Christmas is a big production around “Nana and Pop-O’s” and Carrie and I, along with Natalie and Marshall, showed up late on Christmas Eve Eve to get a head start on the festivities! Natalie and Marshall drove in from Austin and arrived around eight in the evening — about half-an-hour before we pulled in to Chappell Hill (Texas, of course, not North Carolina).

The “Batt women” are hard at work making all sorts of food that we will try to put a big dent in tonight and tomorrow! (I did help out with peeling some potatoes! Woohoo!!!) Here are some pics of my Mom, Natalie, and Carrie hard at work…

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I gotta start blogging more — have lots going on and good stuff to blog about, but just haven’t gotten around to it! So, here goes… We can start with some skiing pics from last week.

Carrie, Kelli and I flew up to Amarillo last Friday and were picked up on Saturday morning by Dan, Mindy, and Carrie and Kelli’s little sister Macey. We drove over to Red river, NM (a short 6 hours!) and took to the slopes the next morning. Carrie and I skied and Kelli and Macey snowboarded for the next two days before we headed back to Amarillo a day early to avoid the impending ice storm! Fortunately we were able to make it out of Amarillo and back to Houston — they did have some flights cancelled, but ours wasn’t one of them!

Without further ado, here are the pics…

Macey pimped out and ready for her snowboarding lesson

Kelli and Macey get ready for snowboarding

Carrie and her dad — Dan and Mindy hung around to watch, but didn’t hit the slopes themselves

Me and Carrie

Carrie on the slopes… check out the boots!

After skiing a bit I turned around to see where Carrie was and I looked just in time to see her fall! After checking to make sure that she was ok, I did what any reasonable person would have done — take out the camera to take pics!!

“Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!!!” — Yeah, I had to hike my butt up the hill to get her back on her feet! LOL

Carrie at the top of the mountain, where we stopped for some lunch.

The house in Red River that Dan and Mindy rented for all of us — Thank you guys SOOOO much!! Much props to Mindy for bringing enough food for all of us ….. (or Kelli)

The Colbert girls!

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A special thanks to my sister (”Nat Batt” as Brendan calls her — even though he is fully aware that her last name is now Glowka) … I flew in to Austin yesterday and Natalie picked me up at the airport and we headed to lunch. We ate at a great little place called Z Tejas — a southwestern type restaurant — it was really good!
Afterwards we headed back to the Omni, with a quick side trip to the post office to pick up some stamps for some *ahem* thank you notes that I still haven’t mailed — yeah, if you haven’t received one, that would be my fault! I worked out of her office for a bit while her officemate Megan was out to lunch and then headed down to the hotel bar to answer some emails, work on some programming, and review my second half small college assignments (which had just been released).

A little after four we headed to San Marcos for my game at Texas State. The Bobcats took on UT-Permian Basin and it turned out to be a pretty good game — notwithstanding the 60 fouls that we had to call!

After a quick stop at Sonic for a bite to eat after the game, we headed to her house to “sleep quick” as we had to be up and on the road by 6am this morning in order to get me back to the airport and Natalie in to work on time! Special thanks for the coffee this morning Nat — much needed and appreciated!!

I really enjoyed getting to spend some time with my sister and wanted everyone to know how much I enjoy our relationship, which prompted this blog entry — well, that in addition to her admonition, “I better make the blog!!”

Since I don’t have any pics from last night, enjoy the random wedding photo of us bustin’ a move back in April!

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Friday at my grandmother’s started off fairly uneventfully … Carrie and I got to Mamoo’s (the name that all grandkids starting with my just-older cousin, Darin, call my grandmother — the older ones call her “grandma” — booooooring!) and it was pretty empty! My cousin Danielle was there and everyone else was over at my Aunt Essie’s. I headed into the kitchen to make myself a bowl of dumplins and Carrie sat down to start to watch the Longhorns (let’s not talk about that game - or the K-State one, for that matter).

A few minutes later, Mamoo showed up. She said hi to Carrie and was walking through the living room to the kitchen — I was in the kitchen on the other side of a small table that is in the middle of it. I turned to say hi to her and she said, “Hi Bradley…” and then started to fall — in an instant she was falling and I couldn’t do a thing! I yelled, “Mamoo!” and got to her as quickly as I could, but she was already on the floor. She didn’t trip — her knee simply gave out — refused to work anymore, as the doctor later put it.

She seemed ok until she said, “Get me a rag” and turned her head revealing a large one-inch gash that was bleeding pretty heavily. I yelled for Carrie to call Essie — neither of us knowing the number — with Mamoo telling us to “Just punch it”, her way of saying to use the speed-dial. In less than a minute, all my aunts and uncles and cousins were over there helping and debating the best way to stop the bleeding, etc. — fortunately two of my cousins are nurses and everyone yielded to their expertise!

I’m happy to report that after a quick trip to the hospital (quick as in 2-3 hours), Mamoo returned home ok — her pride probably damaged more than anything. At 91 years young, she is pretty set in her ways (read: stubborn!) — has two walkers that sit in closets and hearing aids that stay on the nightstand. I think after this mishap the walkers are going to get some use though — hopefully!

Carrie and I headed to Shreveport Friday evening to meet up with John. After some dinner, John and I headed over to the El Dorado to play some cards — woohoo! I’ll leave the poker details for another post (still thinking of starting up a poker-only blog… we’ll see) — but I was down substantially and then came back to go home with a $1 loss — John walked out ahead.

Carrie and I went to John’s game at Centenary (a Mid-Con school) the next afternoon. The game started a little late because the visiting Wiley team thought that the game was scheduled for 7pm rather than 2pm — so they got there as quickly as possible and it tipped off about 2:30pm. We stayed for the first half and I went in at halftime to visit with John and the other officials that I knew as well. After a few minutes in the second half we headed back home to Houston.

Enjoyed it John!

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Poof — another week gone! So much for the “Last Two Weeks” update! I’ll try to get Part Two cranked out on one of my flights or in the hotel…

I’m off to an EARLY start this morning — as in my-blackberry-alarm-went-off-at-5:15am early! If you know me, the only time I am usually up at 5:15am is if I stayed up!

I’ve off this morning on a flight to St. Louis, headed to work a game tonight at Western Illinois — I’ll meet one of my co-officials at the airport, and then we have about a three-hour drive to Macomb, IL. Not exactly an easy trip, especially if you have been following the weather — currently a brisk 17 degress!!! My co-official is handling the rental car and has booked us an 4×4 SUV because, as he put it, “It looks like we’ll need it.” I’m expecting the three hour drive to take a little longer today!

So, I’m off to my first Mid-Con game — and my first game outside of Texas and it’s surrounding states (I’ve worked games in Oklahoma and Louisiana in the past). It’s something that I expected would happen one day, and it’s cool that it’s finally here! Hopefully we will avoid the five overtimes that they had at Western Illinois just a few weeks ago!

It’s going to be a busy week… Fly home tomorrow, work a high school game tomorrow night, then Wednesday at Sam Houston. Recover on Thursday and then head over to San Antonio on Friday for a game at UTSA over the weekend. Somewhere in there I am going to try to work on a few things and also see Carrie a bit!

On a completely unrelated note — I’m thankful that Brendan and Julie are back home! I talked with Julie Saturday morning as I was headed to work a game (and as Brendan was still asleep on the “Bouch” — the hospital’s combination bed / couch contraption, that I assure you is not something that you would want to try to sleep on!). She had finished up her first week’s chemo treatment and was excited about the prospect of going home. I hope that they both have a couple of “normal” weeks before they have to go back up to MD Anderson later this month for Round 2. Glad you guys are home!!

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