Happy Holidays 2025.

From our 'house' to yours

Christmas is Caring; Christmas is Sharing.

This post is our holiday greeting to you this year.   It is about a time when our family was all together just enjoying the fun of being together.   We wish that for you and yours for this holiday season!

We are in the 10th month of our 3rd full-time year on the road. Baby Beluga, our road home, is too small for a Christmas tree, but  we were quite taken with this delightful one found in Historic Market Square in San Antonio, TX, where we all gathered recently.  The picture  carries with it our best wishes to you and yours for a fabulous holiday season.

San Antonio may have felt  like a crowd descended when we showed up:

Eleven of the 12 of us (our step-granddaughter Laura is missing) gathered in San Antonio to celebrate Thanksgiving this year.   All the folks not sitting at our table in the Mi Tierra Restaurant and Panaderia are key players painted in a mural called The American Dream.  We were there because it was a stop on a San Antonio food tour on Thanksgiving morning. There were other fun stops:

 John and the Giant Pretzel.   What?  Why?  And a giant chair:

 Our 'boys':  Mark, William, Matt, John, Michael.

And here's our girls-- so lucky to have them in our family.  This picture was taken just before the annual Texas  A&M vs University of Texas  rivalry game. Lindsay (far left), our most ardent Texas A&M fan, is making a 'horns down' sign, to show a bit of good-natured disrespect to UT, and trying to recruit her sisters-in-law to do the same, with varying degrees of success.   Amber, second from left, is laughing too hard, Georgia (green hat)  is trying, and Katy (far right) has mixed up the fingers. Perhaps we were all laughing too hard, which of course is the point! 

Giant Pretzel, Giant Chair, and of course, a Giant House: 

Advertised on VRBO as a resort, it would have been better described as 'former mansion', now a comfy, sort of ramshackle old house with enough bathrooms to prevent  sibling fights.  It featured front porch planters full of junk mail and inside, a 'moulin rouge' sort of decor.   The house gave us all something to laugh about and fun was had by all.   And yes, we did catch our grandson pouring water from the third floor balcony.

Watching that Texas A&M - UT game

Several doors were marked private but were not locked (imagine tempting...inviting??... our family with that!  One such room revealed a giant nut cracker).  An entrance rug greeted us with the design of a spread eagle cabaret dancer whose strategic parts were covered by the design of the rug. The table upon the rug featured a vase of red ostrich feathers surrounded by extra light bulbs and batteries.   We rolled the rug up for the duration -- the lady's legs were bruised by rug stains anyway.  In general, the house was clean-ish, had a good stove to cook on, and it provided endless opportunities to laugh at it. We did manage to turn out a great Thanksgiving dinner.  

Amber and Mark will be the new parents of a sweet baby boy in February, so we took advantage of the gathering of our family to invite Amber's family to join us for a sort of "welcome to this world" baby shower, and as a way for the families to get together (and for us to unload all the baby things we'd been buying on our travels.)  

Note the plastic 'throne' chair in which Amber is sitting to be honored!  It was part of the house decor.  The balloons and the streamers were provided by Lindsay.  

A late-evening foray to another giant Texas Institution -- Buc-ees. It is a giant gas station with ~100 gas pumps, ~100 EV stations, ~100 very clean restrooms, but only ~60 ice machines.  And it is all attached to a convenience store roughly the size of Walmart.  Why did some of the kids do this?  John, who lives in India, had never seen one, so his brothers rectified his shortcoming!  William was probably the tour guide;   They came home with something called Bucky nuggets (mostly brown sugar), a half-eaten, but reportedly very good brisket sandwich, and key-lime fudge (with other flavors, of course).  Do key-limes grow in Texas?

Here's the scouting party:  Back row is Georgia, Katy, William, Matt.  In front is John and Lindsay.

We'll add one more Giant institution, if only because of the long, long, long drive-through lines.  We went inside Chick-Fil-A.

What we didn't want to do:  Saying goodbye.
 

Katy watching  Matt and Lindsay hugging in the foreground.  If you look at the background, you can see part of the 'caberet dancer' rug, with John, William, and Michael standing on it.  The tan V are her legs.  

John and Georgia arrived before check in time, so we went to visit one of the San Antonio missions.  You can see them in the doorway of the church at Mission Espada.  My brother, now a widower, was married here several years ago.   

Matt and Katy and we had an extra day, so we explored the visitor center and church at Mission Conceptión.  This is the altar reredos. 

A big three-story hallway structure called a convento, led from the church to the larger mission compound. Rooms exited from it, and some of their foundations are still there.

We were fortunate enough to spend a night in a hotel with a view of the famous and fabulous San Antonio River Walk.  

Christmas lights on the Riverwalk seen from our hotel room, with a pink tour boat crossing under an overpass.

The same view at street level.

No trip to Texas would be complete without seeing my brother, Joe.  He's in Austin; Mark, Bill and I visited him:

We did a lot of other things in Austin, as well:  Saw a lot of friends and family and enjoyed every visit.  

For now, let us reiterate our wishes for your very happy holidays and a 2026 full of peace and kindness, and from us, Mele Kalikimaka! Our adventures continue.

VOYAYA

Here are random pictures followed by the who's who of our family.

Matt and Mark

Georgia and John, and 1/2 of Amber

Detail from the San Antonio Market Square Christmas Tree

Michael and William

Amber carved the Turkey

Matt

Mark

Michael and Lindsay

Lindsay & Georgia in the background; William (Superman)

Background:  Lindsay, Georgia, John and Amber:  William as Superman in the foreground.

Even though Laura couldn't join us in San Antonio, we want to include her for sure with our family blog posts.  So here she is, in a pretty white dress,  eating Thanksgiving lunch among her classmates and families at her school and holding Mark's hand.

The Who's Who:  
 if you are confused, and who wouldn't be,  here's the summary of who and where, from oldest to youngest

John and Georgia, still serving in the Foreign Service, are in India, where John is the Chief Management officer of the US Embassy to India.  They arrived this summer after leaving war behind in Israel.  We are quite relieved that they are outa' there.

Matt and Katy are still in Durango, where both still work for Flight for Life, rescuing and transporting folks by helicopter to medical services.  Matt has also started a cabinet making business called Mesa Built!  He has also built himself quite the workshop and does quite a good job.

Mark, Amber and Laura split their lives between Mark's post as he serves in the Foreign Service as an IT specialist and Austin, Texas where Amber, Laura and their soon to arrive baby boy live. Mark is currently posted to Vienna, Austria.  He'll leave there soon because his tour is over, and will likely move on to serve in Amman, Jordan.  We're excited about that because it gives us an interesting place to visit, but he's not happy because it's a longer flight to reach his wife, step daughter, and soon to arrive son in Austin.  (And just to note, Amman is not written in stone yet -- he may surprise us with a different location in a few months.). Laura is six and in first grade.

Michael, Lindsay, and William Micheal is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army and he, along with his family, are currently posted to Fort Huachuca, Arizona.  They'll be leaving this summer because Michael has been selected to attend the Army Senior Service College.  There's more than one location for that to happen, and which one is unknown at this point!   We always want to acknowledge Lindsay -- Military Wife is not easy!  And William who is thriving at Colonel Smith Middle School.  He's 11 and in 6th grade.