We have been getting settled and getting ready for visitors for Christmas!  Heather is coming to visit tomorrow with Sasha and then after she leaves we will be happy to see Erin P and Alice!  What a lot of fun to look forward to!  We want to see the latest two movies that have come out and we have some fun things that the Barneys want to do while they are out of school.  Jer and I already saw Interstellar.  There was a time during the movie when I thought "why did he want me to see this?  It's awful!"  Everything was falling apart for the characters, but then it got better. 

Right now, Jer is in a meeting as we speak getting oriented to his new job with Jackson Hewitt  that will start in January.  He says he is the only man and the only white face.  Except the tech guy.  But most of the consultants are black women  with a few Hispanic mixed in.  I told him he should have a good time.  They are all very friendly and nice and he has always gotten along well with women.  His boss is a lady named Raj so we assume she is of near east descent, or maybe not.  Who knows?

Today I took my computer into the Geeks at Best Buy.  They are going to do a total wipe of everything and start fresh.  It's been running slowly and when we "fixed" it ourselves, it practically stopped working.  So we hope we can find our Word/Office disk or password to reinstall when it comes back.  If not, I will be working on this laptop till we can get into our file cabinet in storage.  And we hope it's there.   Fortunately, because of Erin's advice a while ago, all my major files are in Dropbox and are safe. :o)  He says I can still watch movies on Amazon and Netflix.  So what more do I want, huh? 

Friday

We went to the Houston Symphony with Lara and Jon and Mary and Sam.  Sarah begged to not have to go and stayed with a friend over night.  It was magnificent!  We heard and saw Handel's Messiah and it was fresh and wonderfully new as they played and sang it.  The tempo was faster and the singers were so clear and precise!  We loved it!  That was their Christmas present to us along with dinner before.  What a great evening!  We had a great time.  And one of the best parts was that Lara drove us downtown and out again with Jon's directions.  We didn't have to battle traffic and try to find our way in all the streets and traffic.  It was really slick and easy as she did it.  Earlier in the day we had to find our way to Jer's first meeting with his boss with Jackson Hewitt near downtown.  It was pouring rain and hard to see and even with Jer having done a dry run the day before it was tricky to maneuver in and out to get there.  

On the way to their house we passed the sod fields along our main street getting out of Crosby and they were lakes.  The rain had soaked in and was standing in lakes and pools and puddles all over.  The drainage ditches were full and overflowing.  It stopped by the time we had to leave for downtown so we could see better.  Downtown is beautiful at night.  If you don't have to drive. 

This is a sod farm.  Normally it's just a huge field of grass.  But not after that long steady rain.

Sorry about all the traffic lights, but this is an idea of how pretty the downtown buildings are at night.

During the week I made stockings to go with our red and gold rug that centers the living room.  I finally gave up on trying to find our stocking hangers and used push pins.  But you can't really tell, right? 

They are for Jer and me and Heather and Sasha.