Happy St. Stephen's Day to me!

I'm working very hard to get Jennifer to keep up the Czech Name's Day tradition and give me gifts on my Patron Saint's day. I would be successful, too, if it had not been for my mom two years ago when she proclaimed that "you only do this for kids" when Jennifer was the only person who gave me something on my Name's Day. Still, Jennifer does not fail to give "me" a DVD that she wants every December 26. This year she didn't bother to wrap Spider-Man, although she claimed she didn't need to because it comes shrink wrapped from the store. That's what happens when you get married!

Christmas was very nice. I had a lovely call with my family on the 24th and then left Austin two hours later than I intended to. Traffic was good and I made it easily to Houston. Dinner was at Kathleen's and there were over 30 people there. After appetizers, food and drink there was a very active and tumultuous white elephant gift exchange. All the gifts were pretty neat. I ended up with a purse that I stole from somebody else for Jennifer through a complicated three-way exchange. She ended up with picture frames and a huge Toblerone but then exchanged the frames for a Margarita set.

After the white elephant we did our gift exchanges and I cleaned up pretty nicely, thank you very much. The we hang out and didn't leave Kathleen's until after one AM when Margaret called that Homer had dismantled their screen door and was barking incessantly. We missed an exit on the way and drove an extra 15 miles.

On Christmas day we did church in the morning, took a nap and then went to Felicia's for her Christmas Day dinner. It was another big crowd and delicious food and lots of visiting, etc. We left Houston at 8:30 and I made it back to Austin in just over two hours. Not bad at all!