John and I kicked off the holiday week with our first "bake-off". Winner takes the glory and the loser cleans up. John started off strong with his famous peanut butter kiss cookies and I pulled out a few stops with my first ever pumpkin pie and sweet potato balls - both Paula Dean recipes. After a ferice rock-paper-scissor competition to determine who gets to use the new mixer first, John took the lead and never looked back. He won the bake-off and I was left with the clean up. I think it was because he never let my glass of wine get empty. Sneaky!
Thanksgiving morning we participated in an annual Stephenson tradition, The Turkey Trot. A nice 5 mile race around the UT campus with 14,000 of our closest friends. Since I am still not cleared for running this year because of my foot, I walked the route with John and Stella. She was quite the hit among the race goers. One set of girls even said that she will be a "model" one day. Ummm...really? Not sure where that came from. Anywho, my previous race times have ranged in the 8.5 minute mile arena, this year, however we pulled off 19 minute miles. Stella has a lot to build on for next year!
Dinner preparations began quickly thereafter because we took for-ev-er to complete the race. My brothers, Nathan and Ciaran chipped in and we were all set for a 4PM feast. The turkey was like "butta" - absolutely the best I have ever had - good job John! All of the sides and fixin's went well and before we knew it it was time for the Texas vs. Texas A&M football game - i.e. we all moved upstairs to the man cave.
On Friday, John and I decorated our home for the Christmas season. Since this is our first Christmas in our new home we spent almost 8 hours getting everything out and set-up. Pictures are forthcoming as I still have a few small touches to add. We wrapped the trees outside with Christmas lights, put up our tree (which is John's parents first tree from almost 35 years ago!) and hung our stockings.
On Saturday we headed to Houston to meet up with John's college teammate, Ryan and his wife Julie who were in town to play the Houston Texans (professional American football team). We had dinner at a fantastic place - BackStreet Cafe - and walked around the galleria area for a bit before Ryan had to head back for his team's pre-game meeting.
We attended the game on Sunday where the Colts came out with a win. A quick chat after the game with Ryan some of the players and we headed back to Austin - a very long drive with all of the traffic. We ended our fantastic holiday week like any other Sunday night - John and Stella asleep on the couch with Sunday football on and me making my weekly to-do list. It was perfect!
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