Thanksgiving in Texas

We have many things to be thankful for, especially Ryan's family.  Joining us at his parent's house this year were his Aunt Carol and Uncle Carl from P.A.  (That's how people from Pennsylvania refer to Pennsylvania.)  Tessa is totally enamored with Aunt Carol, notice that she is parked right between Nanny and Aunt Carol at our Thanksgiving dinner.  Tessa even tried sleeping in Aunt Carol's room at night, which kind of worked.  The food was delicious, as always.  I try to pay attention to what Paula does in the kitchen because she has some great cooking tips.  But, sometimes, I pay more attention to my wine glass and forget all about cooking.  With Carol to play with Tessa, and Paula to do the cooking, I had a very relaxing holiday.     

 

After a morning of shopping in Old Town Spring, we settled down for lunch at Wunsche Brothers, pronounced Win-chee.  Texas has a huge German population and nothing is pronounced like it's spelled, except my high school name.  Klein is pretty straight forward.  Since Germany is our country this year for Christmas, I was able to pick up a few things in Old Town Spring.  At lunch we started with fried sausage and sauerkraut balls.  For those of you that just thought - yuck - don't knock it till you try it.   Wash it down with a Shiner Bock, brewed just down the road in the Hill Country, and the taste is amazing.  I kicked myself for not ordering the chicken fried steak here.  Never mind that I had just had the light chicken fried steak the night before at a popular barbeque place, I could have eaten it again.  Now don't think I had ordered some diet entree, light just means it was a smaller serving of the famous fried beef, only twelve ounces or so served with gravy and my side choices of fried okra and french fries.  My kind of food!  Sorry about the fuzzy picture, I think our waitress may have had a couple of Shiners also.

 

I love when Uncle Carl comes because he and I always have a list of "must eats"  and they are usually many of the same foods, taquitos and fajitas topping the list of course.  After braving Santa at the mall and the Disney store, we girls joined the boys for Mexican.  You just can't get good Tex-Mex outside of Texas, believe me I have tried.  We mowed down red and green salsa and killed a few pitchers of margaritas here.  We shared fajitas and carnitas and I had a stuffed and fried avocado.  Yes, you read that right, a fried avocado and it was delicious.  After lunch, we all had a nice little siesta by the pool.   

I do love to eat, but we did more in Texas than just eat.  I did some shopping.  How can I forget how huge and crowded the malls are?  Ryan forgot that they are swanky and have valet parking.  We zipped up I-45 to visit my dad.  On the way back, I drove because Ryan had to make phone calls for work.  He doesn't usually let me drive and I was flying.  Looking at the speedometer he asked me if I drove this fast when I was a teenager.  Yep, even faster hence the multiple speeding tickets.  My MIL says I drive like I'm from Texas and she's right, but I take it as a compliment.  We visited with friends.  Ryan's parents were nice enough to babysit for us so we could have an adult's night out.  We also got the kids together to play.  I cannot believe how fast these babies are growing up!

It was a good trip and probably our last Thanksgiving trip for awhile.  We plan to switch gears and travel during the summer starting this June so we will be back soon.