Christmas and New Years

I had Christmas here in Austin this time with just the cats and Garrett. It was nice and quiet. I saw It's a Wonderful Life for the first time. I'm not sure how I made it 24 Christmas's without seeing that classic. We made some good food, including two new recipes. One failed; pear puff-pastry with carmel, and one succeeded; corn bread stuffing with fennel. It was an extremely slothful four day weekend, as all good Christmas's should be.

New Years, on the other hand, was not relaxing at all! I went to my friend Emily's party and had a great time. There was meat-wrapped meat, a dance party, a fire pit and lots of friends. Garrett and I made Admiral Russell's Christmas Punch and it was a big hit. It involves lemons, sugar, sherry and a full bottle of cognac. Needless to say, the rest of the weekend was spent recovering. It was worth it, totally worth it.

It actually gets cold here!

Proof that it does indeed get cold in Texas:

The first picture is the hot tub at my boyfriends place. Not too hot, is it? The second is from condensation dripping from the outside of my window. It got pretty cold this past weekend. It's just like a distant memory now, just a bad dream. It's back up in the 60's. Gotta love Texas in the winter.

Meeting the parents

This winter break brought a new level to my relationship with my boyfriend: we met each-others parents. I brought him to Iowa for a few days. We ate a lot of food, froze our Texas butts off and had a really good time. My parents are very low-key and it was a stress-free visit. I think they liked him.

His parents came to Austin for a weekend visit. It was really concentrated and kind of exhausting because we wanted to fit a lot of stuff into the two days they were here. As you can see from the pictures, we took them to the capital, which neither Garrett or I had been to. We also ate a lot (including the Salt Lick - I still think about those pork ribs, mmmm!) and walked around campus.

I really like them! They're tiny and cute and very nice. They like me too, but how could they not?

So, successful parent meetings overall. I'm glad that's taken care of.