Lone Star Turkey

We're off today to Texas... San Antonio to be precise, to spend Thanksgiving with Wayne and his family.
In a probably ill-conceived act of vanity, we chose to fly from Salt Lake City to Houston, with a stopover in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You may wonder why. Well, we have visited 48 of the fifty states. Only Minnesota and Alaska remain to be seen. With apologies to anyone whose roots extend into Minnesota, we have found no compelling reason to make it a point of destination in our travels, but the vanity (the one I talked about last week) in me still wanted to be able to say: "been there." In order to stop over at Minneapolis, our final Texas destination had to be Houston, a 3 to 4 hour drive from San Antonio. But, I rationalized, this is a mini vacation, and besides, maybe I can get a few pictures of the hurricane devestation that hit that city. We'll see.

Houston will actually play another role in our little jaunt: Two of my students, He Yan and Li Tong, from Xi'an, China are studying at the University of Houston. We have invited them to join the family Thanksgiving Feast, which means a Thanksgiving morning drive to and from Houston to pick them up, They will spend the night. On Friday the whole family in two cars will take them,back to Houston. That's when we'll probably take pictures. Another of our friends from Xi'an, Xu Hong Mei, is studying with Wayne at the University of Texas, San Antonio. She will not only join us for turkey day, she will also house He Yan for the evening before our return to Houston. We will keep Li Tong at Waynes overnight.

There's a third, and really most important purpose for going to Waynes: Our granddaughter Catherine has recently celebrated her eighth birthday, and will be Baptised on the Saturday following Thanksgiving.

Family, Faith, Friends.... Lots to be thankful for.

Enjoy!