Christmas II (Dos)

Christopher, Heather, Hunter & Sierra all arrived safely in the Texas Panhandle after driving all night from Crosby, Texas (Houston Area) making the drive in about 10 hours. It was so good to see them all. Christopher & Heather had been to Washington to visit us in September, but it was good to have them with us for Christmas as well. They arrived with some good news, it appears that Christopher has a really good lead on a job, more details will follow once they are confirmed and of course when more details are available. This is something Christopher is really excited about, please keep him in your prayers.

The 7 of us joined Pat & Waudell along with our extended family (The Sterlings) (14 total) for their traditional Christmas Eve get together and dinner. All of the food was delicious, as usual and we all ate way too much. Hunter & Sierra entertained themselves with the pool table while the “adults” talked and talked. Dinner was followed by 2 tables of Chickenfoot dominoes. Christopher’s family started to fade (yes some of them had been awake for over 36 hours) just about the time our Chickenfoot game was over so we all headed back to G’Ma Evelyn’s so we could get the kids (& the adults) in bed.

On Christmas morning our Hopper tradition continued; the kids must wake the adults up before they run out to see what cash & prizes that Santa has brought to the good little boy & girl. When we told Heather & Sierra about our family tradition while tucking them into bed they looked at us as if we had lost our minds, but they agreed to follow the Santa rule. It was great to be able to have younger kids around to share those magical moments with, it had been a long time.

Pat & Waudell came over for Christmas dinner II, it was a full house with all 9 of us there, but we still had a good time as always. As usual Bill’s turkey was cooked to perfection and the dressing was good. It was Tonya’s opinion that there was “too” much cheese in the broccoli/cheese/rice casserole but she quickly found out that out of the 9 of us, 8 strongly disagreed with her opinion (yes that too is not anything new). Bill says that there is no such thing as "too much cheese" and everyone but Tonya agrees.

(No family get together at G'Ma E's house would be complete without some sort of check on the plumbing...)

Friday was a sad day for all of us; it was our last day with the family as that evening was when our flight was scheduled to fly back to Dallas (7:00 am Saturday flight out of DFW to Seattle). Another tradition within the Hopper family is that we all get back together the day after Christmas (or Thanksgiving) to eat leftovers from the day before. We got to spend a little more time with Pat & Waudell. Christopher & Heather followed us to Amarillo where we said our good-byes and tears were shed by many of us.

We made another family connection right in the airport there in Amarillo! Tonya’s great-nieces, Baylee & Hannah were arriving from Dallas to visit their Grandparents (Ronney & Marilyn) for Christmas. In our conversations with Marilyn and due to the timing of the flights we were convinced they would arrive on the same flight that we were leaving on. The girls we had not seen in several years are now beautiful young ladies.