a place to land: food, friends, family, and a foot rub or two...or six

So it's been about two weeks since my last entry. Happy late Thanksgiving everyone! We've had an eventful holiday season already. Nate has made the car trip to San Antonio/Austin five times in the last week and a half so we're going to take it easy for the next couple of weeks so he can spend some time not in the car.

Rachel came down to visit for the first part of her Thanksgiving break. I'll post a picture when I get them from her. It didn't seem like five months since we'd seen each other. We just picked right back up where we left off. It was really nice to have my best friend around again. The weather wasn't perfect, but it was pretty nice. We slept a lot...A LOT. It was pretty relaxing, although we each took turns being sick which was kind of a bummer. We decided that we must be getting old since we can't party like we used to. I guess we'll have to give it another try when we're back in IA for Christmas.

Nate's sister, Jamie, came down while she was on break too. Her and Rachel hung out while Nate and I were at work. They found a couple of new places in town for Nate and I to check out. She got to spend Thanksgiving with us at my co-worker Sergio's house. I'm pretty glad we got to have a home-cooked turkey dinner. It was really delicious and pretty fun to have a substitute family. I've never been away from my own for the holidays. After dinner we spent a couple of hours playing pictionary (Midwest vs Dirty South) with his family and friends. This year I'm adding co-workers and my excellent job to my list of things to be thankful for.

Also on my list is my Grandma Jones' health! She was in the ICU right before Thanksgiving. Pretty scary stuff. Glad you're feeling better Grandma! Keep resting and makin' them red blood cells.

We left Corpus the day after Thanksgiving to head up to Austin...Nate's 4th car trip of the week... to meet my mom, grandma, sister, and Grace at the Lake Austin Spa and Resort (pictures to come soon). It had been since July since I'd seen any of them so I was pretty glad to see some family. We spent the weekend getting totally pampered in celebration of my grandma's 70th birthday! You'd never know she's 70. She had at least 5 people on the trip say things like "when you reach 60" or "I thought you were in your late 50's." She is one classy lady....and apparently looks only slightly over twice my age. The spa was the best thing ever though. I learned a lot about how to take care of my muscles and joints so that my constant computer use doesn't cause permanent damage...and hopefully I can avoid some of the shoulder and neck pain I get. Grace, my sister, and I also tried some Eastern treatments. I wasn't as brave as Emily, who tried a full acupuncture treatment, but I did end up with a couple needles in my neck and some HUGE hickey looking things on my back from a cupping treatment. We also did some Thai massage, which was really awesome. I could go for one of those a couple times a week.

We left yesterday, and Nate and I came back to Corpus. Izzy was so hyper when I finally got home. She didn't leave my side all night. But she did throw up on Nate's neck while he was sleeping. Welcome home I guess.

Tonight we photographed the "Lighting of Lamar Park" at the Lamar Park shopping center for the website Nate designed. Hopefully we got some good pictures of what they needed. It was pretty dark...and cold. We finally got out our sweaters.

The new McLeod Creative website is up. Check it out. www.mcleodcreative.com. Oh, and I added one more day to my Christmas vacation. We will officially be on vacation from December 14 (at 5pm) - January 6th. I think we'll plan on leaving Iowa on Saturday Jan. 5th unless the weather is looking bad enough for us to leave earlier. See y'all in 2 and a half weeks!!