Being familiar with the concept of pub crawling, having done such things many a time, but knowing that generally pubs in Dallas are all way too far apart to be able to do pub crawls this seemed like a fantastic alternative!

We only covered three houses, which with a big group was really plenty, though being a hardened drunk walker, I'd have covered more ;) We started at our house, which was cheese and wine house, followed by pizza (cooked on a pizza stone on the grill!) and beer at Adam's and then dessert (and birthday cake!) and liquor at Peter's. We had a hilarious walk between houses, accompanied by beer and wine and Sara's (not so) fantastic cooler with built in radio. Great night! I'm sure most people can hardly recall the cake part ;)

I finally completed all the visa paperwork bollocks and got that sent off. That was a weight off, so now we sit and wait.....again....but at least I'm here with my boy this time :) There was method to our madness, of course! :D

We took full advantage of Chris' time off over Thanksgiving and did a bit of road tripping. We drove to Austin to see Donna and Corey and little Isaac for a couple of nights and although holiday traffic on the way down was hell, we got there eventually and managed to squeeze in stopping by Nathan and Julie's new place to catch up and play some spades.

Thanksgiving (mine and Isaac's first ;) ) brought a trip to Brenham for the day at Chris' aunt Sharon's where we stuffed ourselves silly, watched football then stuffed ourselves silly again. Great company, great banter, great food, great stories and generally a lovely day :)

After our last night hanging out with Donna and Corey we drove from Austin to San Antonio, stopping in Gruene on the way for some lunch and so I could see some of the (little) hills and have a drive up the Guadalupe which was great. It's really nice there. I think I'm gonna crave spending some time out of the city now and again here, I'm so used to have it on my door step living in a city like Edinburgh with Arthurs Seat smack bang in the middle and all the green bits we have round about.

Gruene is a cute little place, little old Texas town with a lot of the original buildings including the old dance hall. It's changed a lot from what Chris remembered, built up a lot for the tourists and was mobbed when we got there, but I'm looking forward to some tubing or canoeing trips next summer...right up my street, that is! Oh and since it's so desert, lots of cacti!! Loved it, never really seen big ones in person before, Chris thought I was hilarious!

We drove on to San Antonio, checked into the gorgeous old Menger Hotel right beside the Alamo (I mean really...almost attached....). Met up with Steve and Christina and attempted to get ourselves down to the Riverwalk which was unfortunately closed until after 9pm because we were there the night they were lighting the Christmas lights, which also meant that the Mexican restaurant (Casa Rio) that we wanted to eat at was heaving so we had no choice but to hit a few bars before eventually managing to get back there later on in the evening before having a good old wander around the Riverwalk. Chris and I also spent ages exploring the hotel before we went to bed, looking at all the cool old pictures and furniture, trying to find the ghosts...

Up the next day for breakfast and then we got on the road to Houston to have a fleeting lunch with Bruce's fiance Marya and her two kids who were visiting from Boston for Thanksgiving. Great to see her again and meet her lovely children. One night staying with Chris' folks with a nice chilled night with the compulsory family card games (which I always lose...but it's all good fun).

And from Thanksgiving to Christmas....I think we're finally all sorted, having people all over the world is interesting (thanks heavens for amazon gift wrapping service!). It's going to be a weird one not seeing my family this year, I miss them a lot, but I'm happy to be with Chris finally. He spent one Christmas in Scotland with me in 2007 which was amazing, but knowing neither of us have to get on a plane and fly away is awesome! It's going to be a quiet Christmas day as all Chris' lot are at in-laws this year, but we're going to have a nice little day ourselves (and hopefully get some Skype time in with my family) and then we're going to drive to Houston and the extended Machart Christmas will take place on Boxing Day instead. Not long to go now and really happy for Chris that he has some good time off and couple of short weeks. Hopefully next year I can persuade the Scots to do a Texas Christmas ;)

I love having our tree up too and with presents underneath, makes me feel very at home...a good dose of the warm and fuzzies! And it's even been cold too which has helped with the nice festive wintery feel! It was pretty warm through most of November so it was great to have some really brisk days, below freezing a fair bit and even a little sprinkling of snow! Getting to wrap up in my big Scotland coat and be perfectly at home :) The snow we had here didn't last long, snowed and then rained straight away so it was gone in minutes (and before I got a proper picture) but still pretty cool. Our house isn't too great at the cold, kinda hard to warm up and keep warm with our ancient gas heaters, the oven does a better job! One reason on the long list of reasons that we need a new place to live...

I'm happy to say too that Chris and I have been doing a bit of music stuff, it's taken a bit of time to settle down into it, but we finally got the keyboard set up and we're both really excited at working on things together. Chris' songs are so good and so much fun to play, making my unpracticed piano player brain work! It's all good for me though. It's been inspiring and I'm trying to write a little too, but I'm definitely lucky to be with such a talented person. It's definitely nice to have music filled days instead of my usual, no job sitting around on the internet doing laundry doing dishes kinda day! Yes, as I suspected it would, the novelty of no job is wearing off a little (read no money, no car...). I was at a little bit of a loss once my visa stuff was sent off because I worked on that so hard. Though saying that, I have had Christmas to occupy me a little and now we're looking for another place to live so that's my new job too. I like this place a lot, but we'll be moving on in the new year. I do like quirky old houses, but I can't say I'll mind if we can ditch the expensive window units, bad plumbing and noisy neighbours!

And that's another kettle of fish....any suggestions about what I should try and do for a living once I'm allowed to go out and work?? Answers on a postcard....

Merry Christmas everyone! All the best for the year to come :) Keep in touch and sending love to you all xxx

Love
Jenna