The Richards in Scotland: Christmas Visit to Texas

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Christmas Visit to Texas

I opened my blog today and realized its been 3 weeks since I've updated the blog! Thinking about it I realized we have been traveling and going nonstop for 3 weeks straight, and this Mommy is tired! A good tired though, because we've been able to see so much of our family and friends and do so many things in those 3 weeks.

On December 23, 2010 we were flying back to Texas for Christmas, YAY! We had one shot to get out of Aberdeen, as the airport had been cancelling and delaying flights for a week due to the snow so it was either we make it out that morning or we would spend our Christmas in Aberdeen. Well that morning it was like a Blizzard on our way to the airport. I will never forget the fact that it was dark, we could hardly see the road and the streets were piling up in snow. The car in front of us was headed to the airport as well and we watched it slide back and forth across the road all the way to the airport! I just knew we were out of luck. By the time we got checked in the snow had stopped. So now it was a matter of the airport being able to clear the runway of the snow and also de-ice the snow on the plane. Any delays were not on our side as we had a 9 am (10 am flight in Amsterdam) to catch! We were scheduled to leave at 6 am ...and after sitting on the plane for so long it was 7:30 am that we finally took off! Shortly before that I told Jon I thought we should just walk off the plane, there was no way we could make our next flight and I really did not want to be stuck in the Amsterdam airport after there was already many stranded passengers. We decided to stick it out, we knew we would be running to our gate when we arrived.

We arrived at Amsterdam airport at 9:30 am (Amsterdam time) and probably RAN more than a mile through the airport to get to our next flight. It all sounded too familiar to us as we have been watching "Home Alone" over and over again and remembered the scene when the whole family was running through the airport. Exhausting! We arrived at the gate at 10 am and our flight was at 10 am!!! Luckily they let us on the plane even though we did not have our boarding passes prior to arriving. Some how we made it, and I couldn't believe they still let us on the plane! We were on our way to Houston! We had a smooth ELEVEN hour flight home and were so excited to be back for a visit. We did not have our luggage for 4 days but that was ok. It was strange to drive on the right hand side of the road again, and the lanes on the Beltway were so wide compared to those here in Aberdeen!

Our first stop was to pick up Lupe Tortilla fajitas (YUMM!!!) and to see my new nephew Myatt and sister in law Stacey in the hospital! What a special treat to come home to a new nephew and cousin for Trent and Landon. He is precious. We spent Christmas eve with my family and Christmas Day with Jon's family and then spent a couple of days at the farm until Jon had to leave and come back to work in Aberdeen. Trent, Landon and I spent another week in Sugar Land and El Campo visiting with family and friends. We ate lots of Mexican food, played with Gamma, Gampa, Nanny, PawPaw, Uncle Kyle and Aunt Jill and cousin Ally, Aunt Katy and Clark, Uncle Jason and Alyssa, Uncle Neal, Uncle Eric and Megan, Uncle Ramsey, Aunt Stacey and Uncle Jess, and cousins Drake, Carter and Myatt. We had playdates with friends at Stomping Grounds, Chick-fel-A and Chuck-e-Cheese and even Mommy got to visit with some of her friends and catch up for a night out. It was a busy trip but we had fun. When it was time to leave, Gamma and Gampa flew back with us to Aberdeen for a visit here.