Random ramblings from the Texan in London.

So, an old friend of mine (we'll go with OF for this one) in Texas had a baby right before Christmas.  As you can imagine, I was pretty excited to meet the sproglet and to catch up with those who so cleverly made her.  I proceeded to sort through some of Herself's small things, choosing a few of my favourites to pass on, and a few silly little gifty things, and made plans to pop by OF's parents' house to say hi. Let me just lay this out for you.  I had the whole family in tow, which was understood before we were invited.  Perhaps, hindsight being what it is, I should have arranged for the first visit to be sans bratlets, but it didn't occur to me at the time.  So here we are, jet lagged after the HellFlight and spotty sleep, arriving to meet the fresh baby, and first thing I see is a huge well decorated tree with a pile of beautifully wrapped presents beneath it.  Now, as we discussed in the last post, that's Dude's version of catnip.  So I'm already...

Since we've procreated, we made a deal with our respective families that we'll alternate Christmases.  One year here in the UK, one year in Texas.  This year was a Texas year.  Yee haw. Himself, being the savvy consumer that he is, searched around for the flights.  He found the best deal for the time we wanted to spend in the States and booked it for what was, to me, a staggering £2600.  Just out of curiosity, he checked a few weeks later.  The same flights were up to £4000.  A week or two before Christmas he checked again. £7000. For.  The.  Same.  Flights. Because apparently the Reason for the Season is for the airlines to squeeze as much out of people wanting to spend the holidays with their families as they possibly can.  Gross. Anyway, we piled into the cab on the morning of the 22nd to head to the airport.  Little did we know that the ride to Heathrow would be the last moments of peace we had before we hit the t...