Christmas at Mustang Island

About 7:15 am on Christmas morning.

As hard as it was to be away from friends and family at Christmas, we had a lovely time. On Christmas Eve, we took a long walk on the beach with our new friends Molly and Harry. We went in the same direction Elise and I had taken on our early morning walk a few days before. This time we walked out onto the jetties and watched the ocean spray against the rocks. We saw the requisite dolphin or two beyond the jetty and helped Molly collect some shells.



After the walk, we frosted and decorated the sugar cookies and got ready for our dinner guests. Molly and Harry came over at 6:00 and brought over homemade wine and a delicious smoked salmon pate from a salmon Harry had caught. They are a very interesting couple and I love their story. Harry retired from being a firefighter after almost 20 years and then was a medic for a while. After that, he and Molly built a 42′ sailboat and sailed up and down the coast working in logging camps in Canada. Harry would always be the medic and mechanic in the camp and Molly would do whatever needed doing. Once they tired of that, they built and ran a resort on an island in British Columbia for 15 years. They sold that about 8 years ago and now they are travelers.

We had a wonderful dinner and afterwards we all played a game of Clue. Turns out it was Ms. Scarlet with the candlestick in the study. Dastardly woman, eh?


Harry shows his cards.

When Harry and Molly left, the sky was crystal clear and the moon was huge. Before Elise went to bed we put out some reindeer dust so Santa would be sure to find our trailer. Christmas morning the fog was so thick I couldn’t see more than three or four trailers down the row. We’re not sure what time the fog rolled in, but either Santa came before it or Rudolph worked overtime!


The campground. It’s really just a big parking lot, but it’s a four minute walk from the Gulf of Mexico, so we can’t really complain.

Christmas morning started around 7:00. Controlled chaos reigned for a short while as we opened our presents. Elise received four books on CD which will keep us all busy and a pair of real Texas cowgirl boots from my cousin Laura.


Elise in her new sweater, jeans and cowgirl boots.

Elise’s cousins Conor and Taylor gave her a digital camera and she has been taking pictures and video fairly nonstop since. Bobby and I received some books (yeah!) and the super-duper extended version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD! Each movie is two and a half days long. There are many more pictures of present opening on our Flickr site.



We did see Santa’s sleigh tracks in the dew as we were leaving for church.


This is right outside our trailer where we had left the reindeer dust.

We went to church at St. Andrew by the Sea in Corpus Christi. They have an outdoor church and we were really hoping that Mass would be held outside. It wasn’t, unfortunately, but Mass was good and afterward we went back to the trailer for our Christmas brunch. Sticky buns, scrambled eggs, bacon and orange juice. Standard Christmas brunch fare at my parents’ house and we tried to recreate it as best we could. The rest of the day was lazy — perfect. We talked to family at different points and stuffed ourselves with corned beef and mashed potatoes for dinner.


The outside church at St. Andrew by the Sea.

I think we are going to head to Corpus Christi today and visit either the aquarium or the USS Lexington. We’ll be here a few more days and then we’ll head down to Padre Island for New Years.